Donald Trump now refuses to discuss tape recordings of conversations with FBI Director James Comey that POTUS suggested in a Friday morning tweet.
“That I can’t talk about. I won’t talk about that,” Trump told Fox News Channel’s Jeanine Pirro in a taped interview set to air Saturday. “All I want is for Comey to be honest. And I hope he will be. And I’m sure he will be – I hope.”
The president took to Twitter early Friday to tell Comey to think twice, in case he’s mulling whether to publicly contradict Trump’s assertion that the now-former FBI director three times assured Trump he was not under investigation. POTUS told NBC News’ Lester Holt, in an interview parsed out Thursday and Friday, that Comey had asked to have dinner with him in January because he wanted to hang on to his job. During that dinner, Trump said Comey first assured him he was not under investigation as part of the bureau’s probe of possible Trump campaign collusion in Russia’s election meddling.
In two subsequent phone conversations, Comey also assured him he was not under investigation. One of those phone calls Trump said he initiated and asked if he could inquire as to whether he was under investigation.
Trump’s Friday morning tweet , which seemed to suggest Trump had maybe recorded those conversations, triggered TV news pundit talk of Richard Nixon and Watergate again. TV news pundits thought Trump ought to know, that if he did record that dinner or those two phone calls, he does not own them; they are federal records, thanks to Nixon.
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