WASHINGTON -After President Trump publicly refused to say Friday whether he did, in fact, tape conversations with James Comey before firing him as…
WASHINGTON — After President Donald Trump publicly refused to say Friday whether he did, in fact, tape conversations with James Comey before firing him as FBI director, House investigators — led by Texas Rep. Mike Conaway — demanded the White House turn over any recordings or notes of those meetings.
Tapes, if they exist, could clarify whose version of the conversations is accurate.
Comey says the president pressured him to pledge personal loyalty and drop an investigation into fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Trump denies both claims. Each has called the other a liar in the last day, and far more than their reputations are on the line.
Conaway, a Midland Republican, leads the House intelligence committee probe into Russian meddling in the U. S. election. He and the panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, announced Friday afternoon that they formally asked Comey for copies of the memos he testified about a day earlier in the Senate.
They also asked White House counsel Don McGahn in writing “whether any White House recordings or memoranda of Comey’s conversations with President Trump now exist or have in the past, ” and to turn over copies to the committee by June 23 if they do.
Trump alluded to the existence of tapes in a tweet on May 12, days after he fired Comey.
Are there tapes?
But ever since then, top aides have refused to say whether such tapes exist. Trump himself was coy during a Rose Garden news conference Friday afternoon, declining to say whether tapes exist but promising to answer whether they do exist soon — “over a fairly short period of time.” As reporters shouted questions, pressing for a direct answer as to whether tapes exist, he added, “Oh, you’re going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer, don’t worry.”
Aides have ducked questions about whether a taping system exists in the Oval Office.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday that she wasn’t sure and, when one reporter asked if she would find out, she quipped, “Sure, I’ll try to look under the couches.”
Presidential calls with foreign leaders are routinely recorded to allow advisers to parse the conversations and use them for future reference. And it’s perfectly legal to record a conversation without another person’s knowledge.
The issue with Trump-Comey tapes, if they exist, is that they would settle one of the most high-stakes he said-he said tussles in the annals of presidential scandals. And if they did exist and have since been destroyed, that would fuel calls for an obstruction of justice charge, either as a criminal matter or an article of impeachment. Vindication for Trump
Comey testified on Thursday that he told Trump several times during his tenure as FBI chief that he wasn’t personally under investigation. Trump pounced on that Friday as vindication, though it sidesteps the fact that Trump confidants and advisers are central figures in the ongoing probe into Russia’s interference in the election.
In the Rose Garden, Trump reiterated the claim he made via Twitter early in the day that Comey’s testimony supports his own version of events.
Comey’s testimony, Trump said, “showed no collusion, no obstruction. We are doing really well. That was an excuse by the Democrats who lost an election that some people think they shouldn’t have lost, because it’s almost impossible for the Democrats to lose the Electoral College, as you know. You have to run up the whole East Coast and you have to win everything as a Republican, and that’s just what we did.”
Trump added that Comey’s testimony left him “very, very happy and, frankly, James Comey confirmed a lot of what I said. And some of the things that he said just weren’t true.”
He ignored a shouted question asking him to square how Comey could simultaneously be a liar and provide testimony that vindicates him.
The claim of vindication also glosses over Comey’s claims that Trump pressured him, as FBI director, to drop an investigation into Flynn.
“I didn’t say that, ” Trump said Friday. “And there’d be nothing wrong if I did say it.”
Trump’s firing of Comey after he refused to drop the investigation is viewed by Democrats and some Republicans as possible evidence of an effort to obstruct justice, something the president and his defenders vehemently reject.
Comey has asserted that Trump asked him to pledge his personal loyalty, and that he refused. Trump denied that on Friday, saying: “I hardly know the man; I’m not going to ask him to pledge allegiance.”
Trump at one point said he was “100 percent” willing to tell his story under oath, as Comey had. Democrats embraced that.
“The American people deserve to hear directly from this president, under oath, about his charges with respect to Mr. Comey, ” said Sen Jack Reed, D-R. I. “President Trump must also be truthful about what he knows about Russian interference in the election, as well as Gen. Flynn and Attorney General Sessions’ contacts with the Russians. The FBI and the special prosecutor are trying to connect the dots related to Russian meddling in our democracy.”
