General Discussion

When the door by the grandfather clock closed, and we were alone, the President began by saying, “I want to talk about Mike Flynn.” Flynn had resigned the previous day. The President began by saying Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong in speaking with the Russians, but he had to let him go because he had misled the Vice President. He added that he had other concerns about Flynn, which he did not then specify.

The President then made a long series of comments about the problem with leaks of classified information – a concern I shared and still share…. The President then returned to the topic of Mike Flynn, saying, “He is a good guy and has been through a lot.” He repeated that Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong on his calls with the Russians, but had misled the Vice President. He then said, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” I replied only that “he is a good guy.”

Comey went on to note there was some ambiguity as to what “this” referred to in “let this go,” but the comments are difficult, if not impossible, to defend: this appears to have been a sitting president encouraging the then-FBI director to go easy on someone under a federal investigation. (Try to imagine what congressional Republicans would say if Barack Obama fired an aide under investigation, and then told the FBI director to let up on the aide in a behind-closed-doors conversation.)

In two subsequent phone calls — one in late March, the other in early April — Trump reportedly told Comey that the investigation into the Russia scandal had created a “cloud” that undermined his presidency. Trump asked what Comey could do to “lift the cloud,” which lends further credence to concerns that the president was improperly intervening in an ongoing investigation by learning on the FBI director.