it was brief and entirely professional. he didn t ask you to take any specific action on that. no, unlike what he had done with mr. flynn and the overall russia investigation. correct. mr. comey, thank you for your service. america needs more like you and we really appreciate it. yesterday i got and everybody got the seven pages of your direct testimony that is now part of the record here. and the first i read it, then i read it again. and all i could think was number one, how much i hated the class of legal writing when i was-in-law school. you were the guy that probably got the a after reading this. so i find it clear, i find it concise. and having been a prosecutor for a number of years and handling hundreds, maybe thousands of cases and read investigative reports, this is as good as it gets and i really appreciate that. not only the conciseness and the clearness of it but also
the attorney general. decided it didn t make sense because we believed he would recuse shortly. there were no other senate-confirmed leaders in the justice department at that point. the deputy attorney general would be shortly in the seat and decided the best move would be to hold it, keep it in a box, document it as we had already done and then this investigation will go on and figure out what to do down the road. is there a way to corroborate it. it is your word against the president s, no way to corroborate this. my view of that changeded when the prospect of tapes was raised but that s how we thought thank you. director comey, the meeting in the oval office, was that the only time he asked you to hopefully let it go? s. in that meeting, he was asking out about the general russia investigation, he was asking very specifically about the jeopardy flynn was in
correct and i won t get into the details. any suggestion that general flynn had violated the logan act, i always find pretty incredible. the logan act has been on the books for over 200 years. no one has ever been prosecuted for violating the logan act. my sense would be, the discussion, not the problem, misleading investigators. that s fair, yes, sir, . had you previously to february 14th discussed with the president anything you re investigators had learned or their impressions from talking to flynn? no, sir. he said he is a good guy, you said he s a good guy and that was no further action taken on that? he said more than that, but the action was, wrote it up,
statements about his conversations with the russian ambassador in december, end quote. please go into that with more detail. well, the context and the president s words are what led me to that conclusion. as i said in my statement, i could be wrong, but flynn had been forced to resign the day before. and the controversy around general flynn at that point in time was centered on whether he had lied to the vice president about the nature of his conversations with the russians. whether he had been candid with others in the course of that. so that happens on the day before, on the 14th the president makes specific reference to that. and so that s why i understood him to be saying what i wanted me to do is drop any investigation connected to flynn s account of his conversations with the russians. here is the question. you are big and you are strong. i know the oval office and i know what happens to people
truth. numerous trump associates had undisclosed contacts with russians before and after the election, including the president s attorney general, his former national security advisor, and his current senior advisor, mr. kushner. that doesn t even begin to count the host of additional campaign associates and advisors who have also been caught up in this massive web. we saw mr. trump s campaign manager, mr. manafort, forced to step down over ties to russian-backed entities. general flynn had to resign over his lies with engagements with the russia and saw the candidate himself express an odd and unexplained affection for the russian dictator while calling for the hacking of his opponent. there is a lot to investigate. enough, in fact, then director