Spicer stonewalls reporters on mysterious Comey recordings

White House press secretary Sean Spicer repeatedly refused to say Monday whether or not President Donald Trump would comply with congressional requests for recordings of his conversations with fired FBI Director James Comey that may or may not exist.

Trump himself, in a post to Twitter last Friday, suggested that such recordings might exist in a warning to Comey on Twitter: “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Asked at Friday’s press briefing if such recordings exist or if there are recording devices in the Oval Office or the White House residence, Spicer would say only that “the president has nothing further to add on that.”


The issue was raised again at Monday’s press briefing, during which multiple reporters raised the subject with Spicer only to receive an iteration of the same answer he gave last Friday. First, in response to a question about a growing and bipartisan chorus of lawmakers calling on the White House to release the recordings, Spicer said only that “I think I made it clear that the president has nothing further on that” and that he would not elaborate on whether or not Trump would accede to such a request.

Pressed by two other reporters as to why the White House has taken such a tight-lipped stance in the wake of Trump’s mysterious Friday-morning tweet, Spicer refused to offer any clarity and only reiterated some version of his initial statement that the president had nothing further to add.

