On Thursday, former FBI director James Comey gave a long-awaited testimony under oath about the circumstances of his firing, and whether it had anything to do with the fact that he was leading the investigation into the Trump team’s ties to Russia during the election. Despite the fact that what Comey said was pretty damning for the White House, Trump, of course, is already publicly denying everything Comey said, even asserting that he’d be willing to testify under oath against Comey.
The New York Times reports that during a press conference on Friday, Trump accused Comey of lying under oath during his testimony, saying, “Frankly, James Comey confirmed a lot of what I said, and some of the things he said just weren’t true.” He even went as far as to say that Comey’s testimony proved that the president didn’t obstruct justice.
“Yesterday showed no collusion, no obstruction,” the president said. “He’s a leaker,” he added.
Trump is known for taking to Twitter when things aren’t exactly looking up for him, but the president surprisingly stayed relatively silent, only tweeting once about the whole thing before his comments on Friday.Â
Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication…and WOW, Comey is a leaker!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2017
During Friday’s press conference he outright denied another one of the major discoveries from Comey’s testimony: that he allegedly asked Comey for his loyalty and requested that he drop the Russia investigation. “I didn’t say that,” he said. “And there’d be nothing wrong if I did say it.” (Yikes.)
There’s also still the question of whether or not Trump actually has ‘tapes’ of he and Comey’s meetings, which he hinted at with a tweet several weeks ago. Naturally, reporters questioned the president about them yet again – and he still can’t confirm whether they actually exist or not, shadily answering questions about possible tapes with, “I’ll tell you sometime maybe in the very near future,” BuzzFeed News reports.
Hmm. Like always, the president certainly handled things, um, interestingly.