Comey memo says Trump asked him to end Flynn investigation
Source: NY Times
WASHINGTON President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trumps former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo that Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.
I hope you can let this go, the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.
The existence of Mr. Trumps request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trumps associates and Russia.
Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the presidents improper efforts to influence an ongoing investigation. An F.B.I. agents contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.
Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comeys associates read parts of the memo to a Times reporter.
I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go, Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.
Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey that Mr. Flynn had done nothing wrong, according to the memo.
Mr. Comey did not say anything to Mr. 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.
While the president has repeatedly expressed his view that General 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 General 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.
In testimony to the Senate last week, the acting F.B.I. director, Andrew McCabe, said, There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date.
A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment.
Mr. 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 Mr. Comey told the Justice Department about the conversation or his memos.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/16/us/politics/james-comey-trump-flynn-russia-investigation.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share
jpak
(41,758 posts)I'm a monkey's uncle
nycbos
(6,034 posts)This seems like definition of obstruction of justice.
regnaD kciN
(26,044 posts)lanlady
(7,134 posts)luvMIdog
(2,533 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Mrs. Overall
(6,839 posts)Please tell me this breaks some sort of law.
Doodley
(9,089 posts)left-of-center2012
(34,195 posts)lamp_shade
(14,834 posts)groundloop
(11,519 posts)lanlady
(7,134 posts)Nixon's demise took a couple of years, I doubt Trump will last the summer!
world wide wally
(21,743 posts)GeoWilliam750
(2,522 posts)catbyte
(34,386 posts)is in this up to his eyeballs. If we can get rid of both of them, and we can take the House in 2018, we could have a Democratic President like we should've had all along instead of President Goddamn Ryan.
It's really far fetched, I know, but a gal can dream, can't she?
TNLib
(1,819 posts)The hits just keep coming. Breaking news breaking the other breaking news breaking the other breaking news.
I think it's going to be like this till he's out.
Liberal In Red State
(442 posts)sell their country to the highest bidder?
canetoad
(17,160 posts)"Flynn is a treacherous bastard and we're going to persecute him to the ends of the earth"?
reflection
(6,286 posts)without backing down. To say in a private meeting "I agree he is a good guy" costs nothing and keeps a mercurial boss from firing him so he can continue to investigate.
LonePirate
(13,420 posts)The Constitution and all laws do not apply to rich, white, male Republicans.
newblewtoo
(667 posts)first things you learn to do working for the Fed is write a CYA memo after a meeting. I actually had a directory called CYA (full of memo's to file).
Enoki33
(1,587 posts)Let's see how trump tries to lie his way out by smearing Comey. That has been his pattern.
WilmywoodNCparalegal
(2,654 posts)This is obstruction of justice. Between this and the leaks of highly classified information, this man is not fit (mentally, intellectually, ethically) to be President. I've come to believe that his statement (that he could shoot someone on Fifth Ave. without consequence) is probably one of the truest things he's ever said.
Inaction by the GOP is, at this stage, intolerable and an affront to the principles of this democratic republic. What will it take for someone to say 'Enough!' and forget about party loyalty... We have reached a point of no return, I am afraid. Either something happens now, or we may as well forget all the tenets we teach in schools about the Constitution, separation of powers, no one above the law, etc.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,692 posts)I'm old and I've experienced several bad presidents: Nixon, Reagan and Bush. All of them were awful, but they were awful in a sort of normal and conventional way. Nixon was a crook who tried to cover up his minions' attempts to illegally eavesdrop on the opposing party. Reagan was a racist and a liar who claimed he didn't know anything about the Iran-Contra affair in which the administration secretly set up the sale of arms to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. And George W. Bush ... need I say more?
But Trump is different. He's not only bad, he's weird. Industrial-strength, weapons-grade weird. Galactically weird. I knew he would be a bad president, but he's bad and weird in a way I could never have imagined. It's like Fellini directed All the President's Men.
riversedge
(70,218 posts)riversedge
(70,218 posts).....I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go, Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.
Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey that Mr. Flynn had done nothing wrong, according to the memo.
regnaD kciN
(26,044 posts)...meaning, of course, that Trump will tweet confirmation of the account by tomorrow morning at the latest.
riversedge
(70,218 posts)tanyev
(42,556 posts)hamsterjill
(15,220 posts)Comey is smarter than Trump.
Can't wait to see what comes down the pike next.
riversedge
(70,218 posts)cilla4progress
(24,731 posts)Than even imagined.
Can we now return to letting adults run the country? Deplorables be damned!
The walls are closing in shitface.
Ccarmona
(1,180 posts)"WHERE ARE THE REPUBLICANS". It's the death of this Country if they keep quite and complicit, and they don't care.
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)It makes me mildly nauseous to think we might have had an impact on the election.."
"Oops. Did I do that?"
Qutzupalotl
(14,311 posts)orangecrush
(19,554 posts)Rollin ' like a freight train!
Blue Meany
(1,947 posts)The Donald is a narcissist; he uses people and discards them when they're not serving to inflate his image in the eyes of the world. He would not care about Flynn at all if he couldn't implicate him in something.
yardwork
(61,608 posts)paranoid floyd
(254 posts)This occurred to me as well Blue Meany. Trump cares for no one, yet he'll go to the mat for Flynn over and over. Does Flynn know where the bodies are buried?
Dopers_Greed
(2,640 posts)Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)Snake Plissken
(4,103 posts)when he found out Sessions recused himself. It was Sessions job to get Comey to stop investigating anything to do with Russia.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)BumRushDaShow
(128,979 posts)By Devlin Barrett, Ellen Nakashima and Matt Zapotosky May 16 at 6:05 PM
President Trump asked the FBI to drop its investigation into his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and urged the FBI director James B. Comey instead to pursue reporters in leak investigations, according to private notes taken by Comey, according to people familiar with the matter.
According to a set of notes written by Comey following a February meeting with the president, Trump brought up the counterintelligence investigation into Flynn and urged Comey to drop the probe in the wake of the national security advisers resignation.
I hope you can let this go, Trump said, according to the Comey notes, which were described by associates. Comeys written account of the meeting is two pages long and highly detailed, the associates said. The details of Comeys notes of the meeting were first reported by The New York Times.
Officials have previously said that Trump and his senior staff have been pressing the FBI to prioritize leak investigations over the bureaus ongoing probe into possible coordination between Russian officials and Trump associates. On Tuesday, people close to the matter said Comey kept detailed notes of his multiple conversations with Trump.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/notes-made-by-former-fbi-director-comey-say-trump-pressured-him-to-end-flynn-probe/2017/05/16/52351a38-3a80-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html
funkybutt
(3,333 posts)yardwork
(61,608 posts)White House denials are meaningless at this point.
caballojm
(272 posts)when Bill Clinton met with Loretta Lynch on a tarmac in Phoenix? I'm sure the silence will be deafening now. Hypocrites.
reflection
(6,286 posts)gopiscrap
(23,760 posts)suffragette
(12,232 posts)"The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the presidents improper efforts to influence an ongoing investigation."
Given how important this one memo is, Trump and his cabal have got to be sweating about it only being "part" of what Comey has.
briv1016
(1,570 posts)so it doesn't count.
Stuart G
(38,427 posts)GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)That is all.
Turbineguy
(37,329 posts)If you're a 4 year old. "If I put the part of the cookie that I didn't eat back in the jar......?"
iluvtennis
(19,858 posts)...Trump is DISGUSTING. Impeach him now.