White House: Trump will not assert executive privilege to block Comey's testimony

President Donald Trump will not invoke executive privilege in order to block former FBI Director James Comey from testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday.

“The president's power to exert executive privilege is very well established,” Sanders said at Monday’s White House press briefing. “However, in order to facilitate a swift and thorough examination of the facts sought by the Senate Intelligence Committee, President Trump will not assert executive privilege regarding James Comey's scheduled testimony.”


Trump’s abrupt firing of Comey sent shockwaves through Washington last month, an eyebrow-raising decision that was compounded when the president later said he dismissed the FBI director with the bureau’s ongoing Russia investigation in mind.

White House officials had previously said Comey’s firing had nothing to do with the Russia probe and was carried out based on the recommendation of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, an argument Trump tore down by telling NBC News that his mind had been made up on the issue before meeting with Rosenstein.

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Since his firing, multiple media outlets have reported that Comey kept detailed notes of his interactions with the president, including some meetings in which Trump allegedly asked the then-FBI director to drop the bureau’s probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The substance of those memos, relayed to the media largely through individuals with ties to Comey, is almost certain to play a significant role at Thursday’s hearing.

Except for a brief farewell letter to FBI colleagues, Comey’s scheduled testimony is likely to be his first public statements since his firing.

As recently as Monday morning, the question of whether Trump might move to block Comey from testifying remained an open question. Asked Monday on NBC’s “Today” show if the president intended to invoke executive privilege to prohibit Comey’s testimony, adviser Kellyanne Conway would say only that “the president will make that final decision” and added that “if he testifies, we’ll all be watching.”