All is set for the June 8 testimony of fired FBI Director James Comey with the Senate Intelligence Committee. The White House said on Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump will not prevent Comey from giving his testimony on Thursday.
Last week, White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said she is not sure if the president will use executive privilege to block Comey from testifying. The New York Daily News reported that Trump weighed using the privilege to prevent Comey from giving details about their personal conversations. However, the president’s team decided against using the privilege.
Well-established executive privilege
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a White House spokeswoman, said despite the president’s power to invoke Executive Privilege being well-established, Trump decided against using the power. She said the billionaire wanted a swift and thorough examination of the facts related to the firing of Comey and the director’s investigation into Trump campaign’s link with Russian officials, Associated Press reported.
Trump insisted before that he fired Comey because of the way the FBI director handled the Hillary Clinton private email server issue. However, Comey said he was fired by the president because he refused to stop the investigation on Michael Flynn, the former National Security adviser of Trump.
Flynn is one of the members of the Trump campaign staff who served as his link to Russian officials accused of hacking the election in favor of Trump.
First public comments from Comey
All eyes are expected to be on Comey on Thursday as the fired director makes his first public comments since he was fired by Trump in May. The White House did consider blocking his testimony because it might touch on national security issues.
But likely because of the growing public perception that the White House is using its wide powers to prevent Congress from investigating Trump’s links with Russian officials, the officials decided against it.
They fear that if Trump uses his executive privilege, it will only worsen the risk of allowing Comey to testify freely.
Legal experts added that the president weakened his ability to assert using the executive privilege because he had talked about his dealings with Comey in interviews and on Twitter.
The push for the president to allow Comey to testify has bipartisan support. Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Sunday that Trump will be better served if all the information about Comey’s firing will be out.
