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A day before his scheduled public testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, what appears to be former FBI Director James Comey's prepared written "statement for the record" surfaced online Wednesday afternoon and was rapidly being shared among journalists and on social media.
As news outlets were combing through the document for salient details, the url address of the document indicated it was uploaded to the official website of the Intelligence Committee. NBC News reports the committee, chaired by Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, released the testimony.
Speaking on MSNBC, chief legal correspondent Ari Melber described the statement as an "extraordinary piece of testimony" that includes "explicit" details about Comey's interactions with President Donald Trump.
In one of the most potentially damning moments recounted in the memos, Comey describes a private dinner with Trump at the White House on January 27 in which the president asked the director if he wanted to keep his job. "My instincts told me that the one-on-one setting," which he describes elsewhere as unusual compared to his relationship with President Obama, "and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant that the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some of patronage relationship."
Comey describes why he felt compelled to keep detailed notes of his interactions with president and how he came to feel so uncomfortable with the president's behavior that he ultimately asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to make sure he was no longer put in a situation of being alone with Trump or even have "direct communication" with him.
View the original testimony here.
And the 7-page written statement has been reproduced in full below:







Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
A day before his scheduled public testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, what appears to be former FBI Director James Comey's prepared written "statement for the record" surfaced online Wednesday afternoon and was rapidly being shared among journalists and on social media.
As news outlets were combing through the document for salient details, the url address of the document indicated it was uploaded to the official website of the Intelligence Committee. NBC News reports the committee, chaired by Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, released the testimony.
Speaking on MSNBC, chief legal correspondent Ari Melber described the statement as an "extraordinary piece of testimony" that includes "explicit" details about Comey's interactions with President Donald Trump.
In one of the most potentially damning moments recounted in the memos, Comey describes a private dinner with Trump at the White House on January 27 in which the president asked the director if he wanted to keep his job. "My instincts told me that the one-on-one setting," which he describes elsewhere as unusual compared to his relationship with President Obama, "and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant that the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some of patronage relationship."
Comey describes why he felt compelled to keep detailed notes of his interactions with president and how he came to feel so uncomfortable with the president's behavior that he ultimately asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to make sure he was no longer put in a situation of being alone with Trump or even have "direct communication" with him.
View the original testimony here.
And the 7-page written statement has been reproduced in full below:







A day before his scheduled public testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, what appears to be former FBI Director James Comey's prepared written "statement for the record" surfaced online Wednesday afternoon and was rapidly being shared among journalists and on social media.
As news outlets were combing through the document for salient details, the url address of the document indicated it was uploaded to the official website of the Intelligence Committee. NBC News reports the committee, chaired by Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, released the testimony.
Speaking on MSNBC, chief legal correspondent Ari Melber described the statement as an "extraordinary piece of testimony" that includes "explicit" details about Comey's interactions with President Donald Trump.
In one of the most potentially damning moments recounted in the memos, Comey describes a private dinner with Trump at the White House on January 27 in which the president asked the director if he wanted to keep his job. "My instincts told me that the one-on-one setting," which he describes elsewhere as unusual compared to his relationship with President Obama, "and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant that the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some of patronage relationship."
Comey describes why he felt compelled to keep detailed notes of his interactions with president and how he came to feel so uncomfortable with the president's behavior that he ultimately asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to make sure he was no longer put in a situation of being alone with Trump or even have "direct communication" with him.
View the original testimony here.
And the 7-page written statement has been reproduced in full below:






