President Trump finally broke his silence Friday morning about James Comey's congressional testimony a day earlier, tweeting that he felt vindicated and emphasizing the former Federal Bureau of Investigation director's admission that he leaked details of confidential conversations with the president to the press. In the post, the president said: "Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication. and WOW, Comey is a leaker".
Though Republicans worked to discredit Comey and to blunt the impact of his testimony, the ex-director's statement deepened questions about the basis for his May 9 dismissal and about whether Trump's actions constituted obstruction of justice.
Speaking before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey said his memos detailed his so-called "inappropriate" interactions with the President.
By referring to "total and complete vindication", the president was likely thinking of Comey's confirmation yesterday that, as NPR's Jessica Taylor reports, "there was no counterintelligence nor criminal investigation of Trump individually and that the president was not personally under investigation".
Testifying one month after Trump fired him, Comey said he lost his job because of the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 USA election.
Comey who was sacked by the Trump administration in May said this was one of the reasons behind his sacking.
"The president said, 'I need loyalty, I expect loyalty, '" Comey said in written remarks.
While Trump disputed key parts of Comey's testimony, his legal team also welcomed statements that he did not seek the shutdown of the broader Russian Federation probe and that Trump was told he wasn't personally under investigation.
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Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the information policy committee at the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, dismissed Comey's testimony as a "big bubble", adding that it "will not help Trump's adversaries to start impeachment proceedings".
"I would just say that of course there needs to be a degree of independence between [the Department of Justice], FBI and the White House and a line of communications established".
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At one point he practically dared Trump to release any recordings of their conversations, a prospect the president once alluded to in a tweet.
"My judgment was I need to get that out into the public square", he said.
The February meeting was one of several one-on-one encounters that Comey said made him feel such intense discomfort that he felt compelled to document them in memos. "I think he asked for the dinner", Trump said.
Comey's reply on Thursday as to the presence of tapes?
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