Speaking in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday morning, former FBI Director James Comey said under questioning that nobody, including President Donald Trump, asked him to drop the Bureau’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
“Director Comey, did the president at any time ask you to stop the FBI Investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. elections?,” Chairman Richard Burr asked.
“Not to my knowledge, no,” Comey answered.
Comey did say the President asked him to drop the FBI’s investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn during a meeting February 14 at the White House, which he laid out in an opening statement released yesterday.
“The President began by saying Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong in speaking with the Russians, but he had to let him go because he had misled the Vice President. He added that he had other concerns about Flynn, which he did not then specify. The President then made a long series of comments about the problem with leaks of classified information–a concern I shared and still share,” Comey said.
“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,'” he continued.
