With former FBI Director James Comey set to testify before Congress on Thursday, it's expected that he will be urged to provide specific details on whether or not President Donald Trump pressured him to close the ongoing investigation into Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, according to Reuters.
After Comey was fired by the president while only in the fourth year of his 10-year term, it was later reported that the former director had penned at least one memo indicating that Trump had requested he shut down the investigation into Flynn, and prominent senators are looking for things to be clarified.
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"I want to know what kind of pressure - appropriate, inappropriate - how many conversations he had with the president about this topic?" Sen. Mark Warner D-Va., said on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday. Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee also wants to know when the conversations between Comey and Trump took place.
"Did some of these conversations take place even before the president was sworn in? And I think Jim Comey deserves to have his, you know, in effect, day in court since the president has disparaged him so much," Warner added.
Warner also said he will be looking for Comey to "reinforce" that the Russian government "directly intervened in our elections" something the Democrats have been heavily pushing since the Intelligence Community released their assessment on the matter in early January. Though almost uniformly agreed upon between intelligence agencies, there hasn't been substantial evidence or a smoking gun up to this point.
But Democrats are not alone in their curiosity about what exactly was said in the conversations that took place between Trump and Comey. Sen. Susan Collins R-Maine, who also sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee feels that a broader context is needed for what transpired.
On "Face the Nation" Collins said: "The tone, the exact words that were spoken and the context are so important and that's what we lack right now and we can only get that by talking to those directly involved."
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