Fired FBI Director James Comey is dismissing a Republican-led House committee report clearing the Trump campaign of collusion with the Russians as a “political document.”
“This is not my understanding of what the facts were before I left the FBI and I think the most important piece of work is the one the special counsel’s doing now,” Comey said on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday.
Comey called the investigation by the House Intelligence Committee “a wreck” that damaged relations with the intelligence community and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies inside the United States.
While the committee report acknowledged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, it says investigators found no evidence the Trump campaign worked with the Russians.
Democrats on the committee say the Republicans on the panel did not interview enough witnesses or find enough evidence to back the report’s findings.
Ranking Democrat Adam Schiff called its conclusions “superficial.”
President Donald Trump has consistently denied his campaign colluded with the Russians. He has called himself the subject of a “witch hunt” and calls Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe a “hoax.”
Comey told Meet the Press Sunday something he wrote in his just-published best seller about his career – that he has serious doubts about Trump’s credibility, even if Mueller were to interview the president under oath.
“Sometimes people who have serious credibility problems can tell the truth when they realize that the consequences of not telling the truth in an interview or in the grand jury would be dire. But you’d have to go in with a healthy sense that he might lie to you.”
Comey said like all good prosecutors, Mueller wants to finish his probe as quickly as he can.