Everything You Can Expect From James Comey’s Testimony On His Interactions With President Trump

Comeypalooza is coming to Washington, D.C. on Thursday. How can you watch, and what should you expect? One of those questions is much easier to answer, so let’s get that out of the way. James Comey is expected to testify, beginning at 10am EST sharp (in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee), on matters related to his conversations and interactions with President Trump, who unceremoniously fired the former FBI director on May 9. The public portion of his hearing will last approximately three hours, and then the cameras will cease to roll at 1pm EST, at which point a closed committee session with Comey will continue.

The highly anticipated hearing is such a big deal that several networks — CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC, and C-SPAN — will carry it live. Additionally, UPROXX News will stream the hearing live on our Facebook page, and C-SPAN will livestream the publicly viewable testimony as well. The president may also live-tweet the event, which is “2017” in a nutshell.

What will Comey tell Congress? Well, we already heard that he plans to “stop short” of saying that Trump obstructed justice, but the Senate Intelligence Committee just dropped Comey’s Statement for the Record, and it tells us a lot. The seven-page written testimony, which will form the basis of Comey’s opening statement on Thursday, is extraordinary because it backs up many of the bombshell reports from the past month. The document details Comey’s interactions with Trump on five separate dates, and here are some highlights:

• January 6: Comey had his first conversation with President-Elect Trump at Trump Tower. For reasons that weren’t entirely clear to him at the time, he begin typing a documentation of the conversation as soon as he left Trump Tower and entered a vehicle. From that point forward, to “ensure accuracy,” he wrote a memo for every discussion he had with Trump. Comey said this was unusual, but this speaks to the level of unease that he felt around the president:
  

  “This has not been my practice in the past. I spoke alone with President Obama twice in person (and never on the phone) …. In neither of those circumstances did I memorialize the discussions. I can recall nine one-on-one conversations with President Trump in four months — three in person and six on the phone.”

• January 27 Dinner: In this section, Comey discussed how Trump demanded his “loyalty” at a dinner where he and Trump were the only people in the room besides two Navy stewards:
  

  “[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 subject changed, but Trump circled back with the same demand:

  “Near the end of our dinner, the President returned to the subject of my job, saying he was very glad I wanted to stay, adding that he had heard great things about me from Jim Mattis, Jeff Sessions, and many others. He then said, ‘I need loyalty.’ 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.’”

• February 14 Oval Office Meeting: Comey and Trump met again, but the room was filled with several other U.S. intelligence officials and the omnipresent Jared Kushner. Once the main meeting concluded, Trump dismissed everyone except Comey and said he wished to speak about Michael Flynn. Then he complained about leaks for awhile before attempting to convince Comey to kill the FBI investigation into Flynn’s Russian ties:
  

  “The President then returned to the topic of Mike Flynn, saying, ‘He is a good guy and has been through a lot.’ He repeated that Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong on his calls with the Russians, but had misled the Vice President. He then said, ‘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.’ I replied only that ‘he is a good guy.’ … I did not say I would ‘let this go.'”

• March 30 Phone Call: Trump complained to Comey that no one had told the public that he wasn’t under investigation. He ranted about “a cloud” that was preventing him from his main goal — “to make deals for the country.” Trump then brought up the “Golden Showers” dossier:
  

  “[T]he President called me at the FBI. He described the Russia investigation as ‘a cloud’ that was impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country. 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. He asked what we could do to ‘lift the cloud.’ I responded that we were investigating the matter as quickly as we could, and that there would be great benefit, if we didn’t find anything, to our having done the work well. He agreed, but then reemphasized the problems this was causing him.”

• April 11 Phone Call: Trump called Comey and inquired as to when he was going to tell the public that he wasn’t “personally under investigation.” Comey said he had spoken to the DOJ, but Trump wasn’t satisfied because “the cloud” was still interfering with his job:
  

  “I said the White House Counsel should contact the leadership of DOJ to make the request, which was the traditional channel. He said he would do that and added, ‘Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know.’ I did not reply or ask him what he meant by ‘that thing.’ I said only that the way to handle it was to have the White House Counsel call the Acting Deputy Attorney General. He said that was what he would do and the call ended. That was the last time I spoke with President Trump.”

Oddly enough, Trump’s outside counsel has issued a statement following news of Comey’s testimony: “The president feels completely and totally vindicated.”

You can read Comey’s full written testimony at the Senate’s website. It’s chock full of damning information, and it shall form the launching point of an unpredictable and undoubtedly volatile hearing. Join us tomorrow — we’ll have plenty of popcorn in hand.