Analysis Trumps careening toward an inevitable showdown with an undeniable truth
Ten days ago, Donald Trump’s rocky presidency was in relatively calm waters. He’d helped push a health-care bill through the House and was spending the weekend at his Trump-brand property in Bedminster, N.J. After that, the deluge: Sally Yates’s testimony on Capitol Hill, the firing of FBI Director James Comey, the private meeting with Russia’s foreign minister, the revelation that the Comey firing was spurred at least partly by the Russia investigation, the threat to release tapes of his conversation with Comey and, on Monday, The Washington Post’s revelation that Trump had shared classified information with the Russians.
Tuesday had its own surprise: A report from the New York Times about a conversation between Comey and the president in which Trump asked him to end the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. According to the Times, Comey detailed the Feb. 14 conversation with Trump in a memo that he shared with other senior FBI officials at the time — but didn’t reveal it publicly because he didn’t want to influence the investigation.
The White House denied it in a statement. It reads, in part: “The President has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn. The President has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the President and Mr. Comey.”
According to Comey’s purported memo, read to Times reporters by an associate, Trump said in their conversation, “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.”
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