WASHINGTON -- US President Donald Trump asked FBI Director James Comey to drop an investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, according to a person who was given a copy of a memo that Mr Comey wrote following his Oval Office conversation with Trump.
The revelation raised the political peril for Mr Trump’s White House by introducing the possibility that the president may have obstructed justice, an impeachable offence. His administration is already reeling in the face of criticism over his firing of Mr Comey a week ago and a report Monday that Mr Trump revealed sensitive and highly classified intelligence to two senior Russian officials.
Mr Comey didn’t directly respond to Mr Trump’s request, which was made in February a day after Mr Flynn was fired for deceiving the vice-president about his contacts with the Russian ambassador, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Mr Comey prepared the account immediately after his meeting with the president, and sent copies of the memo to FBI leadership and to some of his closest associates. The New York Times was first to report on the memo Tuesday.
“I hope you can let this go,” Mr Trump told the FBI director, according to the memo, as cited by the New York Times.
The White House pushed back against the version of events in Mr Comey’s memo with a statement emailed to reporters saying Mr Trump “has never asked Mr Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn” and the description in the purported memo ‘is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the President and Mr Comey.”
No White House spokesman would make an on-the-record comment in the immediate aftermath of the disclosure.
Mr Comey wrote the memo to document the conversation with Mr Trump because he was uneasy about the president’s request, even though the FBI director didn’t consider it a direct threat, said the person who received a copy of the memo. Trump said to Mr Comey that Mr Flynn was a good guy, to which Mr Comey agreed, the person said.
It wasn’t immediately clear who within the FBI received or saw the memo, including whether acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe did. The White House has pointed to testimony that Mr McCabe gave to lawmakers last week saying there has been no effort to impede the FBI’s probe.
The FBI’s investigation is much broader than just Mr Flynn, and it’s possible Mr McCabe was referring to the overall probe, the person said.
FBI spokeswoman Carol Cratty declined to comment.
Representative Jason Chaffetz, head of the House Oversight Committee, delivered the strongest Republican response, saying his panel will demand to see the memo.
“@GOPoversight is going to get the Comey memo, if it exists. I need to see it sooner rather than later. I have my subpoena pen ready,” Mr Chaffetz wrote in a tweet.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, a key Republican, refused to comment as he walked along a Capitol corridor, saying, “you know I don’t” give hallway interviews.
Yet Arizona Republican Representative Trent Franks defended Mr Trump.
“If his objective was to see that Flynn got a square deal then I think that’s entirely appropriate,” Mr Franks said. “I don’t think he intended to obstruct justice.”
Several Democrats said the allegation, if verified, amounted to obstruction of justice, a crime that was among the articles of impeachment drawn up against Richard Nixon. Mr Nixon resigned office in 1974, engulfed by the Watergate scandal.
Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Judiciary Committee, called the memo as reported “powerful evidence of obstruction of justice.”
“If there were ever a final nail on the case for an independent prosecutor, this is it,” Blumenthal said at the Capitol. “And there’s more behind it. There are other memos.”
He and other Democrats said Mr Comey must testify before lawmakers about his conversations with the president.
“At best, President Trump has committed a grave abuse of executive power,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said in a statement. "At worst, he has obstructed justice."
Second-ranking Senate Democrat Dick Durbin told reporters, "Each day as this unfolds, this pattern of obstruction of justice grows." The Illinois senator said he wants to see Mr Comey’s memos and hear his testimony in public.
Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the former Judiciary Committee chairman, said, "If it’s true, the days when I was a prosecutor, it would be called obstruction of justice."
"I’d want to know more about what the facts were. But if somebody came and tried to bring pressure on me to stop prosecution back then I’d call it obstruction," Mr Leahy said.
Even before the report of the Comey memo, members of Congress were negotiating to bring the former FBI chief in to hear his version of interactions with Mr Trump. He was originally invited to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday but never accepted and indicated he would appear at another time.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters Tuesday that he has offered to let Mr Comey testify in a public hearing of his subcommittee of the Senate judiciary panel, which is conducting its own investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
“Let’s get to the bottom of what happened with the director,” Mr Graham said, declining to comment on the memo. “The best way to get to the bottom of it is for him to testify."
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said after the Times story was published that she planned to press Chairman Charles Grassley to bring Mr Comey before the full committee.
Mr Trump has said he had three conversations with Mr Comey in which he asked the FBI director if he was personally a target of the investigation into collusion with Russia. In his letter firing Mr Comey, Mr Trump said he was assured that he wasn’t.
After Mr Comey was fired, he also tweeted, “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”
White House press secretary Sean Spicer has repeatedly refused to comment on whether Mr Trump records his conversations in the executive mansion.