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