President Trump is waking up in the United States to face front page headlines that declare him a LIAR.
The President was assailed by former FBI Director James Comey during testimony on Capitol Hill yesterday.
But, President Trump's lawyer insists it's Mr. Comey who isn't telling the truth.
Our Washington Correspondent Simon Marks says both men can't be right.
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James Comey's testimony on Capitol Hill was as devastating as the country had been led to expect.
President Trump, he said, had a string of inappropriate conversations with him that threatened to pierce the political independence of the FBI Director and the bureau itself.
He wanted Mr. Comey to terminate the investigation into ties between National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and the Russians.
He asked Mr. Comey to help him "lift the cloud" that was hanging over the White House.
And he wanted a "loyalty pledge"….and when he didn't get it, fired Mr. Comey and then lied about why he'd done it.
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The woman who promulgated those lies on the President's behalf, his Deputy Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders….in an off-camera briefing, pushed back against Mr. Comey's claims….and the reporters who were raising them.
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But the White House knows the question isn't going to go away.
And so President Trump's lawyer, Mark Kasowitz, offered the President's formal response: that everything James Comey had said under oath before the Senate Intelligence Committee was itself a lie.
The President never demanded loyalty…and never asked Mr. Comey to drop the investigation into Michael Flynn.
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He also slammed Mr. Comey for conceding that he had leaked information to the press after he was fired….it's not clear that was, as the Trump team contends, a criminal act since by then Mr. Comey was a private citizen.
This then becomes a straight forward battle between the President's version of events and Mr. Comey's.
And one them cannot be telling the truth.
It will fall to special prosecutor Robert Mueller to try and determine which one of them is lying.
His investigation and all the others underway on Capitol Hill are likely to continue for months….meaning that one thing is certain: if, by firing his FBI Director, Donald Trump hoped to untangle himself from the Russia invevsgiation, his Preisdencys has - in fact - only become further mired in it.
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