Comey talked to Trump nine times in four months

Fired FBI Director James Comey spoke with President Trump nine times within four months – more than four times as much as he spoke with former President Barack Obama over the course of three years. 

In a written opening statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the former top cop says he only spoke alone with Obama two times – once in 2015 to discuss law enforcement policy issues, and again in late 2016, when the former president said goodbye before leaving office.

Both of those conversations happened in person, according to Comey’s testimony. Obama appointed Comey FBI Director in 2013.

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By comparison, Comey spoke with Trump nine times, beginning in January 2017 in the weeks before the president took office. Three of those conversations took place in person, while six were phone calls. 

“I spoke alone with President Obama twice in person (and never on the phone) – once in 2015 to discuss law enforcement policy issues and a second time, briefly, for him to say goodbye in late 2016,” Comey is expected to tell lawmakers on Thursday. “In neither of those circumstances did I memorialize the discussions.”

“I can recall nine one-on-one conversations with President Trump in four months – three in person and six on the phone.”

According to his opening statement, the former FBI director began chronicling his conversations with Trump immediately after their first meeting on Jan. 6, recalling that he began composing the initial memo in an FBI vehicle outside Trump Tower upon leaving the meeting.

“I felt compelled to document my first conversation with the President-Elect in a memo,” Comey writes. “To ensure accuracy, I began to type it on a laptop in an FBI vehicle outside Trump Tower the moment I walked out of the meeting.

“Creating written records immediately after one-on-one conversations with Mr. Trump was my practice from that point forward,” he continues. “This had not been my practice in the past.”

Why Comey chose to document his one-on-one interactions with Trump and not Obama remains unclear, though the former FBI director in his testimony says he was concerned by Trump’s request that he end his agency’s investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.