Trump lawyer denies president demanded loyalty, calls Comey a ‘leaker’

US President Donald Trump’s personal attorney said on Thursday that the president “never, in form or substance” directed former FBI director James Comey to stop investigating anyone. That includes former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

Marc Kasowitz was responding to Comey’s Thursday morning testimony, in which the fired FBI director said Trump urged him to drop the Flynn case.

Kasowitz said in a public statement to the media that the president is “entitled to expect loyalty” from those serving the administration. But he said that Trump never told Comey, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty,” in form or substance, as Comey had claimed.

The lawyer also accused Comey of “unauthorized disclosures” of “privileged communications” he had with the president.

Kasowitz said there continue “to be those in government who are actively attempting to undermine this administration with selective and illegal leaks of classified information and privileged communications.”

He said, “Comey has now admitted that he is one of the leakers.”

Comey said in his testimony that he leaked his memos of his conversations with the president to a friend after a tweet by the president suggested that Trump may have taped the conversations.

Kasowitz said Trump’s team will “leave it the appropriate authorities” to determine whether the leak should be investigated.

Trump tasked Kasowitz late last month with responding to matters arising from various probes of Russian interference in the election.

The Republican National Committee and other White House allies worked feverishly to lessen any damage from the hearing, trying to undermine Comey’s credibility by issuing press releases and even ads pointing to a past instance where the FBI had had to clean up the director’s testimony to Congress. Republicans and Kasowitz seized on Comey’s confirmation, in his written testimony, of Trump’s claim that Comey had told him three times the president was not directly under investigation.

Trump himself was expected to dispute Comey’s claims that the president demanded loyalty and asked the FBI director to drop the investigation into Flynn, according to a person close to the president’s legal team who demanded anonymity because of not being authorized to discuss legal strategy. The president has not yet publicly denied the specifics of Comey’s accounts but has broadly challenged his credibility, tweeting last month Comey “better hope there are no ‘tapes'” of the conversations.

“Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” Comey remarked at one point in his testimony Thursday, suggesting such evidence would back up his account over any claims from the president.

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California asked the question that many Republicans have raised in the weeks since Comey’s firing as one media leak followed another revealing Comey’s claims about Trump’s inappropriate interactions with him.

Discussing the Oval Office meeting where Comey says Trump asked him to back off Flynn, Feinstein asked: “Why didn’t you stop and say, ‘Mr. President, this is wrong,’?”

“That’s a great question,” Comey said. “Maybe if I were stronger I would have. I was so stunned by the conversation I just took it in.”