James Comey Appealed to Jeff Sessions: Don't Leave Me Alone With Trump

According to the New York Times, after former FBI director James Comey was asked by Donald Trump to shut down the investigation into Michael Flynn’s dealings with Russia, Comey went to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and begged him: don’t leave me alone with Trump again.

As it turns out, this wasn’t something Comey would need to worry about for long, since Trump fired him soon after he realized Comey wasn’t going to do his bidding.

WASHINGTON — The day after President Trump asked James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, to end an investigation into his former national security adviser, Mr. Comey confronted Attorney General Jeff Sessions and said he did not want to be left alone again with the president, according to current and former law enforcement officials.

Mr. Comey believed Mr. Sessions should protect the F.B.I. from White House influence, the officials said, and pulled him aside after a meeting in February to tell him that private interactions between the F.B.I. director and the president were inappropriate. But Mr. Sessions could not guarantee that the president would not try to talk to Mr. Comey alone again, the officials said.

Mr. Comey did not reveal, however, what had so unnerved him about his Oval Office meeting with the president: Mr. Trump’s request that the F.B.I. director end the investigation into the former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, who had just been fired.

And now Comey is going to have to face tough questions from Congress about why he kept this very incriminating interaction with our so-called president secret.

Comey’s written testimony for tomorrow’s hearing has now been posted at the Senate website. Some important sections:

A few moments later, the President said, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” I didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner.

[...]

The President then returned to the topic of Mike Flynn, saying, “He is a good guy and has been through a lot.” He repeated that Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong on his calls with the Russians, but had misled the Vice President. He then said, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” I replied only that “he is a good guy.” (In fact, I had a positive experience dealing with Mike Flynn when he was a colleague as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the beginning of my term at FBI.) I did not say I would “let this go.”

[...]

On the morning of March 30, the President called me at the FBI. He described the Russia investigation as “a cloud” that was impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country. He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia. He asked what we could do to “lift the cloud.”

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/os-jcomey-060817.pdf

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