Political warfare in Washington intensifies
A defiant Trump accuses fired FBI director of lying to Congress
By
Barry Grey
10 June 2017
At a White House press conference on Friday, President Donald Trump accused fired FBI Director James Comey of lying under oath in his testimony the previous day before the Senate Intelligence Committee, in which Comey charged that Trump had pressured him to drop the FBI probe into collusion by his election team in connection with alleged Russian government interference in the 2016 US election.
Standing in the Rose Garden alongside the visiting president of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, Trump declared that Thursday’s testimony by Comey had vindicated his own role. He flatly denied that he had demanded a pledge of personal loyalty from Comey or asked him to drop the FBI investigation of his former national security adviser Michael Flynn over Flynn’s ties to Moscow. Trump fired Flynn in February for supposedly lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his discussions with the Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak.
“Yesterday showed no collusion, no obstruction,” Trump said. Reiterating his charge that the furor over alleged Russian hacking and leaking of Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails was a political witch-hunt, he declared, “That was an excuse by the Democrats, who lost an election they shouldn’t have lost.” He went on to say, “but we were very, very happy, and, frankly, James Comey confirmed a lot of what I said, and some of the things he said just weren’t true.”
Asked if he had told Comey in a private White House meeting that he “hoped” the probe of Flynn could be dropped, Trump stated, “I didn’t say that, and there’d be nothing wrong if I did say it.”
In response to a question, Trump said…