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Conservative media buzzed over the release of James Comey’s prepared opening statement for Thursday’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. At National Review, Dan McLaughlin argued that Comey’s statement largely exonerates Trump from charges of obstruction but resurfaces questions about his fitness for the presidency. “Comey explodes the Democrats’ narrative that Trump was under criminal investigation for collusion with Russia, and confirms with specificity that Trump was telling the truth when he tweeted that Comey had told him as much on three occasions,” he wrote. “The bad news, for Trump, is that Comey also details his mounting concerns about Trump’s heavy-handedness.” Particularly troubling, McLaughlin contends, was Trump’s request that Comey jettison the investigation of Flynn’s conversations with the Russian ambassador in December. “While Comey is careful to note that he did not interpret the conversation as a request to abandon all investigations of Flynn, just the conversation that had just cost Flynn his job, and while Trump’s request would not amount to ‘obstruction of justice’ under the law, it’s still highly improper conduct by the President of the United States to ask the FBI Director, who knows full well that the President can fire him, to lay off a friend and former aide to the President.”
The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro concurred that the statement, while troubling, offers little to Democrats seeking a case for obstruction. “[T]here is still no evidence that Trump cares about quashing an investigation into campaign collusion, even according to Comey,” he wrote. “All of this squares with the theory I have been proposing for weeks: namely, that Trump knows he is innocent of collusion with Russia, was angry and puzzled that Comey wouldn’t say so, and fired him out of pique. That isn’t illegal, and it isn’t obstruction, and it isn’t even pressure.”
RedState’s Jay Caruso surmised that the behavior described by Comey is best explained by Trump’s past. “Trump apparently still thinks he can behave like a real estate developer where dinners and personal phone calls to cajole, wink at, and glad handle others is an appropriate way to conduct business,” he wrote. “For anybody who was hoping for the ‘AHA!’ moment, they’d better lower their expectations. Again, Trump comes off as the slimy real estate guy who is trying sell you swampland in Florida, but not somebody who is attempting to throw an investigation off track or trying to obstruct justice.”
On Twitter, conservative commentators were similarly of one mind:
