WASHINGTON: Former FBI Director James Comey will say in his opening statement at a congressional hearing that President Donald Trump told him, “I need loyalty. I expect loyalty” during an “awkward” conversation at a January dinner at the White House, according to documents released a day before his highly anticipated testimony.

James Comey is set to testify before the Senate intelligence committee on Thursday.

His prepared statement, released on Wednesday, details a series of interactions with President Trump that Comey said made him uneasy and appeared to disregard the FBI’s traditional independence from the White House.

He plans to say that though he did assure Trump that he was not personally under investigation, he was taken aback by specific requests, including one from February in which Trump urged him in a private Oval Office meeting to end a probe into National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, a request Comey said he found “very concerning”.

In the statement, the ex-FBI chief plans to say that he and Donald Trump dined together privately in January. During the meal, he said Trump asked him if he wanted to remain as FBI director. Comey said he replied that he wanted to serve out his 10-year term and “was not on anybody’s side politically”.

Comey said Trump then made his statement about loyalty. Comey replied that he could offer his honesty, and that when Trump said he wanted “honest loyalty”, Comey paused and said: “You will get that from me.”

The following month, after Comey had publicly revealed the existence of a federal counterintelligence investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, Trump complained that the probe had left a “cloud” that was “impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country”.

“He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia,” Comey’s prepared statement says. “He asked what we could do to `lift the cloud’.”

President Trump abruptly fired James Comey last month.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2017