Comey: President told me ‘I expect loyalty’

WASHINGTON - Fired FBI Director James Comey said President Donald Trump told him that 'I need loyalty, I expect loyalty” in a private White House dinner conversation in January, according to written remarks from Comey offering a vivid preview of his testimony Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In seven remarkable pages of prepared testimony, Comey describes a president obsessed with loyalty and publicly clearing his name amid an FBI investigation of his associates, and the FBI director's growing unease with the nature of the demands being made in private conversations.

Since firing Comey last month, the president has denied reports he sought a pledge of loyalty from the FBI director amid a Justice Department probe into possible coordination between Trump associates and Russian operatives.

Comey's written remarks, though, do support another Trump claim - that the FBI director repeatedly assured the president that he was not personally under investigation.

'The president is pleased that Mr. Comey has finally publicly confirmed his private reports that the president was not under investigation in any Russian probe,” Trump attorney Marc Kasowitz said.

But overall, Comey's testimony portrays Trump as a domineering chief executive who made his FBI director deeply uncomfortable over the course of nine separate private conversations, beginning with their first meeting in early January before Trump was sworn into office. In that conversation, Comey warned the president-elect of a dossier that was circulating with unsubstantiated allegations against him and his advisers.

The details as described by Comey are likely to further fuel the debate over whether the president may have attempted to obstruct justice by pressuring the FBI director about a sensitive investigation.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., who is leading the Senate probe, said he was not alarmed by the account.

'I don't think it's wrong to ask for loyalty of anyone inside an administration,” Burr said. 'I don't think of what I've read there's anything of wrongdoing.”

Comey writes with almost novelistic detail about his interactions with the president, describing a call on Jan. 27 around lunchtime inviting him to dinner.

The president began the dinner conversation, Comey wrote, by asking him whether he wanted to stay on as FBI director, 'which I found strange because he had already told me twice in earlier conversations that he hoped I would stay, and I had assured him that I intended to.”

Comey's instincts, he wrote, were that both the setting and the conversation 'meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship. That concerned me greatly, given the FBI's traditionally independent status in the executive branch.”

The president then made his demand for loyalty. 'I didn't move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed,” Comey wrote. 'We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner.”

When prompted again on the subject of loyalty, Comey said he replied, 'You will always get honesty from me.”

Overall, Comey's written testimony describes a strained, awkward relationship between the two powerful men, punctuated by exchanges in which the president expressed his displeasure about the Russia probe in ways that alarmed the FBI director. Even the number of contacts between the two were alarming to Comey, who noted he spoke privately only twice with President Barack Obama.

The written testimony also recounts a face-to-face conversation the two men had on Feb. 14 in the Oval Office, where many senior officials had gathered for a counterterrorism briefing.

After the meeting, the president asked everyone to leave. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and senior adviser Jared Kushner lingered, but Trump told them to leave, too, Comey wrote.

Trump said, according to Comey, that 'I want to talk about Mike Flynn” - the former national security adviser forced out after disclosures about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak.

'I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go,” the president said, according to Comey. The FBI director replied only that 'he is a good guy.''

Comey said he understood the president to be asking for him to 'drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December. I did not understand the president to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible links to his campaign.''

Later, Comey complained to Sessions that he should not have been left alone with the president, and Sessions did not reply, according to the testimony. Sessions declined to comment.

Then, in late March, Trump called Comey at the FBI. In that conversation, the president expressed continued frustration that unsubstantiated allegations in a private and lurid dossier about him had become public.

After that phone call, Comey said he called Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente to 'await his guidance.” Comey said he never heard back from Boente.

Reuters contributed to this report.