Former FBI Director James Comey delivers his highly anticipated testimony before Congress. It's his first public remarks since President Donald Trump abruptly fired him last month.
Comey detailed numerous, apparently uncomfortable interactions he had with President Trump.
One of the most notable came in February...when Comey says the President cleared the Oval Office...before pressuring him to drop the bureau's ongoing investigation of Michael Flynn...the President's former National Security Adviser.
“Well I remember thinking this is a very disturbing development, really important to our work. I need to document it and preserve it in a way...this committee gets this but sometimes when things are classified it tangles them up. It’s hard to share it with an investigative team. You have to be very careful about it for good reason,” said Comey.
Ohio Northern University Political Science Professor Rob Alexander was asked how damaging Comey’s testimony was to the President.
“I don’t think there were a lot of huge surprises today relative to his statement that was released yesterday. Certainly, under a normal regime the kinds of things that James Comey was talking about in his testimony would be pretty earth-shattering, but it appears during the Trump presidency that these kinds of revelations are happening on a day by day basis and sometimes hour by hour depending on whether or not the president’s tweeting,” said Alexander.
Alexander was also concerned how this hearing was clearly a fight down party lines.
“If we were to exchange the name Hillary Clinton with Donald Trump throughout this entire testimony, I think we would see a 180 degree reversals as far as people, Republicans wanting to go after and Democrats saying well did she really obstruct justice so I think it’s really important to consider partisanship in all of this,” added Alexander.
