Comey testifies on Trump and Russia

Trump said he "hoped" the investigation into Michael Flynn would be dropped, Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio points out.

He didn't "order" it dropped, Comey confirms.

Senator Feinstein asks Comey how his FBI colleagues reacted to Trump telling the director he hoped the investigation would be dropped.

"I think they were as shocked and troubled as I was," he says.

"They're all experienced professionals and they had never experienced such a thing, he adds.

"Then the conversation turned to what we should do about it. That was a struggle for us."

As Comey described in his written statement, senior FBI leaders decided to keep the details of the meeting to themselves for the meantime, including keeping the Department of Justice and Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the dark.

So far no tweets from the president, but his son, Donald Trump Jr, appears to be live-tweeting the hearing.

California Democrat Dianne Feinstein asks Comey whether the Russia investigation contributed to his firing.

Comey: "Yes, because I’ve seen the president say so."

"It was very, very awkward," adds Comey about Trump's request for loyalty.

He's asked if he believes the Russia investigation played a role in his firing, and Comey bluntly responds "yes, because I've seen the president say so on TV".

Reuters

Sen Risch, Republican from Idaho, is grilling Comey about the exact wording of Trump's alleged request to Comey for him to drop an investigation into Michael Flynn and whether it amounts to obstruction of justice.

The senator is insisting that the fact that thre president used the words "I hope", rather than expressly asking him to drop to the investigation, does not amount to obstruction of justice.

Sen: "Did he did direct you to let it go?"

Comey: "Not in those words".

Sen: "He did not order you to let it go?"

Comey again says Trump did not.

Risch asks whether Trump said he "hoped that he would let it go" and Comey confirms that those were the words chosen by the president.

Here's the relevant passage from Comey's notes:

"I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.” I replied only that “he is a good guy.” (In fact, I had a positive experience dealing with Mike Flynn when he was a colleague as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency at the beginning of my term at FBI.) I did not say I would “let this go."

Law professors seems to agree with the senator. The president's comments were controversial, but not an open and shut case of obstruction.

You can read more on the obstruction of justice issue here.

Donald Trump Jnr is live tweeting proceeding. Here's his take on the obstruction issue

The Republican from Idaho says that as a former prosecutor he appreciates the legalistic terms used in Comey's testimony.

He asks Comey if it is correct that Trump was not personally under investigation.

Comey confirms that he did tell Trump on three occasions that that was the case.

Some people were expecting President Trump to be live-tweeting his version of events throughout the hearing, but there has been no word yet.

Sen Warner asks what Comey meant by saying Trump sought a "patronage relationship".

Comey says it was his "common sense" conclusion from his dinner conversation with Trump, in which the president asked if Comey wanted to stay on as FBI director.

He says Trump may have had the notion, "you already asked Comey to say, but you didn't get anything for it".

He adds that they discussed loyalty in the context of him keeping his job.

The BBC's Charlie Northcott is watching things unfold from a bar in Washington DC...

Comey just described a one-on-one February meeting in the Oval Office which particularly troubled him. Here's the excerpt from his prepared remarks in which he detailed that meeting.

He just said in the Senate that he suspected the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, knew it was inappropriate to leave the room, and so he lingered, but Trump eventually instructed everybody else to leave.

"The President signaled the end of the briefing by thanking the group and telling them all that he wanted to speak to me alone. I stayed in my chair. As the participants started to leave the Oval Office, the Attorney General lingered by my chair, but the President thanked him and said he wanted to speak only with me. The last person to leave was Jared Kushner, who also stood by my chair and exchanged pleasantries with me.

"The President then excused him, saying he wanted to speak with me. When the door by the grandfather clock closed, and we were alone, the President began by saying, “I want to talk about Mike Flynn.” Flynn had resigned 5 the previous day.

"The President began by saying Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong in speaking with the Russians, but he had to let him go because he had misled the Vice President. He added that he had other concerns about Flynn, which he did not then specify. The President then made a long series of comments about the problem."

"I created records after conversations, and I think I did it for all of our nine conversations," says Comey.

"I knew the there would come a day that I might need a record, not just to defend myself, but to defend the FBI."

About his Oval Office meeting with Trump when president told Attorney General to leave, Comey says: "Something big is about to happen. I need to remember every single word that is spoken."

He spoke with Obama twice, but never documented the meetings, he says.

He also never felt the need to document meetings with President George W Bush.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed me to not "call it an investigation, call it a matter, which confused and concerned me", Comey says.

He added that it made him want to step back from the Department of Justice.

Question: How many entities were targeted by Russian hackers?

Comey says "at least hundreds" of US institutions were targeted by a massive Russian spearfishing campaign during campaign, "possibly thousands".

Comey says he first became aware of Russian cyber-intrusion in summer 2015, and says it was later that year that he heard of data theft.

Question: "If you look back, would you change the way you handled the Clinton email affair?"

Comey: "Honestly no. It caused a lot of personal pain but when I look back I think it was the best way to protect the justice institution including the FBI."

Plenty of social media users are comparing this spectacle to the US TV series House of Cards.

And, of course, the House of Cards Twitter account never misses a trick ...

Comey says he won't go into the salacious allegations put forward by a former British intelligence official because of the details.

In January, Buzzfeed published a dossier compiled by the investigator, Christopher Steele, alleging that Moscow had compromising material on the then-president-elect, making him liable to blackmail.

Among the various memos in the dossier was an allegation that Mr Trump had been recorded by Russian security services consorting with prostitutes at a Moscow hotel.

Comey finished by paying tribute to his FBI colleagues.

"The FBI is honest, the FBI is strong, and the FBI is and always will be independent," says Comey who also thanks his colleagues for their service.

He also apologises for not having had the opportunity to say goodbye more formally.

Trump expressed "an odd and unexplained affection for the Russian dictator," says Warner, referring to Vladimir Putin.

Warner calls Comey's description of his interactions with the president "very disturbing".

"The president appeared to be making an effort to influence or at least co-opt the leader of the FBI," Warner says.

"Think about it, the President of the United States, asking the FBI director to drop an ongoing investigation."

On Trump's alleged request to Comey to drop the Mike Flynn probe, Warner says: "Think about it, the president of the United States asking the director of the FBI to drop an ongoing investigation."

Warner says Trump's explanation for firing Comey - that he didn't agree with his handling of Hillary Clinton's email investigation - "didn’t pass any smell test".

He also reminded Comey about the time that Trump reportedly called him "a nut job".

Comey's face remains blank as Warner goes on.

AFP / Getty Images

Senator Mark Warner, Virginia, Democratic vice-chairman of the committee, says: "This investigation is not about re-litigating the election.

"It's not about who won or lost, and it's sure as heck not about Democrats versus Republicans.

"We're here because a foreign adversary attacked us right here at home", he says, adding that it was not done with guns or missiles.

Sen Warner praises Comey, saying that the way he was fired by the president was "ultimately shocking".

He rounds on Trump and his associates (Michael Flynn, Jeff Sessions, and Jared Kushner) for their interactions with Russians.

Sen Richard Burr has some questions for Comey.

Did the president’s request for loyalty or to lift the cloud of the Russia investigation alter your approach to the Russia investigation?

Did you find any evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia?

Why did you decide to publicly announce that the Dept of Justice had decided not to pursue charges on Clinton emails?

AFP / Getty Images

Sen Richard Burr, the Republican committee chairman, introduces the hearings. He tells Comey this is his opportunity to set the record straight about his meetings with the president.

"Americans need to hear your side of the story, just as they need to hear the president's description of events," says Burr.

"We will establish the facts separate from rampant speculation, and lay them out for the American people to make their own judgement."

AFP/Getty Images

Pool

The former FBI director is sitting stony faced for the cameras. He's scheduled for three hours of testimony.

Zvezda TV

"Trump’s only questionable request was that Michael Flynn be left alone after losing his job,” said the Russian Defence Ministry’s Zvezda TV.

"Donald Trump never interfered in an investigation of his ties with Russia... More than that, Comey said Trump had personally insisted that the public be regularly informed of the progress of the investigation," Zvezda added.

According to official Rossiya 24 TV, the main thrust of Comey’s statement is that Trump himself is not under investigation over his alleged links to Russia.

"The question that has preoccupied the Americans' minds for so long has finally been answered thanks to testimony by [former] FBI chief James Comey," Rossiya 24 TV said.

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Preet Bharara, the former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who was fired by Trump, has managed to bag a seat.

On #ComeyDay, let's take a look at what President Trump's up to.

Starting at 11:30, Trump will be visiting the religious conservative Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference in Washington DC ,where he is due to make remarks.

At 15:30 he will be holding an "infrastructure summit" with mayors and state governors.

Quite a few people are hoping that Trump will take to his favourite medium, Twitter, to comment on the hearing.

BBC

Much of what you'll hear today is based on James Comey's notes. He described in his advance testimony that he decided to begin taking contemporaneous notes of his meetings with Trump after becoming uncomfortable with the president's requests.

The FBI director began typing the notes in his car the moment he left Trump Tower and later the White House. He said he saw no need to take notes of the two occasions when he met Barack Obama.

Although they cannot be corroborated, contemporaneous notes taken by an FBI agent would hold up in court as credible evidence of conversations, so Comey's account is likely to be taken at face value today at the Senate.

"Contemporaneous" ("existing, occurring, or originating during the same time") was one of the most searched words on the Merriam Webster online dictionary on the day news reports about the meetings emerged.

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James Comey's prepared testimony describes a series of one-on-one meetings in which the president said he needed loyalty from the then-FBI director and appeared to ask him to drop an investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's alleged ties to Russia.

We knew about this request already, it was detailed a fortnight ago in an article by a lawyer and friend of the former FBI director. Comey's testimony could add weight to the issue, in that he will say publicly for the first time that he construed the remark as a specific request to drop the Flynn inquiry:

"I had understood the President to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his [Flynn's] conversations with the Russian ambassador in December"

Law professors told the BBC when the remarks were first published that they did not add up to a smoking gun, and Comey offering his interpretation in front of the Senate is unlikely to change that.

You can read more on the obstruction of justice issue here.

Speaking to the BBC this morning, Republican senator Lindsay Graham said accusations of obstruction were "not helpful to the president".

A lot of bars are hosting special events to mark the hearing.

The Union Pub on Washington's Capitol Hill is pledging to give out drinks every time the president tweets.

A bartender at Clooney's Pub in San Francisco told the BBC: "We've been getting so many calls and people have been asking to make reservations. [They're asking] 'Can I get a seat? 'Are you serving breakfast?' I was like, 'You guys, it's a Thursday morning.'"

Some places have also promised covfefe cocktails, inspired by the president's infamous typo.

You can read more about the barroom build-up here.

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Virginia Democrat Mark Warner, who serves as vice-chair of the committee, has released his prepared opening remarks.

Comey's testimony is "disturbing", he will say.

"I do want to emphasise what is happening here - the president of the United States is asking the FBI Director to drop an ongoing investigation into the president's former national security adviser," Warner is expected to say.

Warner plans to say that these efforts by Trump are "not how a president of the United States behaves".

"Regardless of the outcome of our investigation into those Russia links, Director Comey's firing and his testimony raise separate and troubling questions that we must get to the bottom of," he will say.

Comey departed his home in the suburbs of Washington DC in a gold-coloured SUV at 8:54 local time, according to reporters camped outside his home.

Who says only British people like queuing?

The BBC's Rajini Vaidyanathan has arrived in the committee room, where some eager young Senate staffers have lined up since 04:00 this morning to grab a seat.

Trump's critics are charging him with obstruction of justice for his alleged pressure on Comey to pledge loyalty and drop the Michel Flynn investigation, which the president has denied.

Not so fast, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham tells the BBC.