The former F.B.I. director has long been a target of President Trump’s.
The former F.B.I. director James B. Comey will testify on Wednesday before a Republican-led Senate committee seeking to discredit the investigation he opened during the 2016 election into ties between Donald J. Trump’s campaign and Russia. With another presidential election looming, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are eager to portray President Trump as a victim of a politically motivated smear by the F.B.I. that unfairly cast a shadow over his presidency. And they will contend that Mr. Comey was the ringleader. Mr. Comey is expected to strongly defend the F.B.I.’s handling of the investigation, including his decision to open it. But he will most likely acknowledge that his initial claims were wrong that a wiretap of a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, was properly handled and concede that the bureau had been sloppy on that aspect of the broader inquiry. He will testify by video from his home. Here is what to expect. Led by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Judiciary Committee has been pounding away for months at the F.B.I.’s investigation of ties between Russian election interference and the Trump campaign. The panel’s work has built on an investigation by the Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, that found evidence of negligence and errors in one narrow aspect of the investigation: the F.B.I.’s applications to wiretap Mr. Page. But where the inspector general concluded there was no evidence of illegal activity or a politically motivated plot by senior department officials, Mr. Graham insists there may have been. Mr. Comey signed off on some of the warrant applications and, as director, was the top bureau official responsible for the investigation until he was fired by Mr. Trump in the spring of 2017. “The day of reckoning is upon us when it comes to Crossfire Hurricane,” Mr.
