What did Donald Trump tell James Comey about Russian hookers?
Former FBI Director James Comey’s prepared congressional statement on interactions with President Donald Trump regarding the Russia investigation is not devoid of Russian hookers.
Comey is set to testify before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday, and a copy of his opening statement was posted to the committee’s website Wednesday afternoon.
The former FBI director went into detail over his “uncomfortable relationship” with the president, and corroborated Trump’s claims that the president was not under any type of investigation by the bureau.
Comey is also set to tell the committee that the president was adamant that he “had not been involved” with Russian “hookers.”
According to Comey’s prepared remarks, Trump’s adamant denial came during a March 30 phone call between Comey and Trump.
Comey’s statement alleged that the president called the Russian investigation “a cloud” that was “impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country.”
“He said he had nothing to do with Russian, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed be was being recorded when in Russia,” the statement read.
Unsubstantiated reports about Russian hookers emerged in January and claimed that Trump had hired prostitutes in 2013 while in Moscow on a business trip. The allegations were based on a dossier created by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. The dossier, which Comey called “salacious,” was a central point of a private discussion Comey had with Trump on Jan. 6, during which Comey revealed the dossier’s existence to the president, according to Comey’s prepared statement:
I first met then-President-Elect Trump on Friday, January 6 in a conference room at Trump Tower in New York. I was there with other Intelligence Community (IC) leaders to brief him and his new national security team on the findings of an IC assessment concerning Russian efforts to interfere in the election. At the conclusion of that briefing, I remained alone with the President-Elect to brief him on some personally sensitive aspects of the information assembled during the assessment.
The IC leadership thought it important, for a variety of reasons, to alert the incoming President to the existence of this material, even though it was salacious and unverified. Among those reasons were: (1) we knew the media was about to publicly report the material and we believed the IC should not keep knowledge of the material and its imminent release from the President-Elect; and (2) to the extent there was some effort to compromise an incoming President, we could blunt any such effort with a defensive briefing.
After the dossier was revealed, Trump blasted the claims as”fake news,” saying they held no merit.
Following media reports on the dossier, Comey wrote that at a dinner on Jan. 27, Trump “expressed his disgust for the allegations” and was debating whether Comey should “investigate the alleged incident to prove it didn’t happen.”
For his part, Comey claimed that embarking on this type of investigation might “create a narrative” that the FBI was personally investigating Trump:
During the dinner, the President returned to the salacious material I had briefed him about on January 6, and, as he had done previously, expressed his disgust for the allegations and strongly denied them. He said he was considering ordering me to investigate the alleged incident to prove it didn’t happen. I replied that he should give that careful thought because it might create a narrative that we were investigating him personally, which we weren’t, and because it was very difficult to prove a negative. He said he would think about it and asked me to think about it.
Trump fired Comey from his position as FBI director on May 9.
A statement from the president read, “Today, President Donald J. Trump informed FBI Director James Comey that he has been terminated and removed from office. President Trump acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.”
“The FBI is one of our Nation’s most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement.”
