Less than a month after James Comey was fired by President Donald Trump, the former head of the FBI testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Thursday's hearing was Comey's first public appearance since his dismissal. The committee is investigating the circumstances of Comey's firing and its relationship to alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Early on in the hearing, Comey said he and his agency were defamed by Trump, who had said the agency was in disarray and poorly run.
"Those were lies, plain and simple," Comey told the committee. He said he wrote memos following his conversations with Trump because he "was honestly concerned he might lie about the nature of our meeting."
Neither of Connecticut's senators sit on the Intelligence Committee, but Senator Richard Blumenthal was seen in the hearing room and tweeted during the hearing. He called Comey's assertion that Trump fired him to change the Russia investigation "a shattering truth."
Comey says the President fired him "to change the way the Russian investigation was being conducted." A shattering truth. #ComeyHearing
— Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) June 8, 2017
Senator Chris Murphy released a statement following the hearing, calling for Trump to speak publicly under oath:
Every day, it seems like the walls are closing in on this president. What’s most important is that investigators in the Senate and at the Department of Justice get all the facts and find the truth. If the White House’s account differs from what we heard today, the American people deserve to hear the president’s side of the story in a similar forum – under oath and open to the press.
Watch the hearing in the video below from NPR:
Comey's opening remarks were released on Wednesday. NPR journalists annotated his statement, below.
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