Presumably exhausted from keeping Donald Trump off of Twitter during former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s personal lawyer, has released a statement insisting on exactly what you’d expect: a lot of cherrypicking aimed that stitching together the case that Trump did nothing wrong and Comey is a showboat and a dirtbag and a leaker. The Comey testimony as described in the statement is almost unrecognizable if you actually watched Comey testify.
Kasowitz’s statement leads with “Contrary to numerous false press accounts leading up to today’s hearing, Mr. Comey has now finally confirmed publicly what he repeatedly told the President privately: The President was not under investigation as part of any probe into Russian interference.” Okay …
“Mr. Comey’s testimony also makes clear that the president never sought to impede the investigation into attempted Russian interference in the 2016 election ...” Hmm. I’m going to stop you there, Marc-with-a-c. Comey said he didn't remember any conversation about Russian election interference because Trump showed no interest or concern or curiosity about that. He also said repeatedly that he felt Trump had attempted to impede his investigation into Michael Flynn’s Russia ties. Maybe this is a careful way to say that Flynn and election interference were two entirely separate Russia issues, and maybe it’s just a Trumpian lie.
Tipping the scales toward Trumpian lie, Kasowitz goes on to claim that “the President never, in form or substance, directed or suggested that Mr. Comey stop investigating anyone, including suggesting that that [sic] Mr. Comey ‘let Flynn go.’” This is a claim that Republican senators tried to make, beginning with Sen. Jim Risch arguing that Trump’s “I hope” was merely a hope and not an implicit order. It didn’t work then, either, and Comey pushed back hard.
“The President also never told Mr. Comey ‘I need loyalty, I expect loyalty’ in any form or substance.” Perhaps Kasowitz has reviewed Trump’s tapes of the conversation and the exact quote is worded slightly differently? Or perhaps Kasowitz is representing a liar. Kasowitz goes on to say blah blah blah the president should get loyalty but instead he gets dirty leakers and Comey is one of them.
Kasowitz dedicates a fair bit of his statement to trying to establish that Comey leaked before he got fired—because Comey told friends about his conversations with Trump—and that Comey’s memos got to the New York Times before Trump tweeted about tapes, thereby ostensibly showing that Comey lied when he said he had a friend talk to the New York Times about the memos after the tapes tweet. However, while Comey’s friends talked to the Times about Comey’s description of his dinner with Trump—presumably prompting Trump to attempt to threaten Comey with the prospect that the conversation had been taped—there’s no mention in that earlier article of memos. It’s just about what Comey directly told his friends. It was days later, fitting the timeline Comey gave at the hearing, that the Times reported that Comey had documented his conversations with Trump, changing the story from Trump’s memory vs. Comey’s memory to Trump’s memory vs. what Comey wrote down at the time.
Trump’s personal lawyer’s statement is just what you’d expect, in other words: filled with statements only slightly less false than we’d expect to get directly from Trump.