After former FBI Director James Comey’s explosive public testimony on Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee both the White House and President Trump’s private attorney took aim at Comey and his allegations.
As to the accusation that in his statements about Comey’s firing, Trump had lied about Comey and the FBI, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters, ““I can definitively say the president isn’t a liar,” adding that she thought it was insulting that such a question be asked.
While the president himself didn’t tweet in real time, his son Donald Trump Jr. argued that Comey would have known if President Trump was strong-arming him.
“Knowing my father for 39 years when he ‘orders or tells’ you to do something there is no ambiguity, you will know exactly what he means,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted.
In a statement following Comey’s testimony, Trump’s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, disputed Comey’s recollections of his conversations with the president, including their discussion of the Flynn investigation.
“The president never, in form or substance, directed or suggested that Mr. Comey stop investigating anyone, including suggesting that that Mr. Comey ‘let Flynn go,’” Kasowitz said.
Kasowitz also disputed the president ever demanded loyalty from Comey. Comey said Trump told him during a one-on-one dinner, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” After the testimony Kasowitz said, “the president also never told Mr. Comey, ‘I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.’ He never said it in form and he never said it in substance.”
Kasowitz also took aim at Comey’s leak of the details of his recollections and memo to the press. “Today, Mr. Comey admitted that he leaked to friends his purported memos of these privileged conversations, one of which he testified was classified,” Kasowitz said Thursday afternoon.
“We will leave it to the appropriate authorities to determine whether these leaks should be investigated along with all those others being investigated,” he said.
But Comey did not say he had leaked the classified memo and not everything the president says in private is automatically “privileged” and therefore unable to be shared freely, unlike attorney-client privilege or doctor-patient privilege. Executive privilege is not absolute.
Also, the president would have to claim executive privilege before his conversations with Comey, not after the fact, according to Mark Rozell, author of Executive Privilege: Presidential Power, Secrecy and Accountability.
ABC News’ chief legal analyst, Dan Abrams, said the problem is Trump “waived confidentiality on it by discussing these matters publicly previously.”
He added that one can’t use executive privilege to cover up alleged misconduct, and that’s “effectively what Comey is saying that he is doing here.”
“So I think the notion that this is somehow privileged communications is simply not going to hold up,” Abrams said.
Source-ABC
