WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump asserted Friday that the testimony of fired FBI Director James Comey to Congress represents “total and complete vindication” in the Russian election-meddling political furor.

Trump, who had not posted on his Twitter account Thursday as Comey accused the administration of spreading “lies,” struck back with an early morning tweet in which he said, “Wow, Comey is a leaker.”

Comey had laid bare on Capitol Hill months of distrust of the president, bluntly asserting that Trump had fired him to interfere with the probe of Russia’s ties to the Trump campaign.

At his first congressional appearance since his abrupt firing last month, Comey also revealed that he’d orchestrated the public release of information about his private conversations with the president in an effort to further the investigation.

Trump’s tweet said: “Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication … and WOW, Comey is a leaker.”

Comey’s testimony, at a hugely anticipated hearing that captured the country’s attention, provided a gripping account of his interactions with Trump and underscored the discord that had soured their relationship.

He portrayed Trump as a chief executive dismissive of the FBI’s independence and made clear that he interpreted Trump’s request to end an investigation into his former national security adviser as an order coming from the president.

Though Republicans worked to discredit Comey and to blunt the impact of his testimony, the ex-director’s statement deepened questions about the basis for his May 9 dismissal and about whether Trump’s actions constituted obstruction of justice. The veteran lawman expressed confidence that could be a matter ripe for investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, though he declined to offer an opinion on whether it met such a threshold.

Trump’s private attorney, Marc Kasowitz, seized on Comey’s admission that he had told Trump on multiple occasions that he was not personally under investigation and maintained the testimony made clear that Trump “never, in form or substance, directed or suggested that Mr. Comey stop investigating anyone.”

Kasowitz also jumped on Comey’s revelation that he had released details of his private conversations with the president, casting the former FBI director as one of the “leakers” set on undermining the Trump administration.

Still, there was no doubt the veteran lawman made for a challenging adversary.

“It’s my judgment that I was fired because of the Russia investigation,” Comey said toward the end of more than two hours of testimony before the Senate intelligence committee. “I was fired in some way to change, or the endeavor was to change, the way the Russia investigation was being conducted.

“That is a very big deal, and not just because it involves me.”

At one point he practically dared Trump to release any recordings of their conversations, a prospect the president once alluded to in a tweet.

“Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” Comey said, suggesting such evidence would back up his account over the president’s.

Thursday’s hearing brought Washington and other parts of the country to a standstill as Americans sat glued to their screens, harkening to the Watergate congressional hearings that held the nation rapt some four decades earlier.

Republicans mindful of the gravity of the moment worked feverishly to lessen any damage from the hearing. They tried to undermine Comey’s credibility by issuing press releases and even ads pointing to a past instance where the FBI had to clean up the director’s testimony to Congress.

In his opening statement, Comey somberly accused the Trump administration of spreading “lies, plain and simple” in the aftermath of his abrupt ouster, declaring that the administration “chose to defame me and, more importantly, the FBI” by claiming the bureau was in disorder.

He then dove into the heart of the fraught political controversy around his firing and whether Trump interfered in the bureau’s Russia investigation, as he elaborated on written testimony released a day earlier.

In that testimony, Comey said that Trump demanded his “loyalty” and directly pushed him to “lift the cloud” of investigation by declaring publicly the president was not a target of the FBI probe into his campaign’s Russia ties.

He said that when Trump told him he hoped he would terminate an investigation into Michael Flynn, the ousted national security adviser, he interpreted that as a directive.

“I mean, this is the president of the United States, with me alone, saying, ‘I hope’ this,” he said. “I took it as, this is what he wants me to do.”

He said that while he found the February exchange in the Oval Office disturbing, “that’s a conclusion I’m sure the special counsel will work towards, to try and understand what the intention was there, and whether that’s an offense.”

Comey said that after his firing he actually tried to spur the special counsel’s appointment by giving a damning memo he had written about a meeting with Trump to a friend to release to the media.

“My judgment was I need to get that out into the public square,” he said.

The February meeting was one of several one-on-one encounters that Comey said made him feel such intense discomfort that he felt compelled to document them in memos.

“I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting, so I thought it really important to document,” he said. “I knew there might come a day when I might need a record of what happened not only to defend myself but to protect the FBI.”

Trump himself was expected to dispute Comey’s claims that he demanded loyalty and asked the FBI director to drop the investigation into Flynn, according to a person close to the president’s legal team who was not authorized to discuss legal strategy by name and demanded anonymity. Instead, Kasowitz pushed back and the president remained conspicuously silent on Twitter during the hearing despite expectations he might respond.

The disclosures that followed Comey’s firing have raised questions about why Comey, known in government for an independent streak and a willingness to buck protocol, did not speak out publicly while on the job, or at least make his objections directly known to the president.

Discussing the meeting in which Comey says Trump asked him to back off Flynn, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California asked, “Why didn’t you stop and say, ‘Mr. President, this is wrong,’?”

“It’s a great question,” Comey replied. “Maybe if I were stronger I would have. I was so stunned by the conversation I just took it in.”

Comey also made clear that political entanglement in law enforcement has cut across party lines.

During a discussion of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, Comey disclosed that then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, an Obama administration appointee, instructed him to refer to the issue as a “matter,” not an “investigation.”

“That concerned me because that language tracked how the campaign was talking about the FBI’s work and that’s concerning,” he said. “We had an investigation open at the time so that gave me a queasy feeling.”

Many Democrats still blame Comey for Clinton’s loss, leading Trump to apparently believe they would applaud him for firing Comey. The opposite occurred, as the firing created a political firestorm that has stalled Trump’s legislative agenda and taken over Washington.

Under questioning Thursday, Comey reaffirmed the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia meddled in the election.

“There should be no fuzz on this. The Russians interfered,” Comey stated firmly. “That happened. It’s about as unfake as you can possibly get.”

Trump has begrudgingly accepted that assessment. But he has also suggested he doesn’t believe it, saying Russia is a “ruse” and calling the investigation into the matter a “witch hunt.”</s>“Despite so many false statements and lies,” the president of the United States tweeted Friday, “total and complete vindication… and WOW, Comey is a leaker!”

To be clear: on the one hand, Donald Trump alleges that the former director of the FBI, James Comey, perjured himself in sworn testimony before the Senate Intelligence committee — testimony based on his detailed contemporaneous memos of his conversations with him. On the other hand, the same testimony offers “total and complete vindication” of his conduct.</s>President Donald Trump refused to make a declarative statement about the alleged tapes of his meeting with former FBI Director James Comey that may or may not exist.

"I'll tell you something about that maybe sometime in the very near future," Trump said when asked about the purported existence of the tapes during a joint news conference with the president of Romania at the White House today.

"I'll tell you about it over a short period of time. I'm not hinting at anything," he said.

"You're going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer," he said.

Trump was the first person to suggest that there may be recordings of his conversations with Comey after tweeting that Comey should be afraid of the possible recordings being released.

"James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" Trump wrote in a May 12 tweet.

Trump also denied ever asking Comey to "let" the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn go or asking for Comey's loyalty, both of which Comey said under oath during testimony at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday.

"I didn't say that. I will tell you, I didn't say that," he told ABC News' chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl about the Flynn investigation claims.

"And there would be nothing wrong if I did say it according to everybody that I read today but I did not say that," he added.

When asked about the alleged loyalty pledge, Trump denied ever having made such a move.

"I hardly know the man. I'm not going to say I want you to pledge allegiance. What would do that. Who would ask a man to pledge allegiance under oath. Think of that. I hardly know the man," Trump said.

At a different point during the news conference, Trump said he would "100 percent" be willing to testify under oath, and went on to criticize Comey's testimony.

"In the meantime, no collusion, no obstruction. He's a leaker. But we want to get back to running our great country. Jobs, trade deficits. We want them to disappear fast. North Korea, big problem. Middle East, a big problem," Trump said.

"So that's what I am focused on. That's what I have been focused on. But yesterday showed no collusion, no obstruction. We are doing very well. It's almost impossible for the Democrats to lose the electoral college, as you know. You have to run up the whole east coast and win everything as a Republican and that's what we did. So it was just an excuse. But we were very, very happy and, frankly, James Comey confirmed a lot of what I said and some of the things that he said just weren't true," he said.</s>Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Former FBI Director James Comey has begun testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday in relation to its investigation into possible connections between the Russian government and President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

In a prepared statement he’s reading to the committee that was released Wednesday, Comey describes a series of uncomfortable interactions with Trump, in which he says the president requested his loyalty and pressed him to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Some of the allegations in Comey’s statement have been directly contradicted by the White House in the past. On May 12, White House press secretary Sean Spicer rejected the notion that Trump ever asked Comey to pledge loyalty, and on May 18 Trump himself said he never urged Comey to back off the investigation into Flynn.

“The president disputes that he ever asked for Jim Comey’s loyalty and he disputes that he ever asked Comey to let the Flynn investigation go in any way,” a source familiar with the president’s thinking told ABC News Thursday.

ABC News has learned that Trump will be watching Comey’s hearing and testimony Thursday with his legal team and senior advisers from the president’s personal dining room near the Oval Office in the White House.

On May 9, Trump fired Comey from his position as FBI director after receiving letters recommending he do so from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Sources told ABC News that the firing came as a surprise to Comey, which is part of the story he plans to tell Thursday before the committee. As one source said, he was “angry” and wants the public to know why.

ABC News reported earlier this week that Comey’s congressional testimony would make the White House uncomfortable, but that Comey won’t say the president directly interfered in the FBI’s probe into Flynn.

Prior to Comey’s testimony Thursday, a person close to the former FBI director told ABC News he was prepared and calm.

“That’s what happens when you are armed with the truth; it washes all over you,” the individual told ABC News.</s>Donald Trump Jr., shown here at the 2016 Republican National Convention, on Thursday tweeted a defense of his father against allegations from former FBI director James Comey. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

President Donald Trump has yet to offer a reaction to explosive testimony from former FBI director James Comey. But his son has now chimed in, using an expletive to describe Comey’s account.

“Flynn stuff is BS,” the younger Trump wrote, referring to Comey’s allegation that the president tried to coerce him, during a one-on-one meeting, to drop an investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

In contrast, Trump Jr. described the conversation, a central part of Comey’s testimony, as, “2 guys talking about a guy they both know well.”

Comey alleged that Trump had demanded his loyalty and asked him to end the Flynn investigation, saying, “I hope you can let this go,” according to Comey’s prepared statements.

“I hear ‘I hope nothing happens but you have to do your job,’ he tweeted. In subsequent tweets, he said the interaction, as Comey had described it, was, “very far from any kind of coercion or influence, and certainly not obstruction.”

“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,” he Tweeted.

Trump was widely expected to live-tweet his reaction to Comey’s testimony but has not updated his personal account since early Wednesday morning, when he tweeted about that day’s trip to Ohio.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that the president was planning to refute Comey’s claim that Trump asked him for loyalty and his depiction of the Flynn conversation.

Trump Jr.’s Tweets about the Flynn exchange are below.</s>President Donald Trump is claiming “total and complete vindication” the day after former FBI Director James Comey testified on Capitol Hill.

In his testimony, Comey was clear that the President was never an explicit subject of the Russia probe — but he also said Trump’s private comments urging him to drop the probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn led him to tell his Justice Department colleagues they needed to be careful.

“Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication…and WOW, Comey is a leaker!” Trump tweeted Friday morning.

Comey disclosed Thursday that he provided the content of memos regarding meetings between himself and the President to a friend, who then disseminated the information to the media.

Trump’s outside lawyer insisted Thursday that it was Comey who lied when he detailed conversations between himself and the President, raising the suggestion that Comey committed perjury while testifying under oath.</s>Somehow, Donald Trump managed to restrain himself from tweeting yesterday.

Throughout James Comey's testimony — which aimed some pretty no-nonsense barbs at the President — Trump managed to hold himself back. It was the first full day he's gone without tweeting in a long, long time.

It was never going to last, though.

On Friday morning, Trump finally did what everyone was waiting for. He posted an angry, mildly confusing tweet about Comey.

He followed that up 45 minutes later with a thank you message to Fox for their "great reporting".

That's all for now, but we wouldn't be surprised if there's more to follow. Based on Trump's Twitter standards, he's actually been pretty restrained so far...</s>Republican Senator Marco Rubio had asked former Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey whether he perceived the president’s request to let the “Flynn matter” go as an order given Trump’s position as president.

“Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication”, Trump wrote, suggesting that Comey, who was under oath at the hearing, had committed perjury.

“Do you believe this will rise to obstruction of justice?” If, as the president said, I was sacked because of the Russian Federation investigation, why was the attorney general involved in that chain?

Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Roy Blunt of Missouri hit Mr. Comey with shuddering impact in asking why the one item Mr. Comey never leaked was that Mr. Trump was not the subject of the FBI investigation.

Comey’s testimony underscored the discord that had soured their relationship.

Comey further said he felt the need to get his account of his conversations with Trump in the public sphere in the hope that it might prompt the appointment of a special counsel, which later occurred.

But Comey’s comments have been interpreted differently by Republicans and the Democrats.

After that meeting, Comey told Sessions that he did not want to be alone anymore with Trump and “it can’t happen that you get kicked out of the room and the president talks to me”. In contrast, during the probe into Hillary Clinton’s email usage, Comey had no qualms about speaking publicly.

Comey also turned for help to Dana Boente, who was acting as deputy attorney general before Rosenstein was confirmed, after Trump called the FBI director about the Russian Federation investigation and said it was a “cloud” that was impairing his ability as president.

Here’s the definition of collusion, which Trump’s enemies were confident Comey’s testimony would prove: “secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others”.

DOJ’s release claimed that Sessions’s Chief of Staff sent to Comey and other officials an email explaining the AG’s recusal and admonishing them from briefing Sessions on the Russian Federation investigation. Imagine that. Mr. Comey corroborating what Mr. Trump has been saying all along.

“I said, ‘Why would I do that?’ And she said, ‘Just call it a ‘matter, ‘” Comey testified. However, Comey would not say whether he thought the president sought to obstruct justice. Trump wrote at 6:10 a.m. Hence, no intent of stopping investigations or obstructing justice can or should be attributed to Trump.

House Speaker Paul Ryan is going with the former. It is quite possibly this kind of thinking, the author claims, that was behind Trump’s desire to let Flynn off the hook. “We had an investigation open at the time so that gave me a queasy feeling”. Vox has put together a collection of expert responses on the precise legal details of determining whether this counts as obstruction. This last point is integral when lawyers consider the grounds for qualifying this as an “obstruction of justice”. With a few equivocal affirmations but generally more “perhaps”, and “could be”, the exact consequences of Comey’s testimony are still to be fully determined.</s>WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump broke his silence, taking to Twitter to respond to former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Early Friday morning, the President tweeted, “Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication…and WOW, Comey is a leaker!”

In his testimony, Comey was clear that the President was never an explicit subject of the Russia probe — but he also said Trump’s private comments led him to tell his Justice Department colleagues they needed to be careful.

Comey disclosed Thursday that he provided the content of memos regarding meetings between himself and the President to a friend, who then disseminated the information to the media.

Trump’s outside lawyer insisted Thursday that it was Comey who lied when he detailed conversations between himself and the President, raising the suggestion that Comey committed perjury while testifying under oath.</s>Former FBI Director James Comey is sworn in by Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., foreground, during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, Thursday, June 8, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)

The extensive coverage of former FBI Director James Comey's Senate testimony on Thursday gave Americans time to pause and focus on the slowly unfolding story about President Donald Trump and Russian involvement in the presidential campaign, but no rest for partisan spinners.

Broadcast networks cast aside their regular schedules for three or four hours. So did cable news networks, bracketing Comey's session before the Senate intelligence committee with hours of its own talk.

"Capitol Hill has not seen a day like this in years," said ABC News' George Stephanopoulos.

Evidence of the fierceness of the political battle came in the bits and pieces of Comey's testimony emphasized on different outlets and social media accounts. The was particularly true when Comey said that he leaked contents of a memo about his conversation with Trump to The New York Times through a friend, later identified as Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman. Comey wanted to get his account out, perhaps encouraging the appointment of a special prosecutor.

"This whole thing is a giant nothing-burger," the conservative web site Breitbart News wrote as Comey talked, "except for Comey implicating himself as a leaker."

On the liberal site Talking Points Memo, the same detail was hailed as evidence of "how Comey outflanked Trump."

"Depending on which camp you're in, you could say that Comey totally condemned President Trump today, or you could say the president was exonerated by Comey," commentator Dana Perino said on Fox News Channel. "The thing is, this was just another log on the fire, because America is going to continue to push forward on this."

Television commentators did not break in to Comey's testimony, but through headlines put onscreen — called chyrons — they were able to choose often contradictory points of emphasis. That was the case when Comey talked about Trump's discussion with him about former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

On Fox, for example, a chyron read, "Comey: President did not order me to let Flynn probe go." On CNN, the message read "Comey: I took Trump's request about Flynn as a directive."

All of the attention paid to the hearing, and its somewhat repetitive questioning — put special emphasis on some of its more unusual or humorous moments, like when Comey explained to Sen. Angus King of Maine that he had to break a date with his wife when Trump called him for a dinner at the White House.

"That's one of the all-time great excuses to break a date with your wife," King said.

Sen. John McCain was roasted online for a line of questioning where he appeared to conflate separate investigations on the Russian connection and on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email server.

Besides the traditional networks, Spanish-language station Telemundo aired the testimony with a voiceover translation. Telemundo, in the moments before Comey started, also showed a simulated reconstruction of Trump and Comey meeting in the White House, with conversations in Spanish printed in cartoon-like bubbles over their heads.

Not every television network showed Comey. Fox broadcast stations offered coverage anchored by Shepard Smith, but in New York the local affiliate showed Wendy Williams' talk show instead, with a printed message that anyone interested in Comey should seek out an online stream.
President Donald Trump claims that James Comey committed perjury during his testimony yesterday, and offers to give his own testimony, "under oath," refuting that he requested Comey to drop the Flynn investigation and that he had asked for Comey's allegiance.