Former FBI Director James Comey’s opening statement, prepared for the hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday, was released to the public Wednesday afternoon. Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., told NBC News that the testimony was released a day early because that’s what he and Comey had decided. In the testimony, Comey confirms a number of awkward, potentially improper conversations with Trump, who asked him for a loyalty pledge, to end the investigation of Michael Flynn and to announce publicly that the president wasn’t under investigation. Below are 10 takeaways from the seven pages of testimony, which is embedded in its entirety at the bottom of this page. (Yahoo News photo Illustration; photos: AP, Getty) Comey told Trump he wasn’t under investigation … In the letter Trump sent to Comey informing him he was fired, he thanked him for “informing me, on three different occasions, that I am not under FBI investigation.” Comey confirms that he assured Trump at least once that he personally was not the subject of any investigation. In that context, prior to the January 6 meeting, I discussed with the FBI’s leadership team whether I should be prepared to assure President-Elect Trump that we were not investigating him personally. That was true; we did not have an open counter-intelligence case on him. We agreed I should do so if circumstances warranted. During our one-on-one meeting at Trump Tower, based on President-Elect Trump’s reaction to the briefing and without him directly asking the question, I offered that assurance. … but didn’t want to do so publicly in case things changed. In a March 30 phone conversation Comey explained to Trump why there had been a hearing and how he had briefed congressional leadership on the specifics of the investigation. He did not explain to the president that he didn’t want to make a public statement saying he (Trump) was not under investigation, because he would have to publicly correct that statement if the situation changed–precisely the circumstance that had arisen when Comey felt obliged to inform Congressional leaders, just before the election, that he had reopened the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. I explained that we had briefed the leadership of Congress on exactly which individuals we were investigating and that we had told those Congressional leaders that we were not personally investigating President Trump. I reminded him I had previously told him that. He repeatedly told me, “We need to get that fact out.” (I did not tell the President that the FBI and the Department of Justice had been reluctant to make public statements that we did not have an open case on President Trump for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change.) Trump asked Comey for loyalty pledge. In a private dinner in the White House Green Room on January 27, Comey said that Trump repeatedly asked him for loyalty, leading to an “awkward silence”: A few moments later, the President said, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” I didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner. When Trump brought up “loyalty” again, Comey finessed the issue by promising “honesty,” and “honest loyalty,” a phrase he left deliberately ambiguous: I replied, “You will always get honesty from me.” He paused and then said, “That’s what I want, honest loyalty.” I paused, and then said, “You will get that from me.” As I wrote in the memo I created immediately after the dinner, it is possible we understood the phrase “honest loyalty” differently, but I decided it wouldn’t be productive to push it further. The term – honest loyalty – had helped end a very awkward conversation and my explanations had made clear what he should expect.
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