Fired FBI Director James Comey on Thursday speculated that President Donald Trump came up short in April when he sought leverage to persuade Comey to publicly announce that Trump was not under investigation.
In his prepared testimony released Wednesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey said Trump told him in April: “I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know.”
Comey said he did not respond or ask Trump to clarify.
“I think it would intensely arouse my curiosity if the President of the United States said ‘We had that thing, you know.’ I’d like to know what the hell that thing is, particularly if I’m the director of the FBI,” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said to Comey on Thursday.
“Yeah. I get that, Senator. Honestly, I’ll tell you what. This is speculation, but what I concluded at the time is in his memory he was searching back to our encounter at the dinner and was preparing himself to say ‘I offered loyalty to you, you promised loyalty to me,’ and all of a sudden his memory showed him that did not happen and I think he pulled up short,” Comey said. “That’s just a guess. But I’ve had a lot of conversations with humans over the years.”
