How Trump will spend day while Comey testifies

Fired FBI Director James Comey is set to deliver his highly anticipated testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, and President Trump is sure to be watching closely.

Already, Comey’s written testimony to the panel, which was made public on Wednesday, has stirred controversy in Washington and confirmed weeks of news reports detailing a fraught relationship between the former top cop and the president.

Comey is expected to tell lawmakers on Thursday that, in private interactions, Trump demanded his loyalty, asked him to end his agency’s investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn and repeatedly asked him to publicly announce that the president himself was not under investigation.

{mosads}But Comey’s written testimony also lends credence to Trump’s assertion that the former FBI director did, in fact, tell him that he was not the subject of a counterintelligence investigation — an assertion that Trump has touted for months.

While Washington’s attention will be trained on Comey, however, the president will have to turn his to other engagements.

Here is what Trump will be doing the day of Comey’s testimony:

9 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Trump’s morning is free, according to his public schedule, leaving him his best opportunity to monitor Comey’s testimony on Capitol Hill. 

The free time could also prompt the president to respond to Comey’s testimony on Twitter. White House officials reportedly told The Washington Post’s Robert Costa that “the president himself wants to be the messenger, his own warrior, his own lawyer, his own spokesman.”

Nevertheless, Republican lawmakers are advising Trump to steer clear of Twitter while Comey addresses the Intelligence Committee, according to CNN.

12 p.m. to 1:35 p.m.

Trump is set to depart the White House at noon to speak at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority Conference” at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington.

The address to religious conservatives could offer the president an escape from Comey’s testimony. The group’s president, Ralph Reed, is among Trump’s fiercest allies, and the president has been warmly received at the conference in the past.

1:35 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Trump is scheduled to be back at the White House, though it’s not yet clear if Comey will still be on Capitol Hill during that time.

3:30 p.m.

The president will host an infrastructure summit with a coterie of governors and mayors in celebration of what the White House has dubbed “Infrastructure Week.”

Trump has vowed to revamp the nation’s crumbling infrastructure with a $1 trillion package, a promise that gained early bipartisan support and signaled a potential area of cooperation with Democrats, who otherwise sought to oppose Trump’s agenda completely. 

But Democrats have turned against that plan more recently, arguing that Trump’s proposal — a sort of public-private partnership — falls short of the massive infrastructure package they had hoped for.