For Republicans on Capitol Hill, Donald Trump may finally have gone too far. 
 
 Tuesday’s report that Trump asked former FBI Director James Comey to end the criminal investigation into ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn was more than just another embarrassing revelation for a president used to a near-daily barrage of scandal and staff intrigue. 
 
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 Republicans are privately beginning to worry that they may one day have to sit in judgment of Trump, or that more damaging information from Comey could force the president to step down. Within hours of Tuesday's report by The New York Times, there was a distinct shift among congressional Republicans, who until now have mostly resisted criticizing Trump, let alone demanding the president be held to account for all he says or does. 
 
 House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) immediately said he’s prepared to subpoena the memos that Comey reportedly wrote contemporaneously to document his interactions with Trump. Chaffetz sent a letter to the FBI on Tuesday night asking for any notes, documents or records of Trump and Comey’s conversations to be turned over to his panel by May 24. 
 
 His request was echoed by AshLee Strong, spokeswoman for House Speaker Paul Ryan: "We need to have all the facts, and it is appropriate for the House Oversight Committee to request this memo." 
 
 Comey has also been invited by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to testify publicly at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to “tell his side of the story” about his dealings with Trump, Graham said Tuesday, even before this latest story broke. 
 
 More Republicans have openly discussed the possibility of a select committee or the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the Trump-Russia connection. It's still a minority of GOP lawmakers, but Republican leaders are watching closely. 
 
 The White House vehemently denied the New York Times report, and Trump has defended his firing of Comey and reported disclosure of classified information to Russian officials. 
 
 Not since October’s “Access Hollywood” moment — when many Republicans believed Trump would have to drop out of the race over his hugely offensive comments about women — has the president faced such a serious political threat. Even conservatives from districts that Trump won overwhelmingly in November want to find out what occurred between the president and Comey, no matter how damaging it may be to Trump. This is a dramatic turn for the party that's been whiplashed by Trump’s drama since his first day as a candidate in June 2015 yet has still stuck with him. 
 
 “It is important to get to the bottom of it,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the Freedom Caucus. Meadows was last seen celebrating passage of the House GOP health care bill in the Rose Garden with Trump and dozens of his Republican colleagues. “We've got one standard, and we need to make sure that applies to everybody.” 
 
 Top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway met with the Freedom Caucus on Tuesday night and would not say afterward what they discussed. Meadows insisted the Comey matter did not come up, but he told reporters that he intends, through his role on the Oversight Committee, to help get to the bottom of what happened. And he expects cooperation from the White House. 
 
 “If this is legitimately something that there was some kind of influence or pressure from Comey doing his work, I’m going to be very disappointed," added Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.), chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee. 
 
 In private, top Republicans fear that this latest Trump controversy — coming just a week after he fired Comey, and only one day after it was revealed that the president revealed highly classified intelligence information during a meeting with Russian officials — will overwhelm everything they are trying to do legislatively. Health care, tax reform, building up the Pentagon — all of it is potentially threatened by the latest furor. 
 
 And if Republicans are paralyzed and can’t pass anything despite control of the White House and Congress, how can they justify their majorities when they go before voters next year? 
 
 Sen. Lindsay Graham listens as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse holds up a copy of "The Kremlin Playbook" at a hearing of the Senate Judicary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism on Capitol Hill on May 8. | Getty 
 
 “I don’t think we can just shrug our shoulders and walk away from this one,” said a top House Republican, who asked not to be named. “I don’t know where this goes.” 
 
 What is most worrying for congressional Republicans is how easy this latest episode is to explain to the public — Trump reportedly tried to interfere with a criminal investigation by the FBI but was rebuffed, then fired Comey — and thus fodder for endless cable TV coverage. That could spur moderate Republicans in swing districts, already nervous about 2018, to openly break with Trump. 
 
 “If these allegations are true, it’s deeply troubling and it certainly opens up a new chapter that all of us have to consider very carefully,” said Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.) outside the House chamber Tuesday night. "We need to get to the truth as soon as possible. This weekly scandal, this weekly controversy is unhealthy for the country. It’s a major distraction for the country and it’s just bad for the psyche of every American.” 
 
 “I hope Director Comey testifies before Congress as soon as possible,” said Rep. Leonard Lance (R-N.J.), who earlier broke with Trump and his own leadership over health care reform legislation. 
 
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 "Congress needs to see the Comey memo," Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) tweeted late Tuesday night. 
 
 Rep. Pat Meehan (R-Pa.), a former federal prosecutor, suggested Trump’s interactions with Comey threatened the public perception of the Justice Department as an autonomous entity. 
 
 “This whole process is very difficult because we are seeing the central institution — the Justice Department, and the independence of the Justice Department — stretched. And people want to have confidence in the independence of [DOJ’s] activities,” Meehan said. “I’m hoping that throughout this long process, it can get back into a place where there could be confidence in the ability of the institutions to do their work.” 
 
 Kyle Cheney contributed to this report. ||||| poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201805/1666/1155968404_5788755848001_5788722468001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Trump: 'I did a great service to this country by firing James Comey' 'We’re not undercutting. We’re cleaning everything up,' the president said. 
 
 President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he did a "great service to this country" by firing former FBI Director James Comey. 
 
 In comments on the South Lawn, a defiant Trump also defended moves by the White House to force the Justice Department to reveal to lawmakers details about an FBI informant who had contacts with multiple Trump campaign officials. 
 
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 And he denied allegations by Democrats and other critics that his call for a probe into the matter is designed to undermine the ongoing investigation into his campaign's ties to Russia. 
 
 “We’re not undercutting. We’re cleaning everything up,” Trump said. 
 
 He added that he did the United States a favor by ousting Comey, glossing over the idea that his decision to fire the FBI director triggered the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is now investigating whether that ouster amounted to obstruction of justice. 
 
 “What I'm doing is a service to this country. And I did a great service to this country by firing James Comey.” 
 
 
 
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 Trump has challenged the FBI’s use of an informant who made contacts with his campaign aides, and was able to get the Justice Department's inspector general to initiative a review into whether the tactic was politically motivated. 
 
 Trump, who took to Twitter early Wednesday to dub the issue "SPYGATE," on Wednesday said the documents that Republican lawmakers are due to review on Thursday should be revealing. 
 
 “When they look at the documents, I think people are going to see a lot of bad things happened,” Trump said. “I hope it's not so, because if it is, there's never been anything like it in the history of our country.” 
 
 On the former FBI director, Trump said, "I think James Comey's got a lot of problems." 
 
 Comey — who led the agency during the 2016 presidential campaign — defended the use of an informant on Twitter on Wednesday morning. "The FBI’s use of Confidential Human Sources (the actual term) is tightly regulated and essential to protecting the country. Attacks on the FBI and lying about its work will do lasting damage to our country," he wrote. ||||| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former FBI Director James Comey said on Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump asked him to drop an investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn as part of a probe into Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election. 
 
 In written testimony released the day before he appears before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey said Trump told him at a meeting in the White House in February: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.” 
 
 The testimony puts more pressure on Trump, a Republican, whose presidency has been overshadowed by allegations that Moscow helped him win last year’s election. 
 
 Some legal experts said Comey’s testimony could strengthen any impeachment case built on obstruction of justice, but U.S. markets shrugged off the news from the testimony for lack of any major disclosures. 
 
 To build a criminal obstruction of justice case, federal law requires prosecutors to show that a person acted with “corrupt” intent. It does not matter whether the person succeeds in impeding an investigation. 
 
 While a sitting president is very unlikely to face criminal prosecution, obstruction of justice could form the basis for impeachment. 
 
 Comey said he had told Trump on three occasions he was not being investigated, confirming an earlier account from the president. 
 
 Trump, who spent part of Wednesday in Ohio talking about the need to fix the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, ignored reporters’ shouted questions about Comey. On returning to the Oval Office, Trump went into a meeting with top advisers, including chief of staff Reince Priebus. 
 
 Later, his outside counsel released a statement saying Trump felt “completely and totally vindicated” by Comey’s account. 
 
 “The president is pleased that Mr. Comey has finally publicly confirmed his private reports that the president was not under investigation in any Russian probe,” Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s attorney, said in a statement. 
 
 ‘AWKWARD SILENCE’ 
 
 Several congressional committees, as well as the FBI and a special counsel, are investigating whether Russia tried to tilt last November’s election in Trump’s favour, using means such as hacking into the emails of senior Democrats. Trump and the Kremlin have separately denied any collusion. 
 
 Trump abruptly fired Comey, who was leading the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe, on May 9. 
 
 Comey painted a vivid picture for senators of awkward encounters with Trump in seven pages of testimony. 
 
 Comey described a private dinner in the Green Room of the White House on Jan. 26, where Trump asked him whether he wanted to stay on as FBI director, telling him: “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,” Comey said in his testimony, explaining he became concerned that Trump was trying to create “some sort of patronage relationship.” 
 
 On Feb. 14, after an Oval Office briefing on counterterrorism, Trump asked Comey to stay behind, dismissing Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who lingered, and waving off Priebus, who peeked through the door. 
 
 “When the door by the grandfather clock closed, and we were alone, the president began by saying, ‘I want to talk about Mike Flynn,’” Comey said in his testimony. 
 
 Trump had fired Flynn the previous day in a controversy over contacts between the retired general and the Russian ambassador to the United States. The FBI has been investigating Flynn as it looks into allegations of links between Russia and the Trump campaign. 
 
 Comey quoted Trump as telling him: “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.” 
 
 FILE PHOTO - FBI Director James Comey waits to testify to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing on "Russia's intelligence activities" on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. January 10, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo 
 
 On March 30, Trump phoned Comey and asked what “we could do to lift the cloud” of the FBI’s Russia investigation. 
 
 “He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia,” said Comey, who had briefed Trump on “salacious material” that had arisen in a counter-intelligence investigation. 
 
 Michael Cohen, a lawyer for Trump, said in a statement that the uncorroborated dossier of compromising material that Russian operatives allegedly collected on Trump has been “debunked.” 
 
 “Comey’s statement released today needs to be carefully scrutinized as his testimony claims the president was concerned about the dossier,” said Cohen. 
 
 Cohen, along with Flynn, has been subpoenaed by the House Intelligence Committee, which is also conducting a Russia probe. 
 
 LEGAL FALLOUT? 
 
 Some legal experts said Comey’s written statement could be used to show that Trump engaged in obstruction of justice. 
 
 “It shows the president was doing everything he could to shut down the Flynn investigation,” said Andrew Wright, a professor of criminal law at Savannah Law School. 
 
 Bruce Green, a professor of law at Fordham University School of Law, said it would be difficult, however, to show that Trump intended to obstruct justice. Trump could say he was merely vouching for Flynn’s character and voicing concerns about how the probe was interfering with his ability to function effectively as president, Green said. 
 
 Democrats jumped on the testimony, expressing concern that Trump had inappropriately meddled with the probe. 
 
 “It’s certainly very possible that this is evidence, in combination with other actions by the president, that could amount to obstruction. It’s certainly an effort to interfere in the investigation,” the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam Schiff, told CNN. 
 
 Slideshow (6 Images) 
 
 Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, asked about Trump’s request for loyalty from Comey, said it was “very, very critical” that FBI directors remain “independent.” 
 
 But Republican Senator Richard Burr, who heads the Senate intelligence panel, said he did not take issue with Trump’s request. 
 
 “I don’t think it’s wrong to ask for loyalty from anybody in an administration,” Burr said. ||||| Donald Trump received three separate assurances from then-FBI Director James Comey that the president was not personally under investigation — but he may now be under investigation because he couldn’t let his obsession go. 
 
 The greatest threat to Trump and his presidency, say administration officials and outside advisers, comes from his own conduct and obsessive behavior after he took office. While congressional and FBI investigations may prove Trump or his team broke laws before he took office, his advisers say they’re more worried that the things he’s done since the inauguration may have left him exposed to obstruction of justice or other charges. 
 
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 Trump, for months, has bristled almost daily about the ongoing probes. He has sometimes, without prompting, injected. “I’m not under investigation” into conversations with associates and allies. He has watched hours of TV coverage every day — sometimes even storing morning news shows on his TiVo to watch in the evening — and complained nonstop. 
 
 “You may be the first president in history to go down because you can’t stop inappropriately talking about an investigation that, if you just were quiet, would clear you,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said last weekend. 
 
 Just as he has done publicly on Twitter, Trump has told friends and associates that the investigation is a “witch hunt” and that others are out to get him. “It’s basically all he talks about on the phone,” said one adviser who has spoken with Trump and his top aides. 
 
 Aides have tried to change the subject, with little luck. Advisers have tried to buck up the president by telling him to be patient, agreeing that it is a “witch hunt” and urging him to just let it play out — and reassuring him, “Eventually, you will be cleared,” in the words of one. 
 
 But none of that has changed Trump’s response. 
 
 “The frustration he feels is he fully well knows there was no collusion with Russia. And yet, he’s been on the hot seat about it for six months,” said Barry Bennett, a top campaign aide who continues to have ties to the White House. “He’s been told, 'You’re not under investigation,' and yet he still wakes up every day to read he’s under investigation. It’s really hard to be accused of being a traitor and take your lawyer’s advice to shut up and not talk about it.” 
 
 Two people close to Trump note that his is an obsessive personality — whether about businessmen who wronged him over the years, his years-long and fruitless quest to prove President Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States, to reporters who have written negative stories about him. One transition official said Trump lashed out at reporters over old stories within a day of winning the election in November. 
 
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 Aides say they fear his incendiary tweets and public comments have spurred “countless” leaks of damaging information, in the words of one. Chief strategist Steve Bannon has told others that he believes the FBI is now out to get the Trump administration. 
 
 They have urged Trump to stop meddling — but he won't. Under oath, Comey testified that Trump asked him to consider letting go of an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign in February. Trump ordered top aides to leave the room, according to testimony from Comey and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, before he made the request. 
 
 That was after Trump asked Comey for “loyalty” and repeatedly sought assurances that he wasn’t under investigation. He later asked national security officials to make statements they didn’t believe to be truthful, according to The Washington Post. 
 
 Then, again frustrated with the investigation, he fired Comey several months later, according to several aides and advisers — and told contradictory stories about his decision. “And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.' It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won,” Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt. 
 
 “I faced great pressure because of Russia, that’s taken off,” Trump told Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, in the Oval Office, an incident first reported by The New York Times. That, according to several people who spoke to Trump, was the real reason he fired Comey. 
 
 Two days later, angry that the firing might damage him, and after fuming about Comey nonstop, Trump threatened the former FBI director with “tapes” on a Friday morning, a threat that Comey later said spurred him to release memos of his meetings with Trump. One Comey associate at the time said the tweet “amazed” him. 
 
 “I woke up in the middle of the night Monday thinking that there might be corroboration for our conversation,” Comey said under oath. “And my judgment was that I needed to get that out in the public square.” 
 
 Trump now has begun fuming about special counsel Robert Mueller, particularly after Mueller hired several prosecutors and investigators with ties to Democrats. Trump has told associates he might fire Mueller, though they don’t believe he will. On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that Trump was under investigation for obstruction — and that Mueller wanted to interview the national security officials who reportedly had been asked to make false statements. 
 
 Trump woke up Thursday morning and appeared to question Mueller’s integrity on Twitter. “You are witnessing the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history - led by some very bad and conflicted people!” he wrote. White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters she believed the president was responding to the Post story. 
 
 “He is totally in a box now,” one friend said. “And it might make him want to fire Mueller more.” 
 
 “If he didn’t send about 15 tweets that he’s done, he’d be in much better shape than he is right now,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian at Rice University. “I kept thinking he would change from these self-destructive tendencies, but he may be the first president in history who brings himself down because he just can’t help himself.” ||||| From Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton, history suggests that it is never a good thing for a president to have the FBI, with its nearly infinite resources and sweeping investigative powers, on his tail. 
 
 FBI Director James Comey’s promise to the House Intelligence Committee on Monday to “follow the facts wherever they lead” in the bureau’s investigation into possible collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia during last year’s election amounted to an ominous guarantee, barely two months into Trump’s term, that institutional forces beyond any president’s control will force the facts of the case to light, whatever they are. 
 
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 “Comey’s admission of an ongoing counterintelligence investigation, with no endpoint in sight, is a big deal,” said historian Timothy Naftali, who was the first director of the federally run Nixon presidential library. “This is not going away.” 
 
 Moreover, given Trump’s demonstrated willingness to attack any adversary — hours before Comey’s testimony, he tweeted that the suggestion of collaboration between his campaign and Russia was “fake news” — official acknowledgment of the investigation raises sharp new questions not only about the president’s own credibility, but also about his willingness to continue undermining public trust and confidence in the government institutions he leads. 
 
 Typically, the mere existence of such an investigation would make any White House hypersensitive about the appearance of attempting to interfere with the FBI or the Justice Department. Bill Clinton’s loathing for his FBI director, Louis Freeh, was an open secret in the 1990s (and the feeling was mutual), but it couldn’t stop the bureau from doggedly pursuing investigations of Whitewater or the Monica Lewinsky affair. If anything, the reverse was true. 
 
 Will the Trump White House, which is installing loyalty monitors in every Cabinet department, feel similarly hamstrung about publicly attacking Comey, whom the president famously hugged at a Blue Room reception shortly after his inauguration, or trying to quash the inquiry? At a minimum, Trump and his aides would do well to recall the most celebrated instance of a president’s attempt to block an FBI investigation. 
 
 “The obvious example that comes to mind is Watergate, when Richard Nixon famously turned to the CIA to block the FBI’s investigation,” said the historian Julian Zelizer, a professor at Princeton. That attempt failed spectacularly, of course, but Zelizer added, “This is the kind of investigation that is never good news for an administration,” and he noted that the current probe has already “consumed much of the president’s time, and the doors keep opening to bigger potential problems.” 
 
 Trump has an ambitious agenda that involves the Justice Department on matters from immigration to civil rights to border security. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, one of his earliest and most vocal supporters, had his choice of Cabinet positions. Sessions has announced he would recuse himself from any Russia-Trump investigation, but Comey went out of his way to say that the Justice Department had authorized him to take the unusual step of disclosing it. 
 
 The disclosure raises questions about how Trump will navigate his dealings with his attorney general and the department to avoid any suggestion of meddling in an ongoing investigation. At least since Watergate, there have been strict protocols covering contacts between the White House and Justice Department about pending investigations — protocols that Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, may already have violated by speaking with Comey and Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe about the Russia inquiry. 
 
 It also raises the possibility that Trump will get bogged down in questions about the investigation, which could adversely affect his ability to achieve his policy goals. Even initiatives that have nothing to do with Russia or national security could suffer if a Republican Congress is less inclined to fight for his proposals, and there is also the matter of the time and focus responding to such an inquiry requires from the White House. 
 
 Louis Freeh, President Clinton's choice to head the FBI, speaks as the president looks on July 20, 1993, in the Rose Garden of the White House. The two came to dislike each other. | AP Photo 
 
 Bill Clinton devoted much of his second term to fending off the Lewinsky investigation and subsequent impeachment proceedings, fueled not only by the zealous special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, but also by a hostile FBI. When the Lewinsky probe was gathering steam in 1998 and Starr’s lieutenant Bob Bittmann requested 20 FBI agents and 10 financial analysts, “We had them the next day,” he would recall. Freeh personally let Attorney General Janet Reno know that he opposed the Secret Service’s invocation of a “protective function” privilege that would shield its agents from having to testify about any contacts they might have witnessed between Clinton and Lewinsky. 
 
 Trump’s aides and allies have questioned whether the permanent professional bureaucracy of the federal government amounts to a “deep state,” dedicated to undermining his policies. They should be more concerned in the short term about a new “Deep Throat,” like the long-anonymous source who aided The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward’s coverage of Watergate. The source turned out to be Mark Felt, the No. 3 official at the FBI, a reality that the Nixon White House caught onto just months after the foiled break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters. 
 
 “Now why the hell would he do that?” Nixon asked his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, on Oct. 19, 1972. A few months later, when Felt’s name was floated as a possible successor to FBI Director L. Patrick Gray, who had resigned under fire, Nixon told his attorney general, Richard Kleindienst, “I don’t want him. I can’t have him.” 
 
 If Trump can take any comfort from Comey’s latest revelation, it may be that the FBI director’s own credibility was badly damaged last year — first when he took the unusual step of announcing that the bureau’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server did not warrant prosecution; then when he announced he was revisiting the investigation in light of potential new evidence found on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, the husband of Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin; and, finally, when he declared, just days before the election, that his original conclusion still stood. 
 
 Trump has repeatedly shown himself willing to breach the usual niceties of presidential decorum and discourse. With his White House now officially under siege by an entity empowered to seek subpoenas to compel testimony, it’s anybody’s guess just how the president or his lieutenants might react. But one thing is certain: The mood in the White House is grim, and probably apt to get worse before it gets better. 
 
 In September 1972, as the FBI pursued its Watergate investigation, Nixon had some advice for his White House counsel, John Dean, as reported in John A. Farrell’s forthcoming book, “Richard Nixon: The Life.” “This is war,” Nixon said. “We’re getting a few shots and it will be over, and we’ll give them a few shots and it will be over. Don’t worry. I wouldn’t want to be on the other side right now.” 
 
 The president had no idea just how wrong he was. But the FBI did. 
 
 Authors: ||||| poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201706/1191/1155968404_5464486437001_5464481494001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Ryan defends Trump on Comey: ‘The president’s new at this’ 
 
 Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday defended President Donald Trump’s communications with ex-FBI director James Comey, saying Trump wasn’t “steeped in the long-running protocols” of how to interact with law enforcement and is “new at this.” 
 
 The Wisconsin Republican also expressed sympathy for Trump's frustration with the Russia investigation, noting that Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday morning that Trump was not the subject of the probe — at least not while he was at the FBI. 
 
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 "When the FBI director tells him on three different occasions he is not under investigation, yet the speculation swirls around the political system that he is, that’s frustrating,” Ryan said. “I think the American people now know why he was frustrated.” 
 
 Ryan's response is in line with how he's taken to responding to the growing Russia controversy. While Ryan used to lead the pack of Republicans who pushed back on Trump's controversial comments and actions, he has had little criticism for the president since the election. 
 
 On MSNBC Wednesday night, Ryan conceded for the first time that Trump asking Comey for a pledge of loyalty would be "inappropriate." But he very quickly dismissed that news, a preview of Comey's Thursday testimony, as stale, arguing it came out a month or two ago. 
 
 When that news first broke, Ryan would not weigh in because he said the investigation was ongoing and he would not prejudge the outcome. 
 
 On Thursday, Ryan — who would rather discuss legislation than the Trump-Russia scandal — played down Comey's ongoing explosive testimony across the Capitol. 
 
 Comey told Congress that he took notes about his conversations with Trump because he worried Trump would lie about them. Comey also said he took Trump's request that he drop a criminal probe of Michael Flynn, his ex-National Security Adviser, as an inappropriate directive. 
 
 Ryan, while noting the investigation was ongoing, said there should always be independence between the White House and the FBI or Department of Justice. But he suggested Trump may not have known how to use the proper communications channels. 
 
 “The president’s new at this. He’s new at government," Ryan said. "He’s not steeped in the long running protocols that establish the relationships between DOJ, FBI and White Houses."
– President Trump is no stranger to scandal, but reports that he asked former FBI director James Comey to halt the investigation of Michael Flynn may have taken things to the next level. The report may have been the last straw for congressional Republicans, who appeared to be shifting against Trump on Tuesday night, Politico reports. House Oversight Committee Rep. Jason Chaffetz says he has asked the FBI for Comey's memos on the Trump request and other interactions with the president and he is ready to issue subpoenas if necessary. Some legal analysts say there could now be an obstruction of justice case against Trump, though it could be tough to prove. The latest: Obstruction of justice. The New York Times describes obstruction of justice as a "murky" charge, the exact definition of which was being hotly debated on Capitol Hill Tuesday night. Experts say it could certainly cover asking the FBI director to drop its investigation and then firing him. Any criminal case would probably have to prove that Trump had "corrupt intentions," though if Trump is tried, it will be by Congress, not the courts. "If this were anyone other than the president, it is classic, vanilla obstruction," former federal prosecutor Jeff Cramer tells Politico. The showdown. It now appears certain that a "theatrical showdown" between Trump and Comey looms, with Americans having to decide whose word they trust more, CNN reports. Comey is expected to be called to testify before Congress about the Feb. 14 meeting with Trump. Reasons for Trump to worry. The Times' sources say Comey kept detailed memos about his meetings with Trump, which "should strike fear into the White House," according to the Washington Post. The notes may describe other times Trump allegedly crossed the line—and courts in previous cases have considered memos from FBI directors to be credible evidence. "Reasonable objections." The National Review notes that while there is "no good outcome" here, it is premature to say Trump is doomed to face impeachment proceedings: The allegation has not been proven, and the "reasonable objections" include Sen. Lindsey Graham's observation: "If this happened, the FBI director should have done something about it or quit." GOP reaction. Republican lawmakers including House Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Frank Meadows are calling for an investigation of the "disturbing" allegation. Some have signaled that their patience is wearing out. "This weekly scandal, this weekly controversy is unhealthy for the country. It’s a major distraction for the country and it’s just bad for the psyche of every American," said Florida Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo, per Politico. Nixon comparisons. There are many comparisons to the Watergate scandal being made. Vox notes that what ended Richard Nixon's presidency wasn't the Watergate break-in itself—his involvement was never proven—but his attempt to force the FBI to abandon its investigation. Prison for the press. CNBC notes that amid the Flynn uproar, another allegation has been overlooked: Trump also allegedly asked Comey to consider imprisoning members of the press for publishing classified allegations that had been leaked.