By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
President Trump appeared to be all that stood in the way of fired FBI Director James Comey testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
On Monday, the White House insisted Trump won’t assert executive privilege to prevent Comey from testifying on Thursday morning, the Associated Press reports.
Although White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it’s “well-established” that Trump has power to invoke executive privilege, he won’t exercise it.
Sanders said Trump wanted to permit a “swift and thorough examination of the facts” surrounding Comey’s termination and the multiple investigations into possible ties between Russia and Trump’s campaign.
That being said, some legal experts this week expressed skepticism that Trump could effectively block Comey, now a private citizen, from discussing his dealings with Trump with the U.S. Senate.
The White House had considered blocking Comey on grounds that the testimony involves national security interests, but decided against it because the optics would look bad for the president.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers have urged Comey to testify because of allegations that Trump pressured the former FBI director to drop the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn and his contact with Russia.
