Washington – US President Donald Trump told Russian envoys that sacking FBI chief James Comey had relieved him of pressure from the law enforcement agency’s probe of alleged Russian election meddling and ties to Trump’s own 2016 campaign, The New York Times reported Friday.
“I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off,” he told the visiting officials last week at the White House, according to a White House document about the meeting.
The newspaper said that the contents of the meeting summary were obtained from an official in the US government, confirmed by a second official and not directly disputed by the White House.
In a statement to the Times, White House spokesman Sean Spicer accused former FBI director James Comey of “politicizing” the investigation and causing “unnecessary pressure on our ability to engage and negotiate with Russia.”
If accurate, Trump’s comment could imply obstruction of justice as a motive in the May 9 firing of Comey, who had overseen the federal probe of Russian hacking of Democratic Party targets and other election-related intelligence operations, including possible links to key individuals in the president’s campaign organization.
The White House document said that Trump emphasized to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Sergei Kislyak, Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, that he was “not under investigation” himself.
“I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Trump was quoted as telling the Russians in the May 10 meeting.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday offered to issue a transcript of the Oval Office meeting.
“We are ready to present a record of the talks between Lavrov and Trump to the US Congress, of course, if the American administration wants this,” he said during a press conference in Sochi, Russia.
Meanwhile, Comey has agreed to publicly testify before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the committee chairmen said Friday in Washington.
The date is yet to be announced. The committee will schedule an open hearing after Memorial Day (May 29).
Trump on Thursday insisted there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russia, and complained about “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history.” He denied having asked Comey to drop the investigation of Russian contacts with White House national security advisor Michael Flynn, who was fired in February.
In the wake of reports this week that the FBI chief had documented such conversations with Trump, the Justice Department named Robert Mueller, a former prosecutor who was FBI director from 2001-13, as special counsel to take over the Russia-Trump investigation.
The widening probe has cast a shadow over the White House, while Trump left Washington on Friday for a nine-day trip across the Middle East and Europe.
The Washington Post on Friday reported that the federal investigation is heating up, reaching a stage including witness interviews and grand jury subpoenas.
Citing sources “familiar” with the matter, the paper said that an unnamed senior White House advisor was being treated as a significant person of interest in the ongoing probe.
Trump had initially justified Comey’s firing by citing a memo by Rosenstein accusing Comey of mishandling the 2015-16 investigation of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s use of private email for government documents.
Days later, Trump said he had been planning for months to replace Comey. The president told a television interviewer that he had decided on the sacking while considering the Russia investigation – calling it “a made-up story” – but also said the probe should “be absolutely done properly.”
US media reported Monday that Trump told Lavrov and Kislyak about an Islamic State threat using laptops on planes, including highly classified details about the origin of the intelligence, which came from a “partner” later reported to be Israel.
The White House immediately denied the report, until Trump tweeted the next day that he had an “absolute right” to share information he deems fit as president.
US Representative David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat giving a weekly address on behalf of the left-leaning opposition in Congress, praised Mueller’s appointment as “an important step forward” for the ongoing investigation.
“Each day, it seems, President Donald Trump and his administration become further and further embroiled in scandals of their own making,” Cicilline said Friday. “In just four months, these scandals have shaken the foundations of our democracy and even caused panic in the markets as many begin to question the president’s ability to govern.”
Darrell Issa, a California Republican who was among the conservative party’s first legislators to call for a special prosecutor, said after a briefing Friday by the Justice Department that he was “very satisfied” that Mueller would have “the breadth of scope necessary to follow all leads directly and tangentially” in the investigation.
-dpa
