In Friday’s Fox News interview, Trump also suggested – in confusing language – that a third party, possibly another arm of the government, could have recorded the conversations without his or Comey’s knowledge.
“I didn’t tape”, Trump said. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters”, was how Trump put it during the 2016 campaign.
A day after tweeting that he does not have taped conversations between himself and Comey, Trump addressed the scenario he helped raise in the first place.
“Not a great strategy, President Trump”, Tapper quipped, before ripping the White House for banning cameras and live audio during press briefings in recent days, including on Thursday.
CNN host Jake Tapper dressed down President Donald Trump after a series of public blunders that have damaged the White House’s credibility.
Asked by ABC News’ Jonathan Karl why Trump played “the game” of raising the matter and waiting over a month to reveal that he did not have tapes, Huckabee Sanders said, “I don’t know that it was a game”. “We’re going to have to see”. In fact, Trump says it’s “bothersome” that Mueller is friends with terminated Federal Bureau of Investigation chief James Comey.
Never one for deep reflection, Donald Trump missed the signs of Comey’s true character and deemed him a “showboat”. “But I did not tape”. Comey explained the process during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. In 2004, it was Comey who successfully defied President Bush when he tried to get hospitalized Attorney General John Ashcroft to sign an order reauthorizing a domestic spying program.
While White House officials have said the firing was due to concerns about Comey’s actions at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Trump told an interviewer the Russian Federation investigation was one of his concerns in taking the action.
However, prior to Comey leaking the memorandum to the Times, the newspaper had published accounts of Comey’s descriptions of his meetings with Trump. “Lordy, I hope there are tapes”, Comey added.
Earlier in his testimony, he said he wished such recordings exist, saying he was “stunned by the conversation” about Flynn and was attempting to “remember every word he said”.
Michael Conaway and Adam Schiff and Sens.
Minutes later, in an official release from his office, Schiff said the White House “must respond in writing” to the committee “as to whether any tapes or recordings exist”.
In a brief, two-paragraph letter to the leaders of the House and Senate Russia investigations, White House legislative affairs director Marc Short copied and pasted Trump’s tweet onto formal letterhead.