No one at the White House was willing to put their name on the denial of the Comey memo

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer
(Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The New York Times reported Tuesday that former FBI Director James Comey shared with associates that President Trump asked him to end the FBI investigation into ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Comey apparently had a conversation with Trump in mid-February, just one day after Flynn resigned, and in a memo he wrote about the exchange revealed that Trump asked him to "let this go." Flynn was being investigated as part of the bureau's probe into ties between Trump, his associates, and Russia.

The Times did not view the memo in question; one of Comey's associates read parts of the document to a Times reporter. In a statement, the White House denied the description of the conversation between Trump and Comey as relayed in Comey's memo via the Times report — but no one in the administration was willing to put their name on the statement. The entire denial was issued anonymously:

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Kimberly Alters

Kimberly Alters is the news editor at TheWeek.com. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.