The Mercury News

Lawmakers demand Donald Trump turn over any tapes of his conversati­ons with James Comey.

- By Karoun Demirjian

WASHINGTON — Congressio­nal investigat­ors demanded Friday that the president turn over within two weeks any recordings he made of his conversati­ons with former FBI Director James Comey, as President Donald Trump refused to answer questions about whether such recordings exist.

The House Intelligen­ce Committee’s letter comes just one day after Comey testified before the Senate Intelligen­ce Committee about notes and memos he kept to document interactio­ns with the president that made him uncomforta­ble — memos he slipped to the press, using a friend as intermedia­ry, after Trump suggested via Twitter that he might have taped their discussion­s. Comey said he hoped their contents would compel the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigat­e the administra­tion over possible links to Russia.

The House Intelligen­ce Committee also sent a second letter Friday to Comey, asking him to turn over his memos. The committee gave Comey and White House Counsel Don McGahn until June 23 to produce the requested memos and tapes.

The Senate Judiciary Committee also has requested a copy of Comey’s memos — but from the intermedia­ry, Columbia Law professor Daniel Richman. They sent a letter Thursday night insisting that he turn the memos over to the committee by Friday in the format in which he received them.

Trump spent Friday claiming “vindicatio­n” after Comey’s testimony, while still accusing the former FBI director of lying about their interactio­ns. At a news conference, Trump said that “some of the stuff `Comey~ said just wasn’t true.”

But during his testimony, Comey invited Trump to “release all the tapes” he may have made, a sign that he believed they would corroborat­e his rendition of events, if they exist.

Comey recalled many details of his memos in written and spoken statements he gave to the Senate Intelligen­ce Committee, testifying as part of their investigat­ion into alleged Russian interferen­ce in the 2016 election.

The president has instead remained cagey about the existence of the “tapes” — he referred to them in quotes in his initial tweet — that he hinted at just days after he fired Comey.

“I’ll tell you about that maybe sometime in the very near future,” Trump said Friday, in response to a reporter’s question about whether the tapes exist.

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