Trump Admits He Has No Tapes of Conversations with Comey
Local Editor
US President Donald Trump said he has no recordings of his controversial conversations with former FBI Director James Comey - although he left open the possibility that such an audio record may exist.
The President ignited a furor when he raised the prospect that there may be such recordings when he tweeted last month, in the aftermath of his firing of Comey, while he was heading a probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
"James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press," Trump said.
For weeks, Trump and the White House refused to confirm or deny whether or not any such recordings existed. "Well, that I can't talk about," the President had told Fox News shortly after he published the initial tweet.
"I won't talk about that. All I want is for Comey to be honest. And I hope he will be."
At one point, the issue appeared to descend to the level of farce. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders promised reporters she would "search under the couches" for such recordings, while Comey urged Trump to release them if they existed.
"I've seen the tweet about tapes. Lordy, I hope there are tapes," Comey told the senators, when he was testifying on Capitol Hill.
While Trump may have not made any recordings of his conversations with the former FBI Director, which happened on the phone as well as in person, Comey kept detailed memos of what he discussed with the President. These memos formed the basis of his testimony on Capitol Hill.
In them, he recorded that Trump had asked several times for an oath of loyalty, that he requested he drop the investigation into former national security advisor Michael Flynn and asked him to confirm that he was personally not being investigated.
Comey testified that he took detailed notes of his private talks with the President - something he had not done after his conversations with Barack Obama - because he was concerned he may not be honest about what transpired.
The issue of secret recordings in the White House became notorious after it emerged that Richard Nixon had for many years recorded conversations of people he spoke to in the Oval Office, and on the telephone.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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