The top lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee sent letters to acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and White House counsel Don McGahn on Wednesday seeking any memos or tapes regarding former FBI Director James Comey’s meetings with President Donald Trump.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that, following a meeting with Trump, Comey wrote in a memo that the president asked him to end the FBI’s investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s ties to Russia.
The Times reported:
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. It was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation. An F.B.I. agent’s contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.
After Trump fired Comey, the president appeared to threaten the former director on Twitter, writing that Comey “better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations.”
Some have alleged that the president fired Comey in order to impede the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s alleged efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election.
The members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who sent the letters — Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) — asked McCabe to provide them with any documents “memorializing interactions [Comey] had with Presidents Trump and [Barack] Obama, Attorneys General [Jeff] Sessions and [Loretta] Lynch, and Deputy Attorneys General [Rod] Rosenstein, [Dana] Boente, and [Sally] Yates regarding the investigations of Trump associates’ alleged connections with Russia or the Clinton email investigation.”
The senators asked McGahn to provide the committee with “all White House records memorializing interactions with Mr. Comey relating to the FBI’s investigation of alleged ties between President Trump’s associates and Russia, or the Clinton email investigation, including all audio recordings, transcripts, notes, summaries, and memoranda.”
Politico reported that the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee have also requested Comey’s memos.
Senators in both parties have called for Comey to testify before Congress.
Earlier Wednesday, Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), chairman of the Judiciary Oversight Subcommittee, told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, "I want to hold out skepticism about all that we don’t know. But just the fundamental alleged facts in there, it’s obviously inappropriate for any president to be trying to interfere with an investigation."
“There’s a lot here that’s really scary,” Sasse said.
