Congress asks: Are there Trump tapes?

WASHINGTON - In the wake of James Comey's riveting testimony, congressional investigators say they want to know if the White House has recordings of President Donald Trump's private discussions with the former FBI director.

If it does, they want to listen to them.

Trump added to the mystery Friday by saying he will address the question of tape recordings 'sometime in the very near future,” while warning reporters they would be disappointed.

On Friday, the House Intelligence Committee sent letters to White House counsel Don McGahn, asking 'whether any White House recordings or memorandums of Comey's conversations with President Trump now exist or have in the past.” The committee said it wants any such materials by June 23.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said his committee is focusing on verifying Comey's testimony.

'If there are tapes of the conversations at the White House, we'd like to know,” said Schiff, D-Calif. 'Now is the time for a lot of hard spade work.”

Verification the assertions Comey made Thursday under oath to a Senate committee are seen as an important next step in determining if congressional investigators should start focusing on possible obstruction of justice.

Comey's testimony also could expand the criminal investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into questions of whether Russian interference in the 2016 elections involved anyone on the Trump campaign.

In a Rose Garden news conference Friday, Trump said Comey's testimony vindicated him.

'But yesterday showed no collusion, no obstruction,” the president said. 'That was an excuse by the Democrats who lost an election that some people think they shouldn't have lost.”

During his testimony, Comey asserted that Trump fired him because of the ongoing Russia criminal investigation he was leading at the time - that the president sought 'in some way to change, or the endeavor was to change, the way the Russia investigation was being conducted.”

Comey acknowledged that after he left government and was a private citizen, he gave memos memorializing his conversations with Trump to a friend with instructions to convey them to the New York Times.

'He's a leaker,” a defiant Trump said Friday.

Trump said he would be willing to speak with Mueller under oath to talk of the conversations.

Comey's testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee was based on notes he made after nine conversations with Trump. But after Trump fired Comey in May, the president tweeted: 'Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” The White House has not confirmed if such tapes exist.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, headed by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, has requested any tapes. The committee has not yet heard back if they exist, and if so, whether they will be turned over.

Jill Wine-Banks, a former Watergate prosecutor, questioned why Republican-led congressional committees have not issued subpoenas for the tapes. Many past presidents have used recording systems, either to recheck conversations or for use by historians.

Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said he would 'absolutely” issue subpoenas for White House tapes if it is determined they exist. Sen. Richard Burr, the North Carolina Republican who heads the committee, has not commented on the issue, but he and Warner have pledged to follow the inquiry wherever it leads.

Trump and his personal attorney have strongly denied much of Comey's claims, with the president disputing that he had asked for loyalty from the FBI director or asked him to lay off the Flynn investigation.

The investigation does not end with Comey's conversations, or the tapes, however.

Burr noted that a day before the public hearing with Comey (which was followed by a closed-door session), the committee met with Director of National Intelligence Daniel R. Coats, Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael Rogers and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Coats and Rogers have so far refused to respond to Congress whether they, at Trump's request, asked Comey to curtail an investigation of ousted national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Burr said the committee would seek a private session with those men 'probably next week.”

Schiff said the House committee also would like to hear from the directors as well as from CIA Director Mike Pompeo. He said it may call in FBI officials, including those sitting in the room with Comey during one of his phone conversations. He said committee members also would like to hear from former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. And the list goes on.