Pro-Trump group attacks Comey ahead of his testimony

Former FBI chief James Comey will likely not accuse President Donald Trump of attempting to interfere with an investigation into possible collusion between Trump and Russian Federation when he testifies in Congress this week, legal sources said.

A day before a Senate panel hears former FBI Director James Comey’s first public account of his dramatic firing, the co-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee asked senior members of President Donald Trump’s national security team whether the president has tried to influence investigations into Russia’s election meddling and possible coordination with the Trump campaign. Trump has denied any collusion.

A reporter asked White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer if the president is losing confidence in the attorney general.

After allegedly discussing with colleagues the commander-in-chief’s extraordinary proposal to subvert the Bureau’s ongoing investigation, however, Coats reportedly chose to reject it as inappropriate.

“I am not prepared to go down that road right now”, Coats said. Both men declined the president’s wishes.

Trump praises Comey: “I respect the fact that Director Comey was able to come back after what he did”.

Comey said Trump told him at a dinner on January 27, a week after the president took office, that: “I need loyalty”.

Two of Trump’s most trusted surrogates, sons Eric and Don Jr., have already popped up on television defending their father ahead of the hearings, including a joint appearance Tuesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America”. Instead, Comey recounted to others he had told Trump he would always be honest with him, but that he was not “reliable” in the conventional political sense.

At the time of his dismissal, Comey was leading an FBI investigation into alleged complicity between Trump officials and Russian agents during the 2016 presidential election campaign.

But a report in The Washington Post that Trump went further than just asking Coats to rebut former FBI Director James Comey in public increases the intrigue. But according to a new report by The New York Times, Comey took the president’s words extremely seriously, and documented them in a memo. Trump then said in a subsequent interview that he had fired Comey because of how the Russian Federation investigation is being handled.

He will also be quizzed generally on the FBI investigation into the Russia-Trump claims. The seven-page remarks released Wednesday reveal in dramatic detail, and with a writer’s flair, Comey’s uneasiness with Trump, who he believed was disregarding the FBI’s traditional independence from the White House.

In the prepared testimony published by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey said he offered Trump assurance he was not personally being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation at least three times.

Wray served in a leadership role in the George W. Bush Justice Department, rising to head the criminal division and overseeing investigations into corporate fraud, during the time when Comey was deputy attorney general. Comey was named to the post by Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.

Democrats are almost united in their suspicions of Trump, with 88 percent saying he fired Comey in May to protect himself and 87 percent saying Trump is trying to interfere with investigations of possible Russian influence in the election.

Keen to crack down on leaks, the Trump administration quickly announced the arrest of a 25-year-old intelligence contractor on charges of violating the Espionage Act.