WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump told Russian officials in the Oval Office this month that firing the FBI director, James Comey, had relieved "great pressure" on him, according to a New York Times report about a document summarizing the meeting.
"I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job," Trump said, according to the document, which was read to the Times by a U.S. official. "I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off."
Trump added, "I'm not under investigation."
The conversation, during a May 10 meeting -- the day after he fired Comey -- reinforces the notion that Trump dismissed him primarily because of the bureau's investigation into possible collusion between his campaign and Russian operatives. Trump said as much in one televised interview, but the White House has offered different justifications for the firing.
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The White House document that contained Trump's comments was based on notes taken from inside the Oval Office and has been circulated as the official account of the meeting. One official read quotations to the Times, and a second official confirmed the broad outlines of the discussion.
Sean Spicer, White House spokesman, did not dispute the account.
In a statement, he said Comey had put unnecessary pressure on the president's ability to conduct diplomacy with Russia on matters such as Syria, Ukraine and the Islamic State extremist group.
"By grandstanding and politicizing the investigation into Russia's actions, James Comey created unnecessary pressure on our ability to engage and negotiate with Russia," Spicer said. "The investigation would have always continued, and obviously, the termination of Comey would not have ended it. Once again, the real story is that our national security has been undermined by the leaking of private and highly classified conversations."
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Late Friday, the Senate Intelligence Committee announced that Comey had agreed to testify at an open hearing at an undetermined date after Memorial Day.
Comey will most likely be asked about encounters that precipitated his firing, including a January dinner in which, Comey has told associates, Trump asked for his loyalty. In the Oval Office weeks later, Comey told associates, the president asked him to shut down an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Comey is known to produce memos documenting sensitive encounters.
The day after firing Comey, Trump hosted Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, in the Oval Office, along with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak. The meeting ignited controversy this week when it was revealed that Trump had disclosed intelligence from an Israeli counterterrorism operation.
A third government official briefed on the meeting defended the president, saying Trump was using a negotiating tactic when he told Lavrov about the "pressure" he was under. The idea, the official suggested, was to create a sense of obligation with Russian officials and to coax concessions out of Lavrov -- on Syria, Ukraine and other issues -- by saying that Russian meddling in last year's election had created enormous political problems for Trump.
The president has been adamant that the meddling did not alter the outcome of the race, but it has become a political cudgel for his opponents.
Many Democrats and some Republicans have raised alarms that the president may have tried to obstruct justice by firing Comey. The Justice Department's newly appointed special counsel, Robert Mueller, was given the authority to investigate not only potential collusion but also related allegations, which would include obstruction of justice.
The FBI's investigation has bedeviled the Trump administration and the president personally. Comey publicly confirmed the existence of the investigation in March, telling Congress that his agents were investigating Russian efforts to influence the outcome of the presidential election and whether anyone in the Trump campaign had been involved. Trump has denied any collusion and called the case a waste of money and time.
At first, the White House said Trump fired Comey based on the recommendation of the Justice Department and because of Comey's handling of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton last year. Officials said it had nothing to do with the Russia investigation.
But the president undercut that argument a day later, telling NBC News, "When I decided to just do it, I said to myself -- I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story."
Deputy AG Quizzed
Capping a chaotic week on Capitol Hill, the House of Representatives heard from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, as lawmakers continued to grapple with Comey's firing and a wave of new reports about Trump's behavior.
"Former Department of Justice officials from both political parties have criticized Director Comey's decisions," Rosenstein said in an opening statement before the House at a closed meeting, remarks devoted largely to repeating his claim that Comey mishandled the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.
"It was not just an isolated mistake; the series of public statements about the email investigation, in my opinion, departed from the proper role of the FBI director and damaged public confidence in the bureau and the department," Rosenstein said.
"My memorandum is not a legal brief; these are not issues of law," said Rosenstein, a longtime federal prosecutor. "It is a candid internal memorandum about the FBI director's public statements concerning a high-profile criminal investigation."
In the days after Comey's firing, some lawmakers, former Justice Department officials and people who knew Rosenstein wondered if he had been forced to write the politically charged memo for Trump. But Rosenstein, who has only recently been confirmed to be the department second-highest ranking official, left no doubt that it was voluntary.
"I wrote it," Rosenstein said. "I believe it. I stand by it.
"Notwithstanding my personal affection for Director Comey, I thought it was appropriate to seek a new leader," Rosenstein said. "I wrote a brief memorandum to the attorney general summarizing my long-standing concerns about Director Comey's public statements concerning the Secretary Clinton email investigation. I chose the issues to include in my memorandum."
After Rosenstein was nominated by Trump to be deputy attorney general, a friend of Comey's told the former FBI director that he was encouraged by Rosenstein's nomination and likely Senate confirmation, according to an account of the conversation in the Times.
But Comey did not completely agree with his friend, Ben Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the editor in chief of the Lawfare blog.
"He said, 'I don't know. I have some concerns. He's good, he's solid but he's also a survivor and you don't survive that long without making some compromises and I'm concerned about that," according to the Times account.
Rosenstein had briefed the full Senate on Thursday at an event that left several key questions unanswered, including what exactly Trump said to Rosenstein when he told him Comey would be fired, and to what degree congressional investigators will maintain access to witnesses and documents given Rosenstein's appointment of Robert Mueller III, a former FBI director, as special counsel. Those issues were not resolved with his speech to members of the House on Friday.
Rosenstein only told House members that he appointed a special counsel to restore Americans' faith in the Russia investigation, saying that interference in U.S. elections should not be a partisan issue.
The moment brought applause from most lawmakers present, according to several House members. But Democrats, in particular, left the meeting frustrated that Rosenstein was not more forthcoming with information about Trump's decision to fire Comey. Several said they learned nothing new from speaking with him.
Rep. Charlie Crist, D-Fla., described the meeting as a "brief presentation followed by a Q and A. And not a whole lot of A."
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., recalled the "dissonant moment" when Rosenstein refused to say "who had asked him, if anyone had asked him, to write his memorandum."
"He said, 'That is Bob Mueller's purview,' and that was puzzling to a lot of us," said Himes, a member of the House Intelligence Committee.
Several lawmakers have expressed concerns that the new special counsel investigation may impede the congressional investigations.
Rosenstein ensured House members that the Justice Department would work with members of Congress "to coordinate our parallel efforts" and establish a point of contact for Mueller.
"You can never get guidance from the executive branch about how Congress is to do something because there's inherently always going to be tension," said Darrell Issa, R-Calif. "Congress is going to want to look over the shoulder of this investigation ... the executive branch will always try to limit that for fear that it would contaminate a potential criminal investigation for leaks, all the while sometimes leaks occur in the executive branch. So I don't expect this to be any different."
Rosenstein also told the lawmakers that he is "not aware" of any request by the FBI for additional resources for the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
"I am not aware of any such request," Rosenstein said. "Moreover, I consulted my staff and acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and none of them recalls such a request."
Information for this article was contributed by Matt Apuzzo, Maggie Haberman and Matthew Rosenberg of The New York Times; by Sari Horwitz, Karoun Demirjian and Elise Viebeck of The Washington Post; and by Erica Werner, Eileen Sullivan, Matthew Daly, Richard Lardner, Stephen Ohlemacher, Andrew Taylor, Kevin Freking and Mary Clare Jalonick of The Associated Press.
A Section on 05/20/2017