President Trump reportedly asked former FBI Director James Comey to end the investigation into ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn just one day after Flynn resigned, The New York Times reported Tuesday. Comey apparently wrote a memo about the exchange immediately after speaking with Trump in mid-February.
Comey apparently created "similar memos" for every phone call and meeting he had with the president, the Times reports. His account of the mid-February conversation about Flynn reportedly indicates Trump explicitly sought to meddle in an FBI investigation:
The existence of Mr. Trump's request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and FBI investigation into links between Mr. Trump's associates and Russia.
Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president's improper efforts to influence an ongoing investigation. An FBI agent's contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.
[...] "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go," Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. "He is a good guy." [The New York Times]
Comey apparently did not respond to Trump's request, only agreeing that Flynn "is a good guy," per his memo. The New York Times did not view the memo, which is not classified; an "associate" of Comey's read parts of the document aloud to a Times reporter.
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The White House denied the report, saying, "The president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation." An FBI spokesman declined to comment to the Times. Read more about Trump's reported appeal to Comey at The New York Times.
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