WASHINGTON — Freshman California Sen. Kamala Harris will get a blockbuster debut in the national spotlight Thursday when former FBI Director James Comey testifies to Congress for the first time since being fired a month ago by President Trump, a spectacle that is drawing live coverage from the prime-time anchors of the big three television networks and promises to rival Washington’s most storied public hearings.

Harris, a Democrat, has a seat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting an investigation into Russian interference in last year’s presidential election, including allegations of collusion between Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and Trump’s election campaign.

Comey was leading a parallel investigation of the same issues until Trump fired him. The question is whether Trump pressured Comey to stop his investigation of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn for his dealings with Russia, potentially exposing himself to charges of obstruction of justice.

Back to Gallery Sen. Kamala Harris set to play unique role at Comey hearing 11 1 of 11 Photo: AL DRAGO, NYT 2 of 11 Photo: David McNew, Getty Images 3 of 11 Photo: Mark Wilson, Getty Images 4 of 11 Photo: NICHOLAS KAMM, AFP/Getty Images 5 of 11 Photo: Mark Wilson / Getty Images 2017 6 of 11 Photo: Alex Wong 7 of 11 Photo: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images 8 of 11 Photo: Paul Kuroda / Special to The Chronicle 9 of 11 Photo: Susan Walsh, Associated Press 10 of 11 Photo: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images 11 of 11 Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, Associated Press





















As a first-term senator in the minority party, Harris will be the last in line to ask questions, and will be hard-pressed to find a new angle that would elicit any bombshell revelations from the former FBI director, a man well rehearsed in the choreography of congressional hearings.

“I’m getting used to it,” Harris said Tuesday of being the last committee member to question witnesses. A former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, Harris typically employs a prosecutorial style in hearings that attempts to get facts on the public record.

She said that’s what she’ll do Thursday. “It’s going to be about being probative of the facts,” Harris said in a hallway interview on Capitol Hill.

Her preparation includes “reviewing everything that has happened in previous hearings, reviewing public source documents,” including press reports and interviews, she said. And, she said, she spends prep time “refining the calendar around some of the dates that we know certain conversations ... occurred, where there were answers to certain questions and checking whether they’re consistent.”

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, also a Democrat, is the committee’s former chair and ranking member. She traded her role as ranking member after the last election to take on the top Democratic slot on the Judiciary Committee. But with her seniority, Feinstein will still be the second Democrat to question Comey after top Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia.

“You know the way this works,” Feinstein told The Chronicle. “It goes down the line, back and forth (alternating Republican and Democrat). So you can have a question and somebody else asks it who’s ahead of you, so we sort of keep our powder dry and you have to follow the flow of the questioning.

“Obviously, what we’re looking for is what transpired at (Comey’s) meetings with the president, with respect to the president asking him to lay off of Gen. Flynn, that’s one thing. And another thing is to discuss, to the extent he’ll discuss with us, some of the Russia investigation.”

Nick Akerman, a former Watergate prosecutor and U.S. attorney now at the law firm Dorsey and Whitney, said Comey is unlikely to divulge details of the investigation, but that discussing his conversations with Trump is “totally in bounds.” According to news reports, Comey left a detailed memo trail of his meetings with the president.

The job for senators on both sides of the aisle, Akerman said, will be to “develop as many facts as they can” about Comey’s conversations with Trump. “Everything,” he said. “The atmosphere, what was said, who else was present, who else was spoken to, the who, what, where, why, when, et cetera. Trying to set the entire stage so you know exactly what happened.”

That includes questions about why Comey wrote memos of the meetings with Trump, and whether he did the same after meetings with former President Barack Obama, Akerman said.

For Harris, he said, “You’re talking about the junior senator who gets last word. I think she’s just got to be ready as former prosecutor to do the cleanup. Where there’s some kind of hole or something that hasn’t been covered, her job is going to be to make sure that everything gets questioned about that can be questioned about.

“So what she’s really got to be doing is sitting there with a checklist to make sure that nobody misses anything.”

The Comey hearing has generated such intense media interest that it is already being compared to the Watergate hearings and those over Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court. Hearings of such magnitude can provide a “staging ground” for those with higher aspirations, said Bill Whalen, a political analyst at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The challenge for Harris, who has batted down questions about her presidential aspirations since coming to Washington in January, is, “What can she ask that’s unique by the time it’s her turn?” he said.

Should Harris ever decide on a White House run, Thursday will be “not just a hearing for Comey, it’s a job interview for Harris,” said Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at Claremont-McKenna College in Claremont (Los Angeles County). “She’s going to have to bring her best game to the event. This is probably the biggest national audience she’s had up to now.”

Democrats walk a fine line between trying to get to the bottom of Russian interference in the November election — and possible continuing interference in U.S. politics — and demands from their base for Trump’s impeachment. Harris has not ventured into that territory and party leaders such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco have discouraged such talk.

Whalen noted that Republicans suffered a voter backlash after their impeachment of former President Bill Clinton on perjury and obstruction of justice charges in a case that began with an investigation of Clinton’s Whitewater real estate dealings and wound up with an investigation of Clinton lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. The House voted to bring impeachment articles, but the Senate dismissed both charges, largely on party lines.

Nonetheless, Pitney said the Russia investigation and related hearings pose enormous political peril for Trump, whose public approval has sunk to the high 30s.

“The danger for Trump is an erosion of his political support,” Pitney said. “So far, Republicans have been pretty reluctant to stand up to him, but if the polls start turning, particularly if he leaks Republican support, then some Republicans on the Hill might begin to feel their spine again.”

Carolyn Lochhead is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. Email: clochhead@sfchronicle.com