Sessions to interview Federal Bureau of Investigation candidates Saturday

McCabe became acting director after Comey was sacked, but has shown a repeated willingness to break from White House explanations of the ouster and its characterizations of the Russian Federation investigation. Does Donald Trump have the courage or the self-confidence that President Gerald Ford did in October 1974 when he became the first USA president since Abraham Lincoln to voluntarily testify before Congress in defending his pardon of the disgraced Richard Nixon?

Trump spent most of the week out of sight, a marked change from a typically jam-packed schedule that often includes multiple on-camera events per day.

Rogers, an ex-FBI agent and former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has drawn the backing of the FBI Agents Association.

Trump himself echoed those remarks in an interview with Jeanine Pirro on Fox News on Friday. Personally. I’m not talking about campaigns. I won’t talk about that. “And that’s why I believe he has let Jim Comey go”.

“Today we’ll no doubt hear calls for a new investigation”, McConnell said in a Senate speech Wednesday morning.

The White House refusal to elaborate left open several questions: Had Trump, as his predecessor had in the 1970s, been covertly taping conversations? Or was it merely a button-pushing claim launched over frustration at news coverage of the controversy.

Mr Spicer said he was “not aware of any recording” that may exist from Mr Trump and Mr Comey’s dinner. A former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, Keating served in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

On Friday, a person close to the former director recounted a different version. And President Donald Trump can not tell the difference.

So far 14 people – politicians, lawyers and law enforcement officials among them – have emerged as candidates. Not only did Trump have the authority to fire Comey but also the termination does not end the investigation.

Comey has not publicly discussed any conversations he has had with Trump.

New York University’s Timothy Naftali says that since then, presidents have learned not to tape Oval Office conversations.

“If I thought there was inappropriate behavior by the President, sure”, Graham said.

The New York Times said Comey told associates he declined to make a pledge of loyalty to Trump when the president requested it while they dined just seven days after his inauguration.

Schiff said ex-FBI Director James Comey, “was not only fired in the middle of the Russian Federation investigation, but he may be also now be a witness”.

It was not clear when Comey would speak for himself.

The top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, also called on Comey to testify before his panel. It’s unconscionable. Even James Clapper, former President Barack Obama’s director of national intelligence, has admitted that there is no evidence of collusion and that he has no reason to suspect it.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is facing pressure from Democrats to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

“I think it’s really important that the Congress, and more broadly the American people, hear Director Comey’s side of the story”.

TRUMP: I was going to fire Comey.

The president has said he would release his returns when the Internal Revenue Service completes an audit.

The shifting accounts of the decision to fire Comey, whom Trump derided as a “showboat” and “grandstander”, added to a mounting sense of uncertainty and chaos in the West Wing, as aides scrambled to get their stories straight and appease an angry president. “You know, it depends on how you define loyalty, No. 1; No. 2, I don’t know how it got out there because I didn’t ask that question”.

Even before Trump’s provocative tweets, the White House was scrambling to clarify why Comey was sacked. That love fest ended in divorce last week when the president tweeted that “FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!” Last month’s poll pegged Trump’s rating at 40 percent approval, 54 percent disapproval and 6 percent unsure. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans said they approve of Comey’s dismissal, with 8 percent signaling disapproval and 33 percent with no opinion. John Cornyn of Texas, former congressman Mike Rogers of MI and acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

Fisher and Townsend were the only women on the list of candidates.