This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2017/jun/08/james-comey-testimony-senate-hearing-trump-russia-fbi

The article has changed 16 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 5 Version 6
James Comey testimony: Trump had 'chilling effect' on Flynn investigation – live James Comey testimony: Trump had 'chilling effect' on Flynn investigation – live
(35 minutes later)
5.11pm BST 5.44pm BST
17:11 17:44
Democratic senator Kamala Harris asks Comey if he knows of any meetings between Trump campaign people and Russians that have not been acknowledged? What do you think?
Comey: Can’t talk about that here. 5.43pm BST
He gives the same answer a couple more times. Make that three more times. 17:43
5.10pm BST Comey hearing concludes
17:10 Burr closes the hearing with a rousing call for more closed hearings away from the prying eyes of the public the senators have been elected to serve.
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. Burr tells Comey thanks.
5.09pm BST Warner echoes the thanks.
17:09 “There’s still a lot of unanswered questions, and we’re going to get to the bottom of this,” he says. He says the Russian threat is “real and continuous”.
Cotton: Did you or any agent sense that Mr Flynn tried to deceive you? Burr gavels it. Adjourned.
Comey: “That was the subject of the criminal inquiry.” 5.42pm BST
Cotton: Did you come close to closing the Flynn investigation? 17:42
Comey: Can’t talk about that here. McCain refers to a passage in Comey’s written testimony:
5.07pm BST He said he would do that and added, “Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know.” I did not reply or ask him what he meant by “that thing.” I said only that the way to handle it was to have the White House Counsel call the Acting Deputy Attorney General. He said that was what he would do and the call ended
17:07 McCain: Did that arouse your curiosity as to what ‘that thing’ was?
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.
Updated
at 5.09pm BST
5.04pm BST
17:04
Do you believe Donald Trump colluded with Russia?
Comey: “That’s a question I don’t think I should answer in an open setting.”
5.04pm BST
17:04
Republican Tom Cotton of Arkansas is up.
Comey says he’d encourage the release of his personal memos. He says he didn’t take memos on convos with other officials.
Cotton asks Comey about four phone calls not described in his memo. What happened?
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.Comey: Yes.
Manchin: Did you ever talk with Sessions about it? McCain: Why didn’t you ask him?
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.” Comey says he had an understanding of what was going on.
Manchin: will this rise to an obstruction of justice? McCain: “Yes but I think it would intensely arouse my curiosity if the president of the United States said ‘you know we had that thing’.”
Comey: That’s Bob Mueller’s job to sort that out. Comey says “I’ve had some conversations with humans over the years” and his read on it was that as Trump searched his memory he realized that his request for a loyalty pledge from Comey had been turned down.
4.59pm BST McCain doesn’t really accept that.
16:59 McCain is getting gaveled.
Comey: 'Release all the tapes' 5.35pm BST
17:35
McCain says he doesn’t understand how he can be done with the Clinton investigation but not the Russia investigation. “You reached the conclusion that there was no reason to bring charges against Mr Clinton.”
Then McCain refers to “president Comey.”
Ouch.
5.34pm BST
17:34
Republican John McCain is up. He returns to Hillary Clinton’s emails.
McCain:
I think that the American people have a whole lot of questions... obviously, she was a candidate for president at the time, so she was clearly involved in this whole... fake news...
Huh? We lost him.
Comey did too. “I’m a little confused,” he says.
5.33pm BST
17:33
New York drinkers watch Comey testimony
Amanda Holpuch
At sideBar in New York City, the typical din of flirting young people and cheering sports fans was exchanged for a silent crowd, hooked on the words of senators Mark Warner, Richard Blumenthal and Susan Collins.
The bar broadcast the hearing on 16 screens as bartenders hustled orders of avocado toast and bloody marys to patrons young and old. Some of the crowd was dressed in suits, others were dressed for a day out in the city.
More than two dozen people, excluding a handful of journalists, watched the hearing. Catherine Talese, a 49-year-old native New Yorker, said the sports bar setting did not reflect the gravity of the event.
“We’d prefer to have our president and government be just,” Talese said. “I don’t think we’re just enjoying politics as sports.”
Talese sat at the corner of the bar, discussing the testimony with the people sitting next to her, whom she had just met. She said she has always been interested in politics, but that interest escalated after Trump was elected president, which she said was “upsetting”.
Michael Ehrenreich and Robin Horne, who were visiting from Chicago and San Francisco respectively, sought out the bar to watch the hearing before checking-out the city’s tourist sites.
“Trump is clearly inept and corrupt and I think he threatens a lot of people with his policies,” said Horne, 33, who cited Trump’s policies towards immigration and his attitude towards women as particularly concerning.
“I think that there’s a little bit of schadenfreude – watching him squirm and be under this pressure is satisfying,” Horne said.
Ehrenreich, 28, agreed: “Everybody is salivating for an opportunity to see him [Trump] taken down a notch.”
The bar opened more than three hours early at the behest of tabloid news magazine Inside Edition, which hosted the event, which was called: “Covfefe and the City Hearing”, in reference to a typo in one of Trump’s recent tweets.
It was one of a handful of bars across the city broadcasting the hearing.
5.33pm BST
17:33
Comey judges circumstances of his firing to be 'a very big deal'
Comey: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. “It’s my judgment that I was fired because of the Russia investigation... the endeavor was to change the way the Russia investigation was being conducted. That is a very big deal, not just because it’s me...” but because of the crucial independent nature of FBI investigations.
Updated Comey continues:
at 5.03pm BST If any Americans were part of helping the Russians do that to us, that is a very big deal, and I’m confident if that is the case that director Mueller will find that evidence.
4.58pm BST Reed asks Comey whether Trump’s tweets about tapes was a threat.
16:58 “I’m not going to sit here and try to interpret the president’s tweets,” Comey says.
Comey on Russia: 'Nobody tells us what to think' 5.29pm BST
Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia is up next. He says constituents sent 600 questions to ask Comey. He thanks Comey for coming. 17:29
He asks whether Trump showed concern about what the Russians were doing. Comey describes the terms of his firing as he understands them:
Comey says “there was an initial briefing... where he asked questions... but after that I don’t remember anything.” I know I was fired because something about the way I was conducting the Russia investigation was some way putting pressure on him, was some way irritating him.
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.” 5.27pm BST
Comey on Russians: "It’s not about D and Rs. They are coming after America, which I hope we all love equally" 17:27
Updated Now up: Democrat Jack Reed of Rhode Island.
at 5.03pm BST He’s exploring Comey’s decision not to state publicly that Trump wasn’t under investigation. Was Comey concern that Trump might be entangled?
4.54pm BST Comey says: In theory... the concern was... if you’re looking at potential collusion between the campaign and Russia, logically.. the person at the head of the campaign” may be implicated. It wasn’t his concern but a colleague’s concern.
16:54 5.23pm BST
Comey describes risk of 'chilling effect' on Flynn inquiry 17:23
Lankford asks Comey whether anyone else asked him to drop the Flynn investigation or ask him about it. Cornyn, by the way, is back to the Clinton emails investigation.
“This seems like a pretty light touch to drop it,” if Trump was trying to get Comey to drop the Flynn inquiry, Lankford says.
Comey says the investigation was not slowed by Trump, but Trump would not have known in any case.
Lankford: If the president wanted to stop an investigation, how would he do that?
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.”
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.
Comey:
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.
Updated
at 4.55pm BST
4.49pm BST
16:49
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 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.
Do they still have a copy?
Comey: I think so?
Could Comey get that copy back to hand it over to the committee?
Comey: I think so.
Lankford says the committee needs the documents.
4.47pm BST
16:47
Comey compares Trump’s language about Flynn to Henry II’s language ordering the death of Thomas Becket:
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."