WASHINGTON -- Fellow Republicans pressed President Donald Trump on Sunday to come clean about whether he has tapes of private conversations with former FBI Director James Comey and provide them to Congress if he does -- or possibly face a subpoena -- as a Senate investigation into collusion with Russia or obstruction of justice extended to a Trump Cabinet member.
It was a sign of escalating fallout from testimony from Comey last week of undue pressure from Trump, which drew an angry response from the president on Friday that Comey was lying.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is for sharp questioning by senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. Whether that hearing will be public or closed is not yet known.
"I don't understand why the president just doesn't clear this matter up once and for all," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a member of that committee, referring to the existence of any recordings. "He should give a straight yes or no."
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She described Comey's testimony as "candid" and "thorough" and said she would support a subpoena if needed. Trump "should voluntarily turn them over," Collins said.
Collins, appearing on CNN's State of the Union, said her "theory" is that Trump thought his conversations with Comey were how a president should interact with the FBI director.
"The president clearly does not fully understand or appreciate the boundaries. But he should," she said. "I'm not excusing his behavior. But I'm saying that there are a lot of people in government who should have set him straight."
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., also a member of that committee, agreed the panel needed to hear any tapes that exist. "We've obviously pressed the White House," he said.
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Trump's aides have dodged questions about whether conversations relevant to the Russia investigation have been recorded, and so has the president. Pressed on the issue Friday, Trump said, "I'll tell you about that maybe sometime in the very near future."
Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer of New York said on CBS' Face the Nation he would take Trump up on his offer to testify under oath about his conversations with Comey, inviting the president to testify before the Senate.
Lankford, also appearing on Face the Nation, said Sessions' testimony Tuesday will help flesh out the truth of Comey's allegations, including Sessions' presence at the White House in February when Trump asked to speak to Comey alone. Comey alleges that Trump then privately asked him to drop a probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn's contacts with Russia.
Comey also has said Sessions did not respond when he complained he didn't "want to get time alone with the president again." The Justice Department has denied that, saying Sessions stressed to Comey the need to be careful about following appropriate policies.
"We want to be able to get his side of it," Lankford said.
Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said on Fox News Sunday "there's a real question of the propriety" of Sessions' involvement in Comey's dismissal, because Sessions had stepped aside from the federal investigation into contacts between Russia and the Trump campaign. Comey was leading that probe.
Sessions stepped aside in March after acknowledging that had met twice last year with the Russian ambassador to the United States. He had told lawmakers at his January confirmation hearing that he had not met with Russians during the campaign.
Sessions has been dogged by questions about possible additional encounters with the ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.
As for the timing of Sessions' recusal, Comey said the FBI expected the attorney general to take himself out of the matters under investigation weeks before he actually did.
Reed said he also wants to know if Sessions had more meetings with Russian officials as a Trump campaign adviser than have been disclosed.
Trump on Sunday accused Comey of "cowardly" leaks and predicted many more from him. "Totally illegal?" he asked in a tweet. "Very 'cowardly!'"
Several Republican lawmakers also criticized Comey for disclosing memos he had written in the aftermath of his private conversations with Trump, calling that action "inappropriate." But, added Lankford, "releasing his memos is not damaging to national security."
Trump's alleged comments to Comey about Flynn "is a big deal, and can't be excused by simply being a novice," Preet Bharara said on ABC's This Week, the first televised interview since his own firing by Trump in March as a federal prosecutor in New York. He added that "no one knows right now whether there is a provable case of obstruction." But: "I think there's absolutely evidence to begin a case."
Bharara said he was made uncomfortable by one-on-one interactions with the president, saying that Trump was trying to "cultivate some kind of relationship" with him when he called him twice before the inauguration to "shoot the breeze."
He said Trump reached out to him again after the inauguration but he refused to call back, shortly before he was fired.
Two leading Senate Democrats, Dianne Feinstein of California and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, called on Sessions to appear -- in public -- before the Judiciary Committee, which has oversight responsibility for the Department of Justice. "You can't run forever," Leahy said in a Twitter message to Sessions that also referred to "false testimony" by the attorney general about his contacts with Russian officials.
It would be "fitting" for the attorney general to appear before Judiciary, Feinstein, the top Democrat on that panel, said on CNN. "I have written two letters to Sen. Grassley suggesting that," she added, referring to Iowa's Charles Grassley, the committee's chairman.
"The Judiciary staff are all lawyers, most very good lawyers. And so there is an opportunity to look at the law with respect to obstruction of justice, to hold a hearing, and also to have those relevant people come before the Judiciary Committee," said Feinstein, who is a member of both committees.
Feinstein said she was especially concerned after National Intelligence Director Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers refused to answer questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee about possible undue influence by Trump.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and another member of the Judiciary Committee, said both Sessions and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch should appear. Comey testified that Lynch asked him during last year's presidential campaign to call the investigation into Democrat Hillary Clinton's emails a "matter."
"If the attorney general's office has become a political office, that is bad for us all," Graham said on CBS. "So I want to get to the bottom of that, and it should be in Judiciary."
Feinstein acknowledged she "would have a queasy feeling, too" if Comey's testimony was true that Lynch, as President Barack Obama's attorney general, had directed him to describe the FBI probe into Clinton's email practices as merely a "matter" and to avoid calling it an investigation. Feinstein said the Judiciary Committee should investigate.
Feinstein said she did not necessarily believe Trump was unfit for office, as House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi has asserted, but said he has a "destabilizing effect" on government.
"There's an unpredictability. He projects an instability," Feinstein said. "Doing policy by tweets is really a shake-up for us, because there's no justification presented."
Information for this article was contributed by Hope Yen of The Associated Press and by Ros Krasny, Mark Niquette, Chris Strohm, Todd Shields and Ben Brody of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 06/12/2017