WASHINGTON—Former FBI director James Comey has accused President Donald Trump of lying, improperly directing him to end a sensitive investigation of key ally Michael Flynn, improperly trying to pressure him to secure his obedience, and eventually firing him over the broader investigation of his campaign’s ties to Russia.Comey, dismissed by Trump in May, made a series of extraordinary statements in the first portion of his hotly anticipated congressional testimony on Thursday. To begin, he said the president “defamed” him when he said, upon firing Comey in May, that the FBI director had lost the confidence of the bureau.“Those were lies, plain and simple,” he said.Comey called Trump’s honesty into question again when he was asked why he took to documenting all of his interactions with the president. Comey said there were a few reasons, but that one was this: “I was honestly concerned he might lie about the nature of our meeting.” He emphasized that he did not write memos about his interactions with either of Trump’s predecessors, Barack Obama and George W. Bush.Many of the early queries from members of the Senate Intelligence Committee centred on a Feb. 14 Oval Office meeting in which Comey said Trump asked him to end the investigation into his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who had been forced out of his job the previous day.A Republican senator, Idaho’s James Risch, suggested Trump’s comments — in which he expressed a “hope” that Comey could let Flynn slide — were benign. But Comey said he took Trump’s words as a “direction” from the president, and that he was so “stunned” by the request that he did not even think to tell Trump that his words were inappropriate.“I didn’t have the presence of mind,” he said.Comey said he sensed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions knew he should n ...
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