House Intelligence Committee requests Comey’s Trump meeting notes, White House tapes
The leaders of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence announced on Friday that they’ ve made two requests for evidence — one to former FBI director James Comey and one to White House Counsel Don McGahn — in relation to their investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Reps. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, and Adam Schiff, D-California, said they wrote to Comey requesting any notes or memoranda in his possession memorializing discussions Comey had with President Donald Trump.
They asked McGahn to inform the committee whether any White House recordings or memoranda of Comey’s conversations with Trump exist, or have existed in the past. Their request, submitted via a letter, asked that the copies of any such materials be given to the committee by June 23.
The request comes the day after Comey’s momentous testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, and after Trump in a Rose Garden news conference dodged questions about the existence of any White House tapes of his conversations with Comey.
During the hearing Comey also referenced Trump’s tweet saying Comey “better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations” were he to give information to the press.
James Comey better hope that there are no “tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!
“It didn’ t dawn on me originally that there might be corroboration for our conversation. There might be a tape. And my judgment was, I needed to get that out into the public square, ” Comey said.
Earlier on Thursday, Comey said, “Lordy, I hope there are tapes.”
During his testimony Comey also said that he spoke with the president nine times, and that he thinks he created a written record of each conversation. “If I didn’ t, I did it for nearly all of them, especially the ones that were substantive, ” he said.
“I’ll tell you something about that, maybe sometime in the very near future, ” Trump said when asked about the purported existence of the tapes during a press conference at the White House today. “You’ re going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer.”
