Donald Trump's personal lawyer says 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 is responding to Mr Comey's Thursday morning testimony, in which the fired FBI director said President Trump urged him to drop the Flynn case.
Mr Kasowitz says that the president is "entitled to expect loyalty" from those serving the administration.
But he says President Trump never told Mr Comey: "I need loyalty, I expect loyalty," in form or substance, as Mr Comey claimed.
President Trump tasked Mr Kasowitz late last month with responding to matters arising from various probes of Russian interference in the election.
Mr Kasowitzalso accused Mr Comey of "unauthorised disclosures" of "privileged communications" he had with the president.
He said there continues "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 added: "Comey has now admitted that he is one of the leakers."
Mr 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 he may have taped the conversations.
Mr Kasowitz says President Trump's team will "leave it the appropriate authorities" to determine whether the leak should be investigated.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel