Comey says Trump sought to impede investigation

WASHINGTON - In an explosive hearing Thursday, former FBI Director James Comey told Congress he believed President Donald Trump fired him to impede the FBI's Russia investigation, and described the president's claims that the FBI was poorly led and in disarray as 'lies, plain and simple.”

'It's my judgment that I was fired because of the Russia investigation,” Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee during a three-hour hearing. 'I was fired in some way to change or the endeavor was to change the way the Russia investigation was being conducted.”

Comey also said he decided to write memos for the FBI after his private meetings and phone calls with Trump because he didn't trust the president to tell the truth.

'I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meetings,” said Comey, a registered Republican most of his life who also served under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Comey's charges provided riveting political drama, but no new bombshells about Russian meddling in the 2016 election or improper contacts by the Trump campaign or the White House with Russian authorities. It concluded with the certainty that what Trump has called the 'cloud” of criminal and congressional investigations will not lift anytime soon.

The White House angrily denied Trump was a liar, but left it to Trump's personal lawyer from New York to say Comey's testimony vindicated the president.

Trump 'never, in form or substance, directed or suggested” that Comey block an FBI investigation, the lawyer said.

At times Comey mixed an aw-shucks style with a subtle knife twist. He noted that after he was fired May 9, Trump had tweeted that Comey 'better hope that there are no ‘tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

'Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” Comey said, saying recordings would confirm his account.

He suggested that Trump's implied threat backfired. Comey said he 'woke up in the middle of the night” a few days later 'because it didn't dawn on me originally that there might be corroboration for our conversation. There might be a tape.”

He said he decided to send copies of his memos about his talks with the president to a friend, a professor at Columbia Law School later identified as Daniel C. Richman, with instructions to give them to a New York Times reporter.

'I asked my friend, ‘Make sure this gets out,'” he said. 'I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”

The strategy paid off when the Justice Department appointed former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III as a special prosecutor for the overlapping counterintelligence and criminal investigations, a move meant to limit the possibility of White House interference.

Comey said he gave his copies of the memos to Mueller, but said Richman might still have them, too. Comey said he would be happy to have the memos released along with any Oval Office tapes, if they exist.

Richman declined to comment. The White House said it had no comment on whether tapes exist.

Comey said Trump sought repeatedly to get him to publicly declare that the president was not under investigation.

Comey said he had declined to do so because he would be duty-bound to declare otherwise if the focus of the investigation shifted to Trump.

He said he first privately told the president he wasn't under investigation because he worried that Trump would believe the FBI was out to get him in what Comey called 'kind of a J. Edgar Hoover-type situation.”

Comey also complained he thought Trump sought a 'patronage relationship.”

'The statue of Justice has a blindfold on because you're not supposed to be peeking out to see if your patron is pleased or not with what you're doing,” he said.

None of the Republicans on the committee challenged Comey's recollections, although several pressed him to explain why he had not objected to Trump at the time or raised his concerns with Attorney General Jeff Sessions or members of Congress.

Several also seized on Comey's confirmation that he had told Trump personally he was not under investigation, noting it was among the few facts that had not leaked over the last few months.

The president did not tweet once or mention Comey in a speech later.

After the hearing, Trump's longtime personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, said Comey had 'completely vindicated” the president, even as he blasted Comey for leaking the memos.

Kasowitz denied key parts of Comey's testimony, insisting that Trump never asked Comey to back off the investigation of national security adviser Michael Flynn or asked Comey for a loyalty pledge.