Responding to fired FBI Director James Comey’s testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer denied that Trump pressured Comey to drop the federal investigation into ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
“[T]he President never, in form or substance, directed or suggested that Mr. Comey stop investigating anyone, including — the President never suggested that Mr. Comey quote, let Flynn go, close quote,” Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s lawyer, said at a press briefing Thursday, reading from prepared remarks.
He later addressed Comey’s written recollection that the President had asked for his “loyalty.”
“The President also never told Mr. Comey, quote, I need loyalty, I expect loyalty, close quote. He never said it in form, and he never said it in substance,” Kasowitz said.
But, Kasowitz hedged, “Of course, the Office of the President is entitled to expect loyalty from those who are serving the administration.”
Kasowitz’s focus, it seemed, was on Comey’s admission that he had given his written recollection of a meeting with Trump to a friend of his, and had asked the friend to provide the New York Times with the information.
“[F]rom before this President took office to this day, it is overwhelmingly clear that there have been and continue to be those in government who are actively attempting to undermine this administration with selective and illegal leaks of classified information and privileged communications,” Kasowitz said. “Mr. Comey has now admitted that he is one of these leakers.”
He added later: “We will leave it to the appropriate authorities to determine whether these leaks should be investigated along with all the others that are being investigated.”
Who are you going to believe the Agent Orange’s shyster or Comey? The fact is Trump has a richly deserved reputation as a liar who lies at the the drop of a hat for any reason or for no reason.
Where are the tapes Trump promised?
5 things abaout Kasowitz…
Clearly, the lawyer wants to turn this into a he said, he said…As a private citizen however, Comey-come-lately had every right to turn over whatever notes he had to whoever he chose I would surmise. He wasn’t sworn to secrecy. Trump didn’t invoke executive privilege, and nothing he wrote out could be considered classified, as he no longer is part of the government. Nor did he say anything that would impede the investigation by Mueller. If anything, he helped advance a state of understanding for those investigators, and made clear he thought Sessions was in on the shenanigans and about to be forced to recuse himself because of his own ties to Russian influence peddling as part of the pre-election campaign transition team. Nothing is privileged about what he had to say. If anyone’s being defamed, I’d have to go with Comey on this one. If the Pissident has proof that he didn’t pressure anyone from some recording he has…he should provide that to Mueller.
The GOP and Trump’s people have certainly deployed their freshly sharpened Ginzu knives on the verbal parsing here today.
I know that Trump can be quite the doofus, but even a doofus knows not to order or direct his top people to do something clearly illegal or that is a clear obstruction of justice. You need to retain “credible deniability”. Keep it “he said-he said” if it ever comes out, etc…
With regards to the two intelligence chiefs, both were asked and confirmed they were not “Directed” or “Ordered” or “Pressured” to do anything wrong. Probably true from a purely semantic point of view.
Where Comey is concerned, same deal. The Committee used those worthless words again, “ordered”, “directed”, which of course, he could not claim happened, but then they used his negative response to those words as ammunition to deflect away from Trump.
But there’s another word I don’t think anyone used at all in regard to Trump’s actions. “Suggested”.
Because Trump certainly strongly suggested that Comey let the Russia and Flynn things go… just drop the investigations. “I hope you can see yourself clear to let this thing go…” is a strong suggestion coming from a Predisent.
When a Precedent strongly suggests you do something (without ordering it), it implicitly resembles a directive, because the Predisent is clearly letting you know what he wants to have happen. If you are both wise in the ways of “careful-speak”, it would be obvious that the suggestion is being coined that way to avoid incriminating anyone…
No-one asked those intel chiefs if anything had been suggested to them. I wonder how they would have answered that question…
Trump’s little hands are dirty, and we can all smell it from here.
Not only has Trump NOT been tweeting this morning, but his Twitter feed has been scrubbed. All the Russia and Comey related tweets of the past few days are gone.
So apparently, Kasowitz has some pull with Donnie Dipshit.