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James Comey testimony: 'I was concerned Trump might lie' – live
James Comey testimony: Trump had 'chilling effect' on Flynn investigation – live
(35 minutes later)
4.36pm BST
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17:11
Republican senator Roy Blunt of Missouri is next.
Democratic senator Kamala Harris asks Comey if he knows of any meetings between Trump campaign people and Russians that have not been acknowledged?
He notes that Comey continued to show up for work despite his “serious and troublesome” interactions with the president. Then Comey continued to reassure the president that he was not personally under investigation.
Comey: Can’t talk about that here.
Blunt says Comey took no action, “hadn’t even reported up the chain of command that these things had happened.” Was that a mistake?
He gives the same answer a couple more times. Make that three more times.
“No, in fact I think no action was the most important thing I could do” in order to preserve the investigation.
5.10pm BST
Back to Flynn. Blunt: “My sense would be that the discussion [by Flynn with Kislyak] was not the problem, misleading the vice president might have been.”
17:10
Comey agrees.
Comey says he did not write a letter of resignation in the latest tangle with Trump – though he had written a letter of resignation when he was in the George Bush justice department over qualms about government surveillance.
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Comey: 'Why did he kick everybody out of the Oval Office?'
Cotton: Did you or any agent sense that Mr Flynn tried to deceive you?
Comey declines to say whether he thought it was odd that Trump seemed unbothered by the Russian tampering.
Comey: “That was the subject of the criminal inquiry.”
“I don’t remember any interactions with the president other than the initial briefing” about that issue, Comey says.
Cotton: Did you come close to closing the Flynn investigation?
Heinrich: why should we believe you?
Comey: Can’t talk about that here.
Comey: “I think witnesses should listen to the whole body of my testimony ... A really significant fact to me is: why did he kick everybody out of the Oval Office? ... That to me as an investigator is a very significant fact.”
5.07pm BST
Comey’s talking about Trump turning Sessions, Priebus and Kushner out of the Oval Office before bringing up Flynn with Comey.
17:07
Professor Daniel Richman is Comey friend who passed memo
Comey’s friend emerges:
#URGENT: Columbia Law Professor Daniel Richman confirms he provided information to media at Comey's request
5.06pm BST
17:06
Cotton is trying to knock down the notion that Trump colluded with Russia.
Comey: “I just don’t want to go down that path because I’m not in the government anymore... I’m not trying to suggest by my answer something nefarious.”
Comey’s asked about a New York Times story about Trump campaign contacts with Russian intelligence. Would it be fair to call the story “almost entirely wrong?”
Comey: yes.
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Comey on fact of Russia's tampering: 'it's not a close call'
Do you believe Donald Trump colluded with Russia?
Up next, Democratic senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico.
Comey: “That’s a question I don’t think I should answer in an open setting.”
Comey says:
5.04pm BST
There should be no fuzz on this whatsoever. The Russians interfered in our election in the 2016 election cycle ...
17:04
It is a high-confidence judgment of the entire intelligence community, and the members of this committee have seen that intelligence ... It’s not a close call.
Republican Tom Cotton of Arkansas is up.
That happened. That’s about as unfake as you can possibly get ...
Comey says he’d encourage the release of his personal memos. He says he didn’t take memos on convos with other officials.
This is about America, not about any particular party.
Cotton asks Comey about four phone calls not described in his memo. What happened?
There is "no fuzz" on Russian involvement in the election: "that's about as unfake as you can possibly get" pic.twitter.com/GPX8taN8Ri
Comey says that in one call, Trump wanted to talk about the Steele dossier, called it hogwash and told Comey he was doing great.
Then there was the helicopter “heckuva job” phone call.
There was an operational classified call, a “totally appropriate call.”
The fourth call was the invite to dinner, Comey thinks.
5.02pm BST
17:02
Manchin asks whether Trump ever expressed displeasure with his job performance.
Quite the opposite, Comey says. One time Comey was getting on a helicopter and the president called him just to tell him he was doing an awesome job.
Manchin: Do you think you’d have been fired if Hillary Clinton had become president?
Comey: That’s a great question. I don’t know.
Manchin: Did you wonder why Sessions was not asked to stay in the Oval Office that day?
Comey: Yes.
Manchin: Did you ever talk with Sessions about it?
Comey: “I did say to him... I passed along the president’s message about the importance of aggressively pursuing leaks of classified information... but I did not tell him about the Flynn part.”
Manchin: will this rise to an obstruction of justice?
Comey: That’s Bob Mueller’s job to sort that out.
4.59pm BST
16:59
Comey: 'Release all the tapes'
Comey:
The president surely knows whether he taped me, and if he did my feelings aren’t hurt. Release all the tapes, I’m good with it.
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Comey describes friend's handoff of memo to media
Comey on Russia: 'Nobody tells us what to think'
Collins is asking Comey again why he decided to record details of his meeting with the president.
Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia is up next. He says constituents sent 600 questions to ask Comey. He thanks Comey for coming.
“Really just a gut feel laying on top of all that, that it’s going to be important to protect this organization that I make records.”
He asks whether Trump showed concern about what the Russians were doing.
How did details of the memo emerge? he’s asked. The memo described Trump asking Comey to let the Flynn inquiry go.
Comey says “there was an initial briefing... where he asked questions... but after that I don’t remember anything.”
“The president tweeted on Friday after I got fired that ‘I hope that there’s not tapes,” Comey says. Then he woke up in the middle of the night on Monday and realized it was important he get his own version out.
Comey underscores again the gravity of the Russia tampering: “Nobody tells us what to think, what to fight about...except for other Americans. but we had a foreign government... tried to shape the way we think, we vote, we act... Which is a big deal.”
Comey says he “asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter... I asked a close friend of mind to do it.”
Comey on Russians: "It’s not about D and Rs. They are coming after America, which I hope we all love equally"
Was that Mr Wittes? (Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and editor in chief of the Lawfare blog, is a friend of Comey’s.)
No.
Who was it?
“A good friend of mind who’s a professor at Columbia Law school.”
That presumably led to the publication of this New York Times story reporting that Trump asked Comey to shut down the investigation into Flynn.
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Note: be advised that while Donald Trump isn’t live-tweeting the hearing, Donald Trump Jr is. Perhaps weak by comparison but it will have to do:
Comey describes risk of 'chilling effect' on Flynn inquiry
We all know that there is no way anyone in the swamp would leak something favorable to #potus. Otherwise this whopper would be everywhere! https://t.co/hO5SCD3Nd2
Lankford asks Comey whether anyone else asked him to drop the Flynn investigation or ask him about it.
4.22pm BST
“This seems like a pretty light touch to drop it,” if Trump was trying to get Comey to drop the Flynn inquiry, Lankford says.
16:22
Comey says the investigation was not slowed by Trump, but Trump would not have known in any case.
Shaun Walker
Lankford: If the president wanted to stop an investigation, how would he do that?
The view from Russia:
Comey: I’m not a legal scholar. But the president is the head of the executive branch and he could in theory direct the investigation ended. “We have important norms against this.”
Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted on his daily conference call with reporters that the Kremlin is not paying particular attention to the Comey hearing. Peskov said Russia is paying far more attention to summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, also happening today in Kazakhstan.
Lankford: Is there any question that the president is not real fond of the investigation? He tweets about it. So why was Comey worried about telling FBI agents that Trump asked him to shelve it.
"Trump's enemies are seeking blood, reminiscent of that old US illness, McCarthyism" says this Russian official. Others are simply ignoring. https://t.co/LGqyQIdyqo
4.20pm BST
16:20
Up next: Susan Collins, Republican senator from Maine.
She thanks Comey for showing up. She wants to talk about Comey’s assurances to the president that the president was not under investigation.
Collins asked whether Comey limited his assurance to counterintelligence investigations or whether he meant any kind of investigation?
Comey says he did not use the term counterintelligence. “My reading of it was it was important to assure him that we were not investigating him...”
Comey says he was worried, as he briefed the president on the “salacious” Steele dossier, about conjuring some kind of “J Edgar Hoover” scenario.
I didn’t want him thinking that I was briefing him on it in order to hang it over him in some way... I was very keen not to leave him with the impression that the bureau [was threatening him].
Hoover kept files of compromising information about political leaders from Kennedy to King as leverage should he need it.
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4.17pm BST
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Comey is replying to questions about what former acting attorney general Sally Yates advised the intelligence community about concerns about Michael Flynn.
Comey doesn’t know whether Sessions was in the loop on Flynn. “I don’t remember that he was.”
Comey says he does not know who may have been involved in his firing.
4.14pm BST
16:14
Comey hints at unspecified Sessions conflict in Russia matter
Comey says he can’t talk in an open setting about why he thought attorney general Jeff Sessions would recuse himself from the Russia case.
He knew things about Sessions, Comey says,
that would make his presence in a continued Russia investigation problematic... [things indicating] that he was not going to be in contact with Russia-related matters much longer.
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16:12
Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon. “I believe that the timing of your firing stinks.”
“The odor of presidential abuse of power,” Wyden says, “is so strong.”
In one dinner, Wyden notes, Trump raised Comey’s job prospects, asked for his loyalty and denied allegations against himself. What was Trump after?
Comey:
Comey:
“I got the sense my job would be contingent upon how he felt I conducted myself and whether I demonstrated loyalty, but I don’t know that I’d go so far as to connect it to the [Russia] investigation.”
I think there’s a big difference in kicking superior officers out of the Oval Office, looking the FBI director in the eye and saying I hope we can let this go ... There’s a real chilling effect.
Comey says in a patronage relationship the underling considers the views of the boss.
4.10pm BST
16:10
Rubio is wondering whether Trump’s gist was: let the Russia investigation run its course, even if it catches up with Trump’s associates.
Yes, Comey says, that was the sentiment Trump was expressing.
Rubio breaks down Trump’s requests: 1. be loyal, 2. let Flynn go, and 3. tell the public that I’m not under investigation. Is that right?
“Those are the three things he asked, yes sir,” Comey says.
“The only thing that’s never been leaked is the fact that the president has never been under investigation,” Rubio says. He’s making friends with the president here.
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Rubio asks whether Trump expressed opposition to deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, whose wife’s campaign once took dough from Clinton friend and former DNC chair and current Virginia governor (ie super-Democrat) Terry McAuliffe.
Republican James Lankford of Oklahoma is up next. He says he prays for Comey and his family. He says Comey’s notes are important. He asks whether Comey referenced those notes in preparing the written open testimony.
Comey says Trump said that Trump was “rough on him”, McCabe, on the campaign trail.
Comey says he did review them. But he has no copy now. Mueller has them. The Columbia prof had a copy of the memo at the time.
Comey assured Trump that McCabe was a good guy.
Do they still have a copy?
Then Trump later said: “Remember that McCabe thing.” What did that mean? Rubio asks.
Comey: I think so?
Comey says he’s really not sure.
Could Comey get that copy back to hand it over to the committee?
Updated
Comey: I think so.
at 4.22pm BST
Lankford says the committee needs the documents.
4.05pm BST
4.47pm BST
16:05
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Republican senator Marco Rubio is up. Was the Flynn meeting the only time Trump asked Comey to drop the Flynn investigation?
Comey compares Trump’s language about Flynn to Henry II’s language ordering the death of Thomas Becket:
Yes, Comey says.
Comey being literary: I took Trump's "I hope" you can end the Flynn investigation as a "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest."
But did Comey tell the president that was not an appropriate request?
No, Comey says. “I don’t know. [why]... whether I was a bit stunned, I didn’t have the presence of mind. What came to my mind was, be careful what you say.”
Comey says he thought “the cloud” as Trump referred to it meant the Russia investigation in general. But the specific ask by Trump was to say Trump was not under investigation.
Comey: “First time I said we’ll see what we can do. Second time, I explained how it should work.”
4.02pm BST
16:02
Comey talks about Trump’s reference to the Russia investigation as a “cloud.”
Comey says Trump’s ask was to establish publicly that he, Trump, was not under investigation. Comey told the president he’d see what could be done.
Comey says his assurance to Trump that “we’ll see what we can do” was a “slightly cowardly way” of getting off the phone.
Then he reported the conversation to his team.
“You have the president of the United States asking you to stop an investigation,” Feinstein says. What did your colleagues think?
They were shocked, Comey says. “They were very concerned.” But they struggled with what to do with that information.
Should we share this with any senior officials in the justice department? ... We can’t infect the investigative team... so we decided that we ought to keep it away from our troops...
To tell the attorney general made no sense... there were no other appointed confirmed leaders... We decided that the best thing to do would be to hold it, keep it in a box.
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15:59
Comey: 'Lordy I hope there are tapes'
Comey goes further into the president’s request that he let the Flynn investigation go.
“I was so stunned by the conversation that I just took it in... I was playing in my mind” his response.
Comey continues:
I saw the tweet about the tapes, Lordy I hope there are tapes. I remember saying ‘I agree he’s a good guy,’ as a way of saying ‘I’m not agreeing with what you asked me to just do.’
This was Trump’s “tapes” tweet from 12 May:
James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!
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15:57
Donald Trump Jr picks up on Risch’s parsing of Trump’s words. “I hope [you do this],” Trump said, not “go do this.”
Comey says he understood Trump’s words to represent a direction.
Hoping and telling are two very different things, you would think that a guy like Comey would know that. #givemeabreak
