Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation

[LA se Karachi]

Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing this month.


WASHINGTON — President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.

The existence of Mr. Trump’s request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.

Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation. An F.B.I. agent’s contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.

Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of the memo to a Times reporter.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey that Mr. Flynn had done nothing wrong, according to the memo.

Mr. Comey did not say anything to Mr. Trump about curtailing the investigation, only replying: “I agree he is a good guy.”

In a statement, the White House denied the version of events in the memo.

“While the president has repeatedly expressed his view that General Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn,” the statement said. “The president has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the president and Mr. Comey.”

In testimony to the Senate last week, the acting F.B.I. director, Andrew G. McCabe, said, “There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date.”

Mr. McCabe was referring to the broad investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. The investigation into Mr. Flynn is separate.

A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment.

Mr. Comey created similar memos — including some that are classified — about every phone call and meeting he had with the president, the two people said. It is unclear whether Mr. Comey told the Justice Department about the conversation or his memos.

Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey last week. Trump administration officials have provided multiple, conflicting accounts of the reasoning behind Mr. Comey’s dismissal. Mr. Trump said in a television interview that one of the reasons was because he believed “this Russia thing” was a “made-up story.”

The Feb. 14 meeting took place just a day after Mr. Flynn was forced out of his job after it was revealed he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of phone conversations he had had with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Despite the conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey, the investigation of Mr. Flynn has proceeded. In Virginia, a federal grand jury has issued subpoenas in recent weeks for records related to Mr. Flynn. Part of the Flynn investigation is centered on his financial ties to Russia and Turkey.

Mr. Comey had been in the Oval Office that day with other senior national security officials for a terrorism threat briefing. When the meeting ended, Mr. Trump told those present — including Mr. Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — to leave the room except for Mr. Comey.

Alone in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump began the discussion by condemning leaks to the news media, saying that Mr. Comey should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information, according to one of Mr. Comey’s associates.

Mr. Trump then turned the discussion to Mr. Flynn.

After writing up a memo that outlined the meeting, Mr. Comey shared it with senior F.B.I. officials. Mr. Comey and his aides perceived Mr. Trump’s comments as an effort to influence the investigation, but they decided that they would try to keep the conversation secret — even from the F.B.I. agents working on the Russia investigation — so the details of the conversation would not affect the investigation.

Mr. Comey was known among his closest advisers to document conversations that he believed would later be called into question, according to two former confidants, who said Mr. Comey was uncomfortable at times with his relationship with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Comey’s recollection has been bolstered in the past by F.B.I. notes. In 2007, he told Congress about a now-famous showdown with senior White House officials over the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. The White House disputed Mr. Comey’s account, but the F.B.I. director at the time, Robert S. Mueller III, kept notes that backed up Mr. Comey’s story.

The White House has repeatedly crossed lines that other administrations have been reluctant to cross when discussing politically charged criminal investigations. Mr. Trump has disparaged the continuing F.B.I. investigation as a hoax and called for an inquiry into his political rivals. His representatives have taken the unusual step of declaring no need for a special prosecutor to investigate the president’s associates.

The Oval Office meeting occurred a little more than two weeks after Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Comey to the White House for a lengthy, one-on-one dinner at the residence. At that dinner, on Jan. 27, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey at least two times for a pledge of loyalty — which Mr. Comey declined, according to one of Mr. Comey’s associates.

In a Twitter post on Friday, Mr. Trump said that “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

After the meeting, Mr. Comey’s associates did not believe there was any way to corroborate Mr. Trump’s statements. But Mr. Trump’s suggestion last week that he was keeping tapes has made them wonder whether there are tapes that back up Mr. Comey’s account.

The Jan. 27 dinner came a day after White House officials learned that Mr. Flynn had been interviewed by F.B.I. agents about his phone calls with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak. On Jan. 26, Acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates told the White House counsel about the interview, and said Mr. Flynn could be subject to blackmail by the Russians because they knew he had lied about the content of the calls.

Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman contributed reporting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/...ey-trump-flynn-russia-investigation.html?_r=0

 

[KAL-EL]

This guy is turning into a clown and a complete embarrassment.

 

[C130]

This guy is turning into a clown and a complete embarrassment.

this whole Russia thing is a joke. show me proof of collusion.

Bush and Obama are clowns and Trump is no different I guess..

 

[F-22Raptor]

The reporting coming out of The New York Times and CNN is explosive: Deposed FBI Director James Comey wrote a memo following a February 14 meeting with Donald Trump in which he says the President told him "I hope you can let this go" in regard to fired aide Michael Flynn's role in the ongoing investigation into Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 campaign.
If true, that is almost the textbook definition of obstruction of justice, a charge that could well lead to impeachment proceedings.

"Reluctantly I have to say yes," independent Maine Sen. Angus King told CNN's Wolf Blitzer Tuesday night about the prospect of impeachment if the claims in the Comey memo are true.

Given those incredibly high stakes, the White House has come out forcefully -- insisting that Comey's memo as reported misrepresents the tenor of the conversation on that February day.

"While the President has repeatedly expressed his view that General (Michael) Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the President has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn," a

White House official told CNN in a statement. "The President has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the President and Mr. Comey."

Here's the problem with that statement -- and the broader pushback against the story, which was first reported by the Times' Michael Schmidt: To believe it, you have to make all sorts of assumptions that seem very unlikely to be true.

The first and most important is that Comey is either lying or badly misunderstood a one-on-one conversation -- more on that in a minute -- between himself and the President of the United States.

If Comey is lying, ask yourself why. Why would the then-FBI director lie -- in real time -- about a meeting he had with the President of the United States? What purpose would that possibly serve?

If you think Comey just misinterpreted the meeting, his history on this stuff would suggest that's wrong. His detailed memory of an attempt by then-White House chief of staff Andy Card and then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to convince then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, sick in the hospital, to reauthorize the domestic spying program in 2004, wound up being validated.

The second big issue with the White House story is, why would Trump ask Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Vice President Mike Pence to leave the room before making the request of Comey unless Trump knew that what he was doing was extremely iffy -- and wanted to avoid witnesses? Or perhaps he knew that Sessions or Pence might stop him before he even made the ask and he didn't want that problem?

The only possible explanation I could come up with is that Trump, always a believer in his powers of persuasion, thought he might be able to convince Comey more easily in a one-on-one setting than with Pence and Sessions around. But that seems far less likely, knowing Trump, than the other two alternatives for asking the room be cleared.

And then, finally, is the context into which this latest bombshell lands. Trump's entire presidency -- and his entire transition to the presidency -- has been dogged by questions about his campaign's ties to Russia. From Flynn, who was forced to resign as national security adviser after he repeatedly misled Pence and others about his interactions with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, to Carter Page, a one-time Trump foreign policy adviser, to Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, to political gadfly -- and sometimes Trump adviser -- Roger Stone, there have been a slew of reports that raise questions about the appropriateness of the interactions between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.

While Trump has repeatedly dismissed the Russia story as "fake news," he acknowledged in an interview last week with NBC's Lester Holt that Comey's handling of the Russia investigation played a role in his decision to fire the FBI director. "And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said 'you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won,'" Trump told Holt.

Trump has also acknowledged that he directly asked Comey whether he was under investigation and insisted that, on three separate occasions, Comey said he was not. But Comey allies have disputed the idea that the FBI director would have done so.

The problem for Trump now is that the story is spiraling totally out of control. Given all that we now know about Trump, Comey and the FBI's Russia investigation, it is going to be damn near impossible for Republican congressional leaders to avoid actively seeking out the Comey memo as well as any taped conversations between Trump and Comey. (Trump seemed to float the idea late last week that he may have a secret taping system, but the White House has refused to comment on it since that Friday tweet.)

Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, in a tweet Tuesday, summed up lawmakers' appetite to read the memo: "@GOPoversight is going to get the Comey memo, if it exists. I need to see it sooner rather than later. I have my subpoena pen ready."

If Comey's memo -- when Congress gets its hands on it -- says what the Times' and CNN's reporting says it does (and I am betting it will) then Trump's presidency becomes in serious and immediate peril.

The burden of proof shifts to Trump and the White House to show that what Comey wrote in the memo was simply incorrect. And, barring a recording of the conversation that proves Trump right and Comey wrong, that is going to be very hard to do.

Everything in Trump's first 116 days in office -- and there's been a lot of it -- was survivable in a political sense. If the Comey memo winds up being accurate, this one might not be.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/16/politics/trump-comey-fbi/

 

[Devil Soul]

Trump asked Comey to end investigation of Michael Flynn: source

WASHINGTON: U.S. President Donald Trump asked then-FBI Director James Comey to end the agency's investigation into ties between former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russia, according to a source who has seen a memo written by Comey.

The explosive new development on Tuesday followed a week of tumult at the White House after Trump fired Comey and then discussed sensitive national security information about Islamic State with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

The Comey memo, first reported by the New York Times, caused alarm on Capitol Hill and raised questions about whether Trump tried to interfere with a federal investigation.

The White House quickly denied the report, saying in a statement it was "not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the president and Mr. Comey."

Comey wrote the memo after he met in the Oval Office with Trump, the day after the Republican president fired Flynn on Feb. 14 for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the extent of his conversations last year with Russia's ambassador, Sergei Kislyak.

“I hope you can let this go,” Trump told Comey, according to a source familiar with the contents of the memo.

The New York Times said that during the Oval Office meeting, Trump condemned a series of government leaks to the news media and said the FBI director should consider prosecuting reporters for publishing classified information.

Coming the day after charges that Trump disclosed sensitive information to the Russians last week, the new disclosure further rattled members of Congress.

"The memo is powerful evidence of obstruction of justice and certainly merits immediate and prompt investigation by an independent special prosecutor," said Democratic U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers said they wanted to see the memo.

Republican U.S. Representative Jason Chaffetz, chairman of a House of Representatives oversight committee, said his committee "is going to get the Comey memo, if it exists. I need to see it sooner rather than later. I have my subpoena pen ready."

In a letter to acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Chaffetz set a deadline of May 24 for the FBI to produce "all memoranda, notes, summaries, and recordings referring or relating to any communications between Comey and the President."

Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan backed Chaffetz.

"We need to have all the facts, and it is appropriate for the House Oversight Committee to request this memo," said Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong.

LEGAL QUESTIONS

Legal experts took a dim view of Trump's comments, as quoted in the memo.

"For the president to tell the FBI to end a potential criminal investigation, that's obstruction of justice," said Erwin Chereminsky, a constitutional law professor and dean of University of California, Irvine School of Law. "This is what caused President Nixon to resign from office."

But the experts said intent was a critical element of an obstruction of justice charge, and the president’s words could be subject to interpretation and possibly put into the context of other actions, like Comey’s termination.

The fact that the president apparently said he “hoped” Comey would end the Flynn investigation rather than more directly ordering it “makes for a weaker but still viable case,” said Christopher Slobogin, a criminal law professor at Vanderbilt University Law School.

Flynn's resignation came hours after it was reported that the Justice Department had warned the White House weeks earlier that Flynn could be vulnerable to blackmail for contacts with Kislyak before Trump took office on Jan. 20.

Kislyak was with Lavrov at the White House when Trump disclosed the sensitive information.

A spokeswoman for the FBI declined to comment on the details of the memo.

An emailed fundraising appeal by Trump's political organization and the Republican National Committee sent out after reports of the Comey memo said Trump was being victimized by an "unelected bureaucracy."

"You already knew the media was out to get us," it said. "But sadly it’s not just the fake news… There are people within our own unelected bureaucracy that want to sabotage President Trump and our entire 'America First' movement."

The new development came as Republican and Democratic lawmakers pressured Trump to give a fuller explanation for why he revealed sensitive intelligence information to Lavrov.

The information had been supplied by a U.S. ally in the fight against the Islamic State militant group, the officials said.

 

[LA se Karachi]