WASHINGTON — A Republican member of the Senate Intelligence committee says Congress should obtain any tapes that President Donald Trump might have of his conversations with the man he fired as FBI director — James Comey.
Comey testified before that committee on Thursday, and Sen. Susan Collins tells MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that she found him “credible, candid and thorough.”
The Maine Republican says Comey was wrong to leak his private conversation with the president. Collins says Comey’s motivation “may have been a good one,” but says Comey should have given that document to the Senate committee.
Collins elicited the one big previously unknown revelation of the hearing: that Comey had deliberately leaked his memo of the Feb. 14 session to the media through a friend at Columbia University Law School.
Collins said she has doubts “about whether the tapes really exist or whether that was just an attempt by the president to put some pressure on Mr. Comey or to raise some doubts about his testimony.”
“We absolutely have a right to know whether there are tapes,” Collins said. “This reminds me of the taping system, of course, it reminds all of us that Richard Nixon had and remember that issue went all the way to the Supreme Court and the president was ordered to turn over the tapes. That precedent has already been established.”
Collins said on CNN’s “New Day” on Friday that “it was clear that the president asked Mr. Comey to do an inappropriate action, and that was to drop the investigation of General Michael Flynn. That was clearly inappropriate. It crossed a boundary that the president should not have crossed.”
Staff Writer Steve Collins contributed to this report.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, left, with Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., right, questions Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, and other top national security chiefs as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence discusses gathering intelligence on foreign agents, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, June 7, 2017. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
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