House Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Adam Schiff on Thursday threw cold water on President Donald Trump’s tweets of having no recordings of his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey and demanded formal confirmation from the White House by Friday. I have…
House Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Adam Schiff on Thursday threw cold water on President Donald Trump’s tweets of having no recordings of his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey and demanded formal confirmation from the White House by Friday.
“I have to assume that this tweet was carefully worked on with his lawyers, ” the California Democrat told Wolf Blitzer on CNN. “It doesn’t rule out the possibility that there are tapes.
“It only says I didn’t make them and I’m not aware of them.
“It doesn’t speak for the rest of the White House in terms of whether others in the White House may have made tapes.
“So, I don’t think we can accept this as a complete answer, ” Schiff said.
“And, of course, the president hasn’t explained why, if there were never tapes why he made that suggestion to begin with.
“Was he trying to intimidate James Comey?” he asked. “Was he trying to discourage others from speaking out?”
President Trump capped weeks of speculation by saying on Twitter that he had no recordings of his Oval Office meetings with Comey before he fired the former director last month.
Trump raised the possibility of the tapes in a May 12 post saying that Comey “better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”
The House committee, among three congressional panels investigating Russian meddling in last year’s election, last month demanded that the White House hand over any tapes by Friday.
Schiff said that the panel’s request remained in effect despite Trump’s tweets on Thursday.
“There’s still a lot of questions, but I think prudently as investigators, we can’t take this as the last word, ” he told Blitzer. “A response from the White House on the broader issue of whether tapes exist” is necessary.
“Also, we need to continue to ask others, since, unfortunately the president has in the past tweeted things that simply did not square with the facts.”
