WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump asked the FBI director, James Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo that Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.
"I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go," Trump told Comey, according to the memo. "He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go."
Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. The memo was part of a paper trail Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president's improper efforts to influence an ongoing investigation into links between Trump's associates and Russia.
An FBI agent's contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.
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Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior FBI officials and close associates. The New York Times, which first reported the story, had not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Comey's associates read parts of the memo to a Times reporter.
Trump told Comey that Flynn had done nothing wrong, according to the memo.
Comey did not say anything to Trump about curtailing the investigation, only replying: "I agree he is a good guy."
In a statement, the White House denied the version of events in the memo.
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"While the president has repeatedly expressed his view that Gen. Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving Gen. Flynn," the statement said. "The president has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the president and Mr. Comey."
Late Tuesday, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, demanded that the FBI turn over all "memoranda, notes, summaries, and recordings" of discussions between Trump and Comey. Such documents, Chaffetz wrote, would "raise questions as to whether the president attempted to influence or impede" the FBI.
Chaffetz's letter, sent to the acting FBI director, Andrew McCabe, set a May 24 deadline for the internal documents to be delivered to the House committee.
"I have my subpoena pen ready," Chaffetz wrote in a tweet earlier Tuesday evening.
In testimony to the Senate last week, McCabe had said, "There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date."
McCabe was referring to the broad investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. The investigation into Flynn -- including his payments from foreign entities, whether he violated laws requiring registering as an agent of a foreign government, and his communications with Russian officials -- is separate.
Law enforcement officials declined to explain the apparent contradiction between Comey's notes and McCabe's testimony.
A spokesman for the FBI and the Justice Department both declined to comment.
In the Oval Office
Comey created similar memos -- including some that are classified -- about every phone call and meeting he had with the president, the two people said. It is unclear whether Comey told the Justice Department about the conversation or his memos.
Trump fired Comey last week. Trump administration officials have provided multiple, conflicting accounts of the reasoning behind Comey's dismissal. Trump said in a television interview that one of the reasons was because he believed "this Russia thing" was a "made-up story."
The Feb. 14 meeting took place just a day after Flynn was forced out of his job after it was revealed he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of phone conversations he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States.
Despite the conversation between Trump and Comey, the investigation of Flynn has proceeded. In Virginia, a federal grand jury has issued subpoenas in recent weeks for records related to Flynn. Part of the Flynn investigation is centered on his financial ties to Russia and Turkey.
Comey had been in the Oval Office that day with other senior national security officials for a terrorism-threat briefing. When the meeting ended, Trump told those present -- including Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions -- to leave the room except for Comey.
Alone in the Oval Office, Trump began the discussion by condemning leaks to the news media, saying that Comey should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information, according to one of Comey's associates.
Trump then turned the discussion to Flynn.
After writing up a memo that outlined the meeting, Comey shared it with senior FBI officials. Comey and his aides perceived Trump's comments as an effort to influence the investigation, but they decided that they would try to keep the conversation secret -- even from the FBI agents working on the Russia investigation -- so the details of the conversation would not affect the investigation.
Comey was known among his closest advisers to document conversations that he believed would later be called into question, according to two former confidants, who said Comey was uncomfortable at times with his relationship with Trump.
The Oval Office meeting occurred a little more than two weeks after Trump summoned Comey to the White House for a lengthy, one-on-one dinner in the residence. At that dinner, on Jan. 27, Trump asked Comey at least two times for a pledge of loyalty -- which Comey declined, according to one of Comey's associates.
In a Twitter posting on Friday, Trump said that "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"
After the meeting, Comey's associates did not believe there was any way to corroborate Trump's statements. But Trump's suggestion last week that he was keeping tapes has made them wonder whether there are tapes that back up Comey's account.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer has refused to comment on whether Trump records his conversations in the White House.
The Jan. 27 dinner came a day after White House officials learned that Flynn had been interviewed by FBI agents about his phone calls with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. On Jan. 26, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates told the White House counsel about the interview and said Flynn could be subject to blackmail by the Russians because they knew he had lied about the content of the calls.
Calls for Comey to testify
On Tuesday, for the second night in a row, Senate Republicans and Democrats were caught off guard as they entered the chamber for a scheduled vote.
"I don't know the facts, so I really want to wait until I find out what the facts are before commenting," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters.
Asked if it would be obstructing justice for Trump to have asked Comey to drop the Flynn investigation, Cornyn said: "You know, that's a very serious charge. I wouldn't want to answer a hypothetical question."
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., emphatically said he's not commenting on news stories anymore.
"Let's get to the bottom of what happened with the director. And the best way to get to the bottom of it, is for him to testify. ... I'm not going to take a memo, I want the guy to come in," Graham told reporters, adding, "If he felt confident enough to write it down, he should come in and tell us about it."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Comey needs to go to Capitol Hill and testify. Separately, all 33 Democrats on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees issued a joint letter Tuesday night calling for an immediate public hearing with Comey.
Even before the report of the Comey memo, members of Congress were negotiating to get the former FBI chief in to hear his version of interactions with Trump. He was originally invited to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday but didn't accepted and indicated he would appear at another time.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut tweeted: "Just leaving Senate floor. Lots of chatter from Ds and Rs about the exact definition of 'obstruction of justice.'"
Separately, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said during a Tuesday night dinner in his honor that the scandal surrounding the Trump administration was "at a point where it's of Watergate size and scale," a reference to the scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
McCain said Trump needs to "get it all out ... and the longer you delay, the longer it's going to last."
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said in a statement that "at best, President Trump has committed a grave abuse of executive power. At worst, he has obstructed justice."
House Speaker Paul Ryan, a key Republican, refused to comment as he walked along a Capitol corridor, saying, he doesn't give hallway interviews.
The conversation described in Comey's notes also raised questions among legal experts about whether Trump may have crossed any lines into criminal behavior by pressuring the FBI to end an investigation.
"There's definitely a case to be made for obstruction," said Barak Cohen, a former federal prosecutor who now does white-collar defense work at the Perkins Coie law firm. "But on the other hand you have to realize that -- as with any other sort of criminal law -- intent is key, and intent here can be difficult to prove."
Information for this article was contributed by Michael S. Schmidt, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman of The New York Times; by Eric Tucker and Sadie Gurman of The Associated Press; by Devlin Barrett, Ellen Nakashima and Matt Zapotosky of The Washington Post; and by Chris Strohm, Margaret Talev, Laura Litvan and Steven T. Dennis of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 05/17/2017
