Startling New Details

Some of the most startling assertions by Mr. Comey revolved around his first meeting with the president-elect at Trump Tower just days before the inauguration. That day, intelligence officials, including Mr. Comey, briefed the incoming president on Russia’s attempt to meddle with the election.

Mr. Comey said Mr. Trump and his aides seemed interested only in what the former F.B.I. director called the “P.R. and spin” about the issue.

“The conversation, to my surprise, moved into a P.R. conversation about how the Trump team would position this and what they could say about this,” Mr. Comey said. “I don’t remember any questions about, ‘So what are they going to do next; how might we stop it? What’s the future look like? Because we’ll be custodians of the security of this country.’ There was none of that.”

“It was all, ‘What can we say about what they did and how it affects the election that we just had?’” Mr. Comey said.

It was at the end of the meeting that Mr. Comey said he asked to speak to Mr. Trump alone to brief him on the salacious “Steele dossier,” which contains unverified allegations about Mr. Trump, including a claim that the Russian government has video recordings of him watching prostitutes urinate on one another in a Moscow hotel room in 2013.

Mr. Comey said Mr. Trump denied the allegations that day, saying, “Do I look like a guy who needs hookers?” Weeks later, in a telephone call after the dossier was published by BuzzFeed, Mr. Trump again denied the account in graphic terms, Mr. Comey said.

“There’s no way I’d let people pee on each other around me,” Mr. Trump said, according to Mr. Comey’s account. Mr. Comey said the president also raised the idea that the F.B.I. should investigate the claim as a way of proving that it never happened. Mr. Comey said he warned Mr. Trump that doing so would add to “the narrative” that the president was under investigation.