Trump to Comey: ‘I need loyalty, I expect loyalty’
The fired FBI director said he remembered nine separate private conversations with President Trump. Three were in person and six on the phone.
WASHINGTON — Fired FBI Director James Comey said President Trump told him "I need loyalty, I expect loyalty'' in their private White House dinner conversation in January, according to written testimony prepared by Comey.
In written remarks submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday - a day before his much-anticipated testimony — Comey said he remembered nine separate private conversations with President Trump. Three were in person and six on the phone.
Comey said the president called him at lunchtime on Jan. 27 to invite him to dinner.
"It was unclear from the conversation who else was going to be at the dinner, although I assumed there would be others,'' Comey wrote. "It turned out to be just the two of us, seated at a small oval table in the center of the Green Room. Two Navy stewards waited on us, only entering the room to serve food and drinks.''
The president began the conversation, Comey wrote, by asking him if he wanted to stay on as FBI director, "which I found strange because he had already told me twice in earlier conversations that he hoped I would stay, and I had assured him that I intended to.''
The president replied, according to Comey, that lots of people wanted his job and "he would understand if I wanted to walk away.''
Comey's instincts, he wrote, were that both the setting and the conversation "meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship. That concerned me greatly, given the FBI's traditionally independent status in the executive branch.''
The president then made his demand for loyalty.
"I didn't move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed,'' Comey wrote. "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.''
When prompted again on the subject of loyalty, Comey said he replied, "You will always get honesty from me.''
Comey said that once before Trump's inauguration, and again at the January dinner, he assured the president that he was not personally under investigation. He also told the president later on that he had shared that information with congressional leaders.
In essence, Comey's written testimony confirms a key claim that Trump has made — that three times, Comey told the president he was not under investigation.
But it also paints a portrait of a strained, awkward relationship between the two men, in which the president frequently expressed his displeasure about the Russia probe in ways that alarmed the FBI director.
The written testimony also recounts a face-to-face conversation the two men had on February 14 — Valentine's Day — at the Oval Office, where many senior officials had gathered for a counterterrorism briefing.
After the meeting, the president asked everyone to leave. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and senior adviser Jared Kushner lingered in the room, but the president told them to leave, too, according to Comey.
When the door by the grandfather clock closed, Comey wrote, the president said "I want to talk about Mike Flynn'' — the former national security adviser who was forced out after disclosures about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak. Flynn had resigned a day earlier.
"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,'' the president said, according to Comey. The FBI director replied only that "he is a good guy.''
In that conversation, the president repeatedly complained to the FBI director about leaks, and Comey said he agreed with him about the harm caused by leaks of classified information.
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