President Trump suggested Friday that there may be “tapes” of his private conversations with FBI Director James Comey, whom he fired earlier this week, in an apparent attempt to warn Comey before he starts “leaking to the press.”
The tweet: “James Comey better hope that there are no “tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”
In his tweet, Trump appears to suggest that he may have recordings of his communications with Comey. It is unclear if such tapes exist, however.
White House spokespeople did not immediately respond to questions about whether Trump had in fact taped his conversations with Comey.
Trump put the word tapes in quotation marks, indicating that perhaps there may be a record of some kind if not an actual audio or video recording.
He used a similar construct in two of his March 4 tweets accusing former President Barack Obama, without any evidence, of wiretapping his campaign offices. Trump put the words “wires tapped” in quotation marks, which White House press secretary Sean Spicer later argued meant surveillance activities more broadly as opposed to physical wiretapping.
Trump’s tweet about Comey was likely a reaction to a New York Times report, published Thursday night, detailing a one-on-one dinner Trump had with Comey shortly after the inauguration. The report said that Comey has told associates that Trump twice asked Comey during their conversation to pledge his loyalty to him, something the FBI director declined to do.
Trump said on Thursday, in an interview with NBC News anchor Lester Holt, that he spoke three separate times with Comey about whether he was the subject of the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election — once over dinner and twice in phone calls.
(c) 2017, The Washington Post · Philip Rucker
{Matzav}
it’s illegal to tape without consent from the other party…
depends which state you’re in
I was wandering how the news got that recording of him asking Comey if he can promise he is not under investigation. He was probably the one leaking in the first place. Thats why they could find the person leaking.
It’s only a threat in the sense of – if you lie, you will be caught out. To a liar, and only to a liar, that would be indeed be a threat.
Comey is a big duffus and deserved to get canned, but Trump is acting like a little child in 3rd grade. Shreck, this is the President of the US?