My Dinner With Comey: Clapper, Others Dispute Trump Account of Meeting With FBI Director
One day after the acting attorney general warned the White House that its national security adviser was subject to blackmail, the president summoned the FBI director to dinner at the White House, people close to James Comey told NBC News.
At the Jan. 27 dinner, a week after assuming the presidency, Trump requested a loyalty pledge from Comey, people familiar with the dinner say. Comey replied that he could not offer loyalty, but he could pledge his honesty.
This account of the dinner contradicts the one President Trump gave to NBC News Nightly anchor Lester Holt on Thursday. Trump said Comey requested the meeting, asked to be retained in his job, and told him he was not under investigation.
James Clapper, who retired in January as director of national intelligence, told NBC's Andrea Mitchell that Comey told him on the night of the dinner the president had invited him — and he was uneasy about it.
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Trump gave Holt an entirely different account of the dinner, saying that Comey requested it to seek job security, and told the president he was not under investigation.
None of that is true, Comey's associates insist.
A former senior FBI official said Comey would never have told the president he was not under investigation — contradicting what Trump said.
"He tried to stay away from it [the Russian-ties investigation]," said the former official, who worked closely with Comey and keeps in touch with him. "He would say, 'Look sir, I really can't get into it, and you don't want me to.'"
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