Trump threatens ex-FBI head Comey with possible 'tapes' of conversations
President’s tweet suggests he had been secretly taping White House meetings, after the New York Times reported that he demanded ‘loyalty’ from Comey
Donald Trump threatened former FBI director James Comey on Twitter on Friday morning.
Trump tweeted: “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”
The tweet, which if taken at face value would suggest Trump has been secretly taping White House meetings, came after the New York Times reported that he demanded “loyalty” from Comey in a private dinner held shortly after Trump took office.
At the White House press briefing on Friday afternoon, press secretary Sean Spicer repeatedly refused to deny that Trump was taping visitors to the White House.
Comey, who was overseeing an investigation into alleged links between Trump aides and Russia during the 2016 election, was fired on Tuesday in a surprise announcement.
The White House initially claimed Comey was fired by recommendation of deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who was dissatisfied with Comey’s handling of the Clinton email scandal. But Trump later said it was entirely his decision and said “this Russia thing” factored into it.
The White House’s constantly shifting story on Comey’s firing fueled controversy as administration officials who initially followed the Rosenstein line had to confront Trump’s statement in an interview with NBC.
“I was going to fire Comey,” Trump said. “My decision. I was going to fire Comey.”
The mention of tapes will only fuel further comparisons to Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal. Nixon infamously taped meetings in the Oval Office and recordings of those meetings led to his resignation from office.
Michael Beschloss, a leading presidential historian, said on Twitter on Friday: “Presidents are supposed to have stopped routinely taping visitors without their knowledge when Nixon’s taping system was revealed in 1973.”
Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said on Twitter: “Mr President, if there are ‘tapes’ relevant to the Comey firing, it’s because you made them and they should be provided to Congress.”
Two other leading House Democrats, Elijah Cummings of Maryland and John Conyers of Michigan, said in an open letter that the White House must hand over such tapes, should they in fact exist.
Trump’s sacking of Comey had already been likened to the “Saturday Night Massacre” of 1973, when attorney general Elliot L Richardson and deputy attorney general William D Ruckelshaus resigned after refusing an order to fire Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor leading the Watergate investigation.
Several Senate Democrats explicitly compared the firing of Comey to that event, comparisons that were further fueled when Trump’s first public comment on the topic came during an unannounced Oval Office meeting with Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s secretary of state.
On Friday morning, before issuing his threat to Comey, Trump first tweeted: “Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election.”
He then seemed to blame his staffers for the shifting narrative. As a result, he suggested ending White House press briefings.
“As a very active president with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” he wrote. “Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future ‘press briefings’ and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???”
The White House handed out written statements on Tuesday, after Comey’s firing. The statements were later revealed to be inaccurate.
James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, recalled the day of Comey’s dinner with Trump, 27 January, on MSNBC on Friday. Comey had hosted a farewell ceremony for Clapper, who was leaving office, and was reluctant to go to meet Trump.
“Jim and I spoke briefly before the ceremony and he mentioned that he had been invited to the White House to have dinner with the president and he that was uneasy with that because of even compromising the optics, the appearance, of independence, not only of him but of the FBI,” said Clapper.
Asked why he thought Comey had gone anyway, Clapper added: “Anyone who is a serving officer in the government and you are asked by the president for dinner I think it’s professional courtesy. You’re in a difficult position to refuse to go. But I know he was uneasy with it just for the appearance of compromising the independence of the FBI which is a hallowed tenet in our system.”
Clapper also cast doubt on two Trump claims about his conversations with Comey. He said that the suggestion that Comey told the president was not under investigation was “very inconsistent with what I know of Jim Comey”. He added that: “I think it would be inappropriate and in Jim’s case out of character for him to ask to stay on.”
Trump continued his pushback on the Russia investigation later on Friday, when the White House released a letter from his tax lawyers.
Trump has repeatedly denied having financial ties to Russia despite past statements by himself and family members apparently to the contrary. He has also refused to make his tax returns public, violating 40 years of precedent and giving several excuses for doing so.
In the letter released on Friday but dated 8 March, Morgan Lewis tax partners Sherri A Dillon and William F Nelson wrote that they had reviewed Trump’s tax returns over the past 10 years and found that “with a few exceptions” he had no income from Russian sources in that period.
The exceptions included selling a home to Russian billionaire for $95m, twice what Trump paid for it three years before, and profits from staging the Miss Universe contest in Moscow in 2013.
Trump has also worked closely with Russian-born businessman Felix Sater, the managing director of a corporation called Bayrock, to develop the Trump Soho hotel in New York. Bayrock was founded by Tevfik Arif, a former Soviet official. In addition, Donald Trump Jr said in 2008 on a visit to Moscow: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets.” He added that “we see a lot of money pouring in from Russia”.
