“I need loyalty. I expect loyalty,” President Donald Trump told then-director of the FBI, James Comey, according to the testimony, with cinematographic tones, that will offer this Thursday before the Committee of Intelligence of the Senate and in which it crumbles its “Disturbing” conversations with the agent.
The text prepared for Comey’s expected intervention in the Upper House was revealed today by the Committee itself, and it gathers in detail the meetings and telephone conversations that the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) maintained with the agent until this It ceased in a fulminating way.
Trump unexpectedly fired the high official a month ago, sparking a heated debate as many interpreted it as an attempt to curb Comey’s polls on the links between the tycoon’s campaign and the Russian government to influence the polls Presidential elections last year.
After his resignation, Congressional committees investigating the Kremlin’s role in the elections called on Comey to testify behind closed doors, something he refused, asking for it to be public, something that will happen tomorrow.
In addition to demanding “loyalty,” Comey recounts in his notes how the billionaire asked him to “let go” of the investigations of his national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had to resign because of his links with Russia.
“I hope you can see the way clear to let this happen, to let Flynn go. He’s a good guy,” Trump told Comey, according to the notes he wrote after one of his solo encounters and quoted in his Expected testimony on Thursday.
Also, the former director of the FBI confirms that he repeatedly told the president that he was not being personally investigated on this plot.
Comey will also detail how the president invited him shortly after taking office in January to a dinner in the White House in which it appeared that there would be more attendees and that ended up being only between them, in which the magnate asked him if Wanted to remain in charge of the FBI.
“He started by asking me if I wanted to remain the director of the FBI, which I found strange because he had already told me twice in previous conversations that he expected me to stay, and had assured him that he intended to do so. I liked my job and, given the pressure I’d had over the past year, he would understand if I wanted to leave, “writes Comey.
“My instincts told me that the face-to-face meeting and the pretense that our first discussion was about my post, meant that dinner was, at least in part, an effort to beg me for my work and create some kind of Clientelism. “That worried me a lot, given the FBI’s traditional position of independence from the executive branch.”
Comey, according to his notes, reiterated to Trump his desire to fulfill his ten-year tenure at the head of the federal police, a position he agreed to in 2013, assuring him that he “could always count on” his “honesty” and to tell him true.
“Moments later, the president said, ‘I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.'” I did not move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. Returned to the theme near the end of our dinner, “he says.
The ex-director of the FBI explains that after the first meeting he decided to take note of his talks with the president and notify the leadership of the Bureau, texts that have been leaked to various media but which Comey had not publicly confirmed.
Comey says he reviewed the matter with the FBI leadership, who did not intend to abide by the president’s request for Flynn, and concluded that “since it was a face-to-face conversation, there was no way to corroborate” his version.
With the testimony revealed today, on the eve of his appearance before the senators, the former FBI director also said he “implored” Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to leave him alone with the president given the improper character they were taking the conversations.
To corroborate this version, Trump could be accused of an attempt of obstruction to the Justice, violating the separation of powers that protects the American Constitution.
