Trump: No Tapes of Conversations with Former FBI Director He Fired

WASHINGTON — 

U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday he did not record his conversations with James Comey, the former chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Trump fired after Comey said the president urged him to curb the agency's investigation of Russian meddling in last year's election.

Trump ended weeks of uncertainty about whether he had taped two private White House conversations he had with Comey.

One was a private White House dinner Trump held with Comey shortly after he took office in January when he asked for Comey's pledge of loyalty, which Comey did not give.

At a later meeting with Trump in mid-February, Comey told a Senate panel last month that the president told him he hoped that he could "let go" of an investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn and his contacts with Russia's ambassador to Washington. Trump had fired Flynn the day before after learning that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with the Moscow envoy, Sergey Kislyak.

In a mid-day Twitter comment, Trump wrote, "With all of the recently reported electronic surveillance, intercepts, unmasking and illegal leaking of information, I have no idea whether there are 'tapes' or recordings of my conversations with James Comey, but I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings."

Trump had sparked Washington speculation that he had installed a White House taping system with a tweet last month after ousting Comey, saying that Comey had "better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press." But until Thursday, Trump and White House aides had refused to confirm or deny the possibility of a White House recording system.

Comey, in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee last month, recounted in detail nine conversations, most of them phone calls, he had with Trump before the president fired him. In one of the last, Comey said that in a phone call Trump asked him to "lift the cloud" of the Russian investigation.

Shortly after Trump fired Comey, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein named, over Trump's opposition, another former FBI director, Robert Mueller, as special counsel to conduct a criminal investigation into whether Trump and his aides illegally colluded with Russian officials to help Trump win the election and whether Trump obstructed justice by firing Comey when he was heading the Russia probe before Mueller took over.

In January, Trump acknowledged Russian hacking into computers at Democratic national headquarters and the subsequent release of thousands of emails that embarrassed Trump's challenger, Democrat Hillary Clinton, in the weeks before the November election.

But Trump has since then been dismissive of Mueller's and congressional investigations into the Russian interference in the election, saying they are an excuse by Democrats to explain Clinton's upset loss.

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