INTELLIGENCE/JAMES COMEY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump has let linger — for six weeks — his suggestion that conversations inside the Oval Office may be recorded. But all indications, including inquiries to top government officials and government agencies tasked with tracking White House information and infrastructure, point to no such official recording system existing.
White House officials have said an answer will come by the end of the week. Trump said earlier this month that reporters would be disappointed by the answer, but Congress, through a letter from the House intelligence committee, is trying to compel him to provide an answer by Friday [6-23-17].
The President tweeted on May 12, in response to a New York Times report about fired FBI Director James Comey’s dinner with Trump, that Comey ‘better hope that there are no *tapes* of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!’
To date, though, Trump has treated the possibility of a White House taping system like a game show, failing to give a definitive answer on whether he was bluffing in his tweet towards Comey. The tweet had serious repercussions for the President, though: The fired FBI director testified earlier this month that Trump’s message caused him to leak the bombshell content of a memo to the media through a professor at Columbia University.”
-Dan Merica and David Shortell, “All indications signal no White House recording system” CNN Politics, CNN.com, June 22, 2017 12:54pm