WASHINGTON // US president Donald Trump asked then-FBI director James Comey to end the agency’s investigation into ties between former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russia, according to a source who has seen a memo written by Mr Comey.
The new development on Tuesday followed a week of tumult at the White House after Mr Trump fired Mr Comey and then discussed sensitive national security information about ISIL with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
The Comey memo, first reported by the New York Times, caused alarm on Capitol Hill and raised questions about whether Mr Trump tried to interfere with a federal investigation.
The White House quickly denied the report, saying it was “not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the president and Mr Comey”.
Mr Comey wrote the memo after he met in the Oval Office with Mr Trump, the day after the Republican president fired Mr Flynn on February 14 for misleading vice president Mike Pence about the extent of his conversations last year with Russia’s ambassador, Sergei Kislyak.
“I hope you can let this go,” Mr Trump told Mr Comey, according to a source familiar with the contents of the memo.
The New York Times said that during the Oval Office meeting, Mr Trump condemned a series of government leaks to the news media and said the FBI director should consider prosecuting reporters for publishing classified information.
Coming the day after charges that Mr Trump disclosed sensitive information to the Russians last week, the new disclosure further rattled members of Congress.
“The memo is powerful evidence of obstruction of justice and certainly merits immediate and prompt investigation by an independent special prosecutor,” said Democratic US senator Richard Blumenthal.
Republican and Democratic politicians said they wanted to see the memo.
Republican Jason Chaffetz, chairman of a House of Representatives oversight committee, said his committee “is going to get the Comey memo, if it exists. I need to see it sooner rather than later. I have my subpoena pen ready”.
Legal experts took a dim view of Mr Trump’s comments, as quoted in the memo.
“For the president to tell the FBI to end a potential criminal investigation, that’s obstruction of justice,” said Erwin Chereminsky, a constitutional law professor and dean of University of California, Irvine School of Law. “This is what caused President Nixon to resign from office.”
But the experts said intent was a critical element of an obstruction of justice charge, and the president’s words could be subject to interpretation and possibly put into the context of other actions, like Mr Comey’s termination.
The fact that the president apparently said he “hoped” Mr Comey would end the Flynn investigation rather than more directly ordering it “makes for a weaker but still viable case”, said Christopher Slobogin, a criminal law professor at Vanderbilt University Law School.
Mr Flynn’s resignation came hours after it was reported that the Justice Department had warned the White House weeks earlier that he could be vulnerable to blackmail for contacts with Mr Kislyak before Mr Trump took office on January 20.
Mr Kislyak was with Mr Lavrov at the White House when Mr Trump disclosed the sensitive information.
The new development came as Republicans and Democrats pressured Mr Trump to give a fuller explanation for why he revealed sensitive intelligence information to Mr Lavrov.
The information had been supplied by a US ally in the fight against ISIL, the officials said.
* Reuters
