Pretty much all of the leaks in recent months about former FBI Director James Comey's interactions with President Donald Trump were real – and the details are spectacular.

That's the damning conclusion one draws from reading Comey's statement for the record to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which posted his remarks online Wednesday afternoon, ahead of his Thursday testimony.

Yes, Trump asked for Comey's loyalty at a deeply uncomfortable private dinner; yes, he asked Comey to "let this go" in regard to the investigation of former national security advisor Mike Flynn; yes, Comey "implored" Attorney General Jeff Sessions not just to avoid leaving him alone with Trump again but to prevent any direct communications between the two at all; yes, Trump repeatedly pressed Comey to help dispel the "cloud" of the investigation into Russia's 2016 election meddling; and yes, Trump fans, Comey did tell the president that he personally was not under investigation.

Oh yeah, and yes, the topic of "hookers in Russia" came up between the president and the FBI director, as it does these days. (Then there's the mystery of "that thing," of which more later.)

The early release was the political junkie's equivalent of getting to open one present on Christmas Eve – a taste of things to come in a week that is already taking its place in the growing pantheon of Bad Trump Weeks. While the contours of Comey's interactions were well-known by now, the details are riveting. (And maybe there's more: Comey mentions nine conversations but only details five of them.)

And more: Now these stories are no longer the province of leaks and press reports but have been confirmed by one of the two principals present.

High profile legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin reads the worst in the testimony:

Comey's statement establishes obstruction of justice by Trump. Period. — Jeffrey Toobin (@JeffreyToobin) June 7, 2017

It seems unlikely that Trump will look much better when the questions start flying, especially if Republicans toe the party line and try to personally discredit Comey, and most especially if Trump live-Tweets it, as he's threatened to do. His hard-core followers will love it but everyone else will be repelled.

Comey's narrative starts with his getting the uncomfortable duty of relaying news on Jan. 6 of the "salacious and unverified" dossier a former British spy compiled about Trump and his possible connections with Russia and doing it "alone to minimize potential embarrassment to the President-Elect." It was in this context that Comey assured Trump that he was not personally under investigation (of either a criminal or counter-intelligence nature). And it was after this meeting that Comey started his practice of documenting his conversations with Trump via memo, something he never felt the need to do in his infrequent dealings with President Barack Obama.

"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," according to his testimony.

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Three weeks later, Trump invited Comey to dinner at the White House, "saying he was going to invite my whole family, but decided to have just me this time." Comey assumed that there would be other guests but it was just the pair of them, in the Green Room of the White House, Navy stewards popping in occasionally to serve food and drink.

Never one for subtlety, Trump opened by asking Comey if he wanted to remain on the job, a question Comey found "strange because he had already told me twice in earlier conversations that he hoped I would stay." Lots of other people want the job, the president told him. (One wonders where all these candidates disappeared to when Comey actually vacated the position.)

Comey's take on the conversation is striking:

My instincts told me that the one-on-one setting, and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position, meant the dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship. That concerned me greatly, given the FBI's traditionally independent status in the executive branch.

This is again not surprising in the broad sense, but even months into the age of Trump the idea that any president would try to create a patronage relationship with the director of the FBI – especially when his campaign is under investigation by that same agency – is startling.

However, it's standard operating procedure for Trump. When Comey pointedly tried to explain his position's necessary independence ("I added that I was not 'reliable' in the way politicians use that word, but he could always count on me to tell him the truth") Trump countered with a demand for nothing less than loyalty:

A few moments later, the President said, "I need loyalty, I expect loyalty." I didn't move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he returned to the subject near the end of our dinner.

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He ... said, "I need loyalty." I replied, "You will always get honesty from me." He paused and then said, "That's what I want, honest loyalty." I paused, and then said, "You will get that from me." As I wrote in the memo I created immediately after the dinner, it is possible we understood the phrase "honest loyalty" differently, but I decided it wouldn't be productive to push it further. The term – honest loyalty – had helped end a very awkward conversation and my explanations had made clear what he should expect.

To be clear: It's not normal or healthy for a president to demand and "expect" loyalty of an FBI director. That's the stuff of tin-pots and crack-pots.

Then there was the Valentine's Day gift Trump tried to give Flynn. He asked Comey to stay behind after a Feb. 14 counter-terrorism meeting. Sessions "lingered" by Comey's chair until Trump shooed him out; presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner (who we now know is a focus of the Russia investigation) also loitered until Trump "excused him." (Pause for a moment to ask: Why was Jared Kushner in a counter-terrorism meeting?):

When the door by the grandfather clock closed, and we were alone, the President began by saying, "I want to talk about Mike Flynn." Flynn had resigned the previous day. The President began by saying Flynn hadn't done anything wrong in speaking with the Russians, but he had to let him go because he had misled the Vice President. He added that he had other concerns about Flynn, which he did not then specify.

Maybe those concerns had something to do with the fact that, per by-then-ousted acting Attorney General Sally Yates, Flynn has been compromised vis a vis the Russians. One hopes that was the issue but given Trump's reluctance to fire Flynn and reported yearning to bring him back into the fold, who really knows?

In any case, Trump asked Comey to drop the Flynn investigation: "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go." Just so we're clear, Comey understood "the President to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador," he recounted. He then relayed this conversation to the "FBI leadership team" who all agreed to keep the president's request quiet so as "not to infect the investigative team with the President's request, which we did not intend to abide."

To be clear, the president of the United States asked the FBI director to drop an active investigation. Imagine how quickly articles of impeachment would have been voted out of a Republican House if this was a Democratic president (especially if it was a Clinton).

As National Review's David French put it:

Just read Comey transcript. His interactions with POTUS were worse than what GOP feared happened between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch. — David French (@DavidAFrench) June 7, 2017

And here's Preet Bharara, a well-respected U.S. attorney in New York before Trump fired him:

Obstruction aside, it's NEVER ok for a POTUS privately to ask an FBI Director to drop a criminal investigation. Extraordinary, wrong & dumb. https://t.co/Axwjoaw8F7 — Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) June 7, 2017

And one more, former Department of Justice spokesman Matthew Miller:

Everyone seems to have forgotten Trump publicly denied asking Comey to back off Flynn. Comey rebuts that under oath. Kind of a big deal! https://t.co/4pUzruxEFB — Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) June 7, 2017

Also an interesting nugget here: They didn't tell Sessions because even then there was an expectation that he would eventually recuse himself from the investigation. Comey did pass on Trump's concerns about leaks. "I took the opportunity to implore the Attorney General to prevent any future direct communication between the President and me. I told the AG that what had just happened – him being asked to leave while the FBI Director, who reports to the AG, remained behind – was inappropriate and should never happen. He did not reply," Comey notes.

He did not reply. That silence speaks volumes to Sessions' independence or lack thereof.

Trump then called Comey on March 30. "He described the Russia investigation as 'a cloud' that was impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country," Comey recounts. "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. He asked what we could to 'lift the cloud.'"

And Trump also asked what can only be termed a characteristically ignorant question: Why did Congress have a hearing on the Russia investigation? Answer: That's its job. (Not, it's worth noting, that it's clear many of those on the right are prepared to do it properly.)

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Comey responded to Trump's repeated requests to clear his name by pointing out that the FBI and Department of Justice were avoiding doing that, not least because "it would create a duty to correct." Trump should be familiar with that concept – Comey's perceived duty to correct the record regarding Hillary Clinton prompted him to inform Congress that the FBI had dipped back into the email server case, arguably handing the election to the Republican nominee.

And then apropos of nothing, Trump started talking about Andrew McCabe, the deputy director (now acting director) of the bureau, whose wife had run for Virginia state senate in 2015, receiving a large donation from a political action committee run by Old Dominion Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a long-time Clinton ally, a fact which briefly created a stir in the fall of 2016. Trump said he "hadn't brought up 'the McCabe thing' because I had said McCabe was honorable," Comey recounted. Why did Trump raise the issue? Perhaps he thought it was evidence of having done Comey a favor, putting the FBI director in some sort of debt.

Trump called Comey one last time on April 11 about his request to "get out" that he was not personally under investigation. The FBI director basically referred him to the acting deputy attorney general.

He said he would do that and added, "Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know." I did not reply or ask him what he meant by "that thing."

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That was the last time I spoke with President Trump.