Donald Trump's administration '˜spreading lies, plain and simple'

As he opened his much-anticipated first public telling of his relationship with Mr Trump, Mr Comey disputed the administration’s justification for his firing last month.

Giving evidence before the Senate intelligence committee, he declared that the administration “defamed him and more importantly the FBI” by claiming the bureau was in disorder under his leadership.

In testimony that exposed deep distrust between the President and the veteran lawman, Mr Comey described intense discomfort about their one-on-one conversations, saying he decided he immediately needed to document the discussions in memos.

“I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting, so I thought it really important to document,” Mr Comey said.

“I knew there might come a day when I might need a record of what happened not only to defend myself but to protect the FBI.”

Mr Comey made his comments as the packed hearing got under way, bringing Washington and parts of the country to a halt as all eyes were glued on televisions showing the hearing.

He immediately jumped into the heart of the fraught political controversy around his firing and whether Mr Trump interfered in the bureau’s Russia investigation, as he elaborated on written testimony delivered on Wednesday.

In that testimony, he had already disclosed that Mr Trump demanded his “loyalty” and directly pushed him to “lift the cloud” of investigation by declaring publicly the president was not the target of the FBI probe into his campaign’s Russia ties.

Mr Comey also said in his written testimony that Mr Trump, in a strange private encounter near the grandfather clock in the 
Oval Office, pushed him to end his investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Senate intelligence committee chairman Richard Burr asked Mr Comey the key question about that encounter, saying: “Do you sense that the President was trying to obstruct justice, or just seek a way for Mike Flynn to save face, given he had already been fired?”

Mr Comey replied: “I don’t think it’s for me to say whether the conversation I had with the President was an effort to obstruct.

“I took it as a very disturbing thing, very concerning. But that’s a conclusion I’m sure the special counsel will work towards to try and understand what the intention was there and whether that’s an offence.”

Later, in a startling disclosure, Mr Comey revealed that after his firing he had tried to spur the appointment of a special counsel by giving one of his memos about Mr Trump to a friend of his to leak to the press.

“My judgment was I need to get that out into the public square,” Mr Comey said.

The Republican National Committee and other White House allies worked feverishly to lessen any damage from the hearing, trying to undermine Mr Comey’s credibility by issuing press releases and even ads pointing to a past instance where the FBI had to clean up the director’s testimony to Congress.

Mr Trump has begrudgingly accepted the US intelligence assessment that Russia interfered with the election.