Comey recounts uneasy meetings with Trump, 'I need loyalty, I expect loyalty'

(June 8): The first time James Comey met Donald Trump, he felt compelled to document their conversations, something he had not done regularly before. He typed up a memo recounting that January 6 encounter on his laptop in a FBI vehicle outside Trump Tower “the moment I walked out of the meeting.”

In his nine one-on-one conversations with Trump, which form the basis of Comey’s opening statement to a Senate panel Thursday, the former FBI chief said Trump pressured him for loyalty, sought forbearance for Michael Flynn and asked him to lift the “cloud” of a Russia investigation hanging over the administration.

Comey will testify that he did assure Trump three times that he wasn’t personally the target of a counterintelligence case, confirming statements made by the president as he’s tried to fend off critics.

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