In new reversal, Trump says he didn’t fire Comey over Russia

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump on Thursday said he didn’t fire FBI Director James Comey over the Russia investigation, despite previously citing that as the reason.

Trump tweeted: “Not that it matters but I never fired James Comey because of Russia! The Corrupt Mainstream Media loves to keep pushing that narrative, but they know it is not true!”

Trump fired Comey in May 2017. He and his advisers have since offered at least three different explanations, mostly tying it to the Russia probe.

In announcing the firing, the White House initially cited the FBI director’s handling of the probe into Clinton’s emails.

A few days later, Trump told NBC’s Lester Holt he was thinking of “this Russia thing” when he fired Comey.

The New York Times reported Trump told Russian diplomats in the Oval Office that month Comey’s dismissal had “taken off” pressure he faced “because of Russia.”

Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney, told Fox News this month that Trump fired Comey because Comey wouldn’t state “that he wasn’t a target” of the Russia probe.

Giuliani said Trump did the Lester Holt interview “to explain to the American people the president was not the target of the investigation.”

He said Trump felt that he was treated worse than Hillary Clinton, who was publicly cleared of criminal wrongdoing at an unusual FBI headquarters news conference in July 2016.

“He fired Comey because Comey would not, among other things, say that he wasn’t a target of the investigation,” Giuliani said. “He’s entitled to that. Hillary Clinton got that. Actually, he couldn’t get that.”

Comey told The Associated Press in an interview this month that he saw telling Trump privately — at a January 2017 Trump Tower meeting — that he wasn’t under investigation as a way to lower the “temperature” of an otherwise tense encounter before the president took office.

Comey has acknowledged that he told Trump on multiple occasions that he was not personally under investigation. Yet when asked that same question by Congress at a public hearing last year, he declined to provide that same reassurance.

When asked specifically at a March 20, 2017, House intelligence committee if Trump himself was under investigation, Comey replied: “I’m not gonna answer that… We have briefed him in great detail on the subjects of the investigation and what we’re doing, but I’m not gonna answer about anybody in this forum.”