US | Trump slams ‘cowardly’ Comey as Sessions offers to testify

President Donald Trump slammed James Comey, days after the fired FBI director’s testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee and as Attorney General Jeff Sessions offered to speak to the same panel to answer questions about alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

“I believe the James Comey leaks will be far more prevalent than anyone ever thought possible. Totally illegal? Very ‘cowardly!’” Trump told his 32 million Twitter followers yesterday.

On Friday, Trump said during a news conference at the White House that Comey’s Senate testimony a day earlier showed that the president hadn’t colluded with the Russian government to rig the 2016 election and hadn’t obstructed a federal investigation into the meddling. Trump also said he would “100 percent” be willing to testify under oath that he didn’t demand a pledge of personal loyalty from Comey.

Sessions late Saturday canceled planned appearances at a pair of appropriations panels on Tuesday, and instead said he would appear before the intelligence committee.

That panel hasn’t announced the timing of a hearing with Sessions, though, or said whether he will appear in an open or closed format.

Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” yesterday that the committee is still in a “final conversation” with Sessions but assumes the hearing would be public.

Two leading Democrats, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, called on Sessions to appear before the Judiciary Committee, which has oversight responsibility for the Department of Justice. “You can’t run forever,” Leahy said in a Twitter message to Sessions. Jeff Sessions, Bloomberg