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| Sept. 4, 2013, photo of Mueller and Comey. Photo by AP |
In a newiterview with the conservative news outlet The Daily Caller, President Trump surprised people when e said: “I could give you 100 pictures of Mueller and Comey hugging and kissing each other,” Trump said in the interview, the full transcript of which was released on Wednesday that “You know, he’s Comey’s best friend.”
In August 2005, Comey left the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and became general counsel and senior vice president of Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, Maryland. In 2010, he became general counsel at Bridgewater Associates, based in Westport, Connecticut. In early 2013, he left Bridgewater to become a Senior Research Scholar and Hertog Fellow on National Security Law at Columbia Law School. He served on the board of directors of HSBC Holdings until July 2013.
In September 2013, President Barack Obama appointed Comey to the position of Director of the FBI. In that capacity, he was responsible for overseeing the FBI's investigation of the Hillary Clinton email controversy. His role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, particularly with regard to his public communications, was highly controversial. Many Clinton supporters feel that Comey's decisions might have cost Hillary Clinton's the presidency. In one of those decisions, he reopened the investigation into Clinton's emails less than two weeks before the election. Comey also received heavy criticism from Republicans, in part after it was revealed that he had begun drafting an exoneration letter for Clinton before the investigation was complete.
President Donald Trump dismissed Comey on May 9, 2017. Statements from Trump and the White House suggested that he had been dismissed to ease the "pressure" Trump was under due to the Russia investigation. Later that month, Comey arranged for a friend to tell the press about a memo he had written after a February 14 private meeting with the president. It said Trump had asked him to end the FBI's investigation into Michael Flynn, the former National Security Advisor. The dismissal, the memo, and Comey's subsequent Congressional testimony were interpreted by some commentators as evidence of obstruction of justice by the President, and became part of a widening investigation by Robert Mueller, the Special Counsel appointed to probe Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
President Trump always denies any collusion with Russian probe; but almost Trump's campaign high rank officials charged accordingly to their connections with Russia. President Trump refuses to meet directly with Special Counsel Robert Mueller and claims that Mueller is a closest friend with James Comey therefore the Mueller's investigation is "illegal".
To prove this, today President Trump declares that "I have 100 Pics of Robert Mueller and James Comey "hugging and Kissing".
Vox examined wire service photos and found no such images. A non-exhaustive HuffPost survey of images from Reuters and Getty also revealed no hugging and kissing.
Read this news from HuffPost on Yahoo News at:
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Trump: I Have 100 Pics Of Robert Mueller And James Comey 'Hugging And Kissing'
″[Mueller’s] Comey’s best friend,” Trump told the Daily Caller. “And I could give you 100 pictures of him and Comey hugging and kissing each other.”
Vox examined wire service photos and found no such images. A non-exhaustive HuffPost survey of images from Reuters and Getty also revealed no hugging and kissing.
The pair has enjoyed a close professional relationship, which dates back to 2003 when Comey was deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush and Mueller was the director of the FBI.
Both threatened to resign in opposition to a domestic surveillance program which was modified as a result, the Washington Post reported.
While there do not appear to be “hugging and kissing” photos of the president and his former FBI chief, Trump did make a gesture toward Comey shortly after his inauguration that many observers believed was an air kiss.
Comey claimed that Trump tried to pull him in for a hug as well, but he resisted and kept it to a handshake.
“He was not going to get a hug without being a whole lot stronger than he looked,” Comey wrote in his book, A Higher Loyalty. “He wasn’t.”
Months later, Trump would fire Comey, a move that ultimately led to the special counsel’s investigation.
In the Daily Caller interview, Trump again called the Mueller probe an “illegal investigation” and claimed that the special counsel’s office had “tremendous conflicts.” Trump also said he had a “real business dispute” with Mueller, an apparent reference to 2011, when Mueller resigned from a Trump-owned golf club.
According to the Washington Post: “Mueller had sent a letter requesting a dues refund in accordance with normal club practice and never heard back.”
In July, Trump called it “a very nasty & contentious business relationship.”
- This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
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