In his opening statement before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the recently-fired FBI Director called the President of the United States a liar.
James Comey also told the panel on Thursday that he believes he was terminated for his handling of the Russia probe, and that Trump’s requests for him to drop a separate investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn were “stunning.”
The much-anticipated hearing on Capitol Hill treaded mostly along the written testimony provided to the committee by Comey, which was publicly released Wednesday evening. That statement documented a number of potentially improper interactions the FBI chief had with President Trump before he was fired, including encounters in which Trump asked Comey for his loyalty.
But Thursday’s proceedings also implicated current and former members of the executive branch in ways few were expecting.
Comey left an interesting bit of information hanging about the current Attorney General Jeff Sessions and why he wasn’t a reliable figure to notify of President Trump’s potential obstruction of justice.
“He was very close, and inevitably, going to recuse himself for a variety of reasons,” Comey said of Sessions. “We were also aware of facts that I can’t discuss in an opening session that would make his continued engagement in a Russia-related investigation problematic,” Comey added. He noted that the Attorney General did indeed recuse himself not too long afterward.
Later in the hearing, Comey was attempting to justify his decision last year to go public with the findings of the Bureau’s probe into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. That decision, Comey claimed, was motivated by compromising actions taken by the Attorney General at the time: Loretta Lynch.
He said he considered appointing a special prosecutor to the case following the infamous tarmac meeting that Lynch had with former President Bill Clinton. Comey said he ultimately declined to invoke that option, saying it would have been “brutally unfair” since he knew that case was ultimately not going to lead to a prosecution.
But Comey also suggested that Loretta Lynch was downplaying the Clinton email probe for political reasons.
“At one point, the Attorney General had directed me not to call it an ‘investigation,’ to call it a ‘matter,’ which confused me and concerned me,” Comey said of Lynch, under questioning from the Chairman of the committee, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.).
Comey later told Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) that Lynch’s order was “concerning” since it seemed to “track” with the way the campaign was discussing the issues.
“It gave the impression that the Attorney General was looking to align the way we talked about our work with the way a political campaign was describing the same activity, which was inaccurate,” Comey testified.
“I didn’t believe she could credibly decline that investigation, at least not without grievous damage to the Department of Justice and to the FBI,” the former director added.
The most biting parts of Comey’s testimony Thursday, though, were still reserved for the President of the United States.
In his opening statement, Comey said that the Trump administration “chose to defame me and, more importantly, the FBI by saying that the organization was in disarray, that it was poorly run.”
“Those were lies, plain and simple,” he told Senators.
Comey also informed the committee that he leaked his memos to a friend in order to motivate the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel in the Russia probe.
The ousted FBI chief then had a message for President Donald Trump: “Release all the tapes. I’m good with it.”
Last month, President Trump warned on Twitter that Comey “better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”
Asked if he believed there were actually tapes of the encounters he documented with the President, Comey told the panel: “I hope there are.”
