WASHINGTON — The former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, plans to tell senators on Thursday in highly anticipated testimony about a wide-ranging effort by President Trump to influence the F.B.I.’s investigation into Russia’s meddling in the election, including repeatedly asking Mr. Comey to announce that the president was not personally under investigation.
In seven pages of written testimony made public on Wednesday afternoon by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Comey outlined how Mr. Trump sought a pledge of loyalty and an end to the investigation into his national security adviser, and how the president questioned whether Mr. Comey, four years into a 10-year term, wanted to remain in his job. Mr. Comey wrote that he told Mr. Trump on at least one occasion in early January that he was not under investigation at that time.
Mr. Trump also asked Mr. Comey, in a previously undisclosed phone call on March 30, what could be done to “lift the cloud” over him from the investigation, because it was hurting his ability to govern, according to the remarks. But Mr. Comey will say that he was reluctant to make that announcement “for a number of reasons, most importantly because it would create a duty to correct, should that change.”
Mr. Comey’s dramatic recounting echoed memos he has written about his interactions with the president, some of which have been described to The New York Times, but it was the first detailed account directly from him about his service in the Trump administration until he was abruptly fired last month. Representatives for Mr. Comey asked the committee to release the testimony on Wednesday shortly before it was made public, according to people familiar with the sequence of events.
In the written testimony, Mr. Comey also disclosed that Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, is the subject of an investigation into whether he made false statements to the F.B.I. about his contacts with Russian officials. Mr. Flynn was interviewed by the F.B.I. at the White House in January about those interactions, shortly before he was removed by Mr. Trump.
Mr. Comey will tell senators that he wrote the first memo shortly after he initially met Mr. Trump, on Jan. 6, during the presidential transition.
In that meeting, Mr. Comey told the president-elect he was not under investigation; Mr. Trump did not ask but Mr. Comey “offered that assurance,” he said. He also briefed Mr. Trump on the contents of a dossier of salacious, unsubstantiated allegations that a former British spy believed the Russian government had collected on Mr. Trump.
“To ensure accuracy, I began to type it on a laptop in an F.B.I. vehicle outside Trump Tower the moment I walked out of the meeting,” Mr. Comey said. “Creating written records immediately after one-on-one conversations with Mr. Trump was my practice from that point forward.”
Document: Read James Comey’s Prepared Remarks for Testimony
Mr. Comey, who was confirmed in 2013, said he had not written similar memos for his interactions with President Barack Obama, whom he met privately with twice when Mr. Obama was in office.
Weeks later, once Mr. Trump was in office, the president asked Mr. Comey about the dossier over dinner at the White House and “expressed his disgust for the allegations and strongly denied them,” Mr. Comey wrote.
The president told Mr. Comey he was considering asking him to investigate the material in the dossier, which included unproven allegations of videotaped encounters with prostitutes in Moscow, and prove that the described events did not happen. Mr. Comey said he advised the president to give the request “careful thought because it might create a narrative that we were investigating him personally, which we weren’t, and because it was very difficult to prove a negative.”
In the March phone call, Mr. Trump said he had nothing to do with Russia and had not been involved with prostitutes in Russia “and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia.”
Mr. Comey said the last time he had spoken with Mr. Trump was on April 11. Mr. Trump called to ask again when Mr. Comey planned to put out word that Mr. Trump was not under investigation.
Mr. Comey responded that he had passed the request on to his bosses at the Justice Department but had not heard back.
“He replied that ‘the cloud’ was getting in the way of his ability to do his job,” Mr. Comey wrote in his written testimony.
The president emphasized that he had been loyal to Mr. Comey.
“Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing, you know,” Mr. Trump said, according to Mr. Comey, who wrote that he had not replied or asked Mr. Trump what he meant by “that thing.”
“That was the last time I spoke with President Trump,” Mr. Comey said.
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