By CGTN’s Zhou Jiaxin
US President Donald Trump on Friday denied former FBI director James Comey’s testimony on their Oval Office exchange, which he had related under oath to the country’s counsel committee.
At his Thursday testimony, Comey revealed that Trump sought “loyalty” from him, claiming that the president privately “hoped” the FBI would drop the investigation into resigned national security adviser Michael Flynn’s meeting with Russia.
“I didn’t say that,” Trump told a news conference, saying that he would be “100 percent” glad to testify under oath to special counsel Robert Mueller.
Comey interpreted Trump’s “hope” words as a “directive” followed by concern, Eleanor Clift, a columnist with The Daily Beast, told CGTN.
“The probe will go forward and the legal jeopardy to the president has increased substantially,” Clift said, adding that “obstruction of justice” could be among the charges.
A “legal confrontation” had been set up after Trump engaged an outside lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, who suggested that Comey failed to tell the truth and had violated the law by causing memos about the private conversation to become public.
In order to “prompt the appointment of a special counsel,” Comey asked a friend to leak to the New York Times details about his exchanges with Trump after he found Trump to be a “liar”.
“This (memo) was unclassified,” said Rick Dunham, a professor at Tsinghua University. “There is no question that what Comey did was legal and he believed it was tactical and necessary to correct what was wrong committed by Donald Trump.”
David S. Law from the University of Hong Kong gave his opinion that prosecuting the sitting president is still an “unresolved legal question” for the US Department of Justice and the impeachment of president Trump is unlikely.
Given the trouble Trump faces on several fronts, anything resembling an announcement of an investigation of Trump himself or efforts to bring criminal charges against him would be “tremendously distracting” for the White House to make any legislative progress, such as tax reform and deregulation, Law added.
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