So that a goldfish served me

US President Donald Trump asked the former FBI director James Komi to terminate the ex-adviser Trump on National Security Michael Flynn. The former head of the special services said this in preliminary written testimony of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The document is published on the Committee's website. Hearing with the participation of Komi will take place on Thursday.

According to Komi, Trump convinced him to turn the investigation against Flynn on February 14, the day after the resignation of an adviser. Trump and Komi were left alone after the anti -terrorist briefing with the participation of the heads of special services. The President told the head of the FBI that Flynn "did nothing wrong," and he had to be resigned only because he had misled Vice President Mike Pence. Trump called Flynn a "good guy" and several times asked Komi to "let him go." Komi, however, did not agree to do this.

Komi also noted that Trump asked him to publicly declare that the special service was not conducting a personal investigation against the president. According to Komi, during his meetings and telephone calls he assured Trump twice. He reported the same thing about the leadership of Congress. Trump, says the head of the FBI, called suspicions of ties with Russia a "cloud" that prevents him from working. He asked Komi to help "dispel the cloud."

At another meeting with Trump, which occurred on January 27 at dinner in the White House, the president, according to Komi, told him that he was “expecting loyalty” from the head of the special services. Komi notes that this has worried him, since the FBI should be independent of the White House.

According to Komi, he behaved records about all meetings with Trump, starting with the traditional meeting of the elected president with the heads of special services held on January 6. He shared this information with the former leadership of the FBI. In total, the ex-head of the special services calculated that before his resignation, he met three times alone with the president, and six times they spoke on the phone. He considered it unusual: with the previous President Barack Obama, during his last period, Komi personally met only twice and never communicated on the phone.

On May 10, Trump sent a letter to the head of the FBI to James Komi with a resignation message. In it, the president said that the director of the FBI cannot cope with his duties . “Although I am very grateful for the fact that three times you informed me under different circumstances that I am not under investigation, I still agree with the assessment of the Ministry of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau,” the document said.

Many American politicians connected the resignation of Komi with the investigation of the ties of the Trump team with Russia. On May 12, The New York Times, citing a number of sources in Congress, reported that in the last days before dismissal, the FBI director demanded significant additional funds for this investigation.

On May 17, information appeared that Trump asked Komi to terminate the investigation against Michael Flynn. He resigned from the post of presidential security adviser on February 13, after it became known that he was misinformed by the Vice President Michael Pence regarding the details of his conversations with the Russian ambassador to Washington Sergei Kislyak.

On May 20, Komi agreed to appear at the open hearings of the US Senate Committee on Intelligence . According to the committee chairman Richard Burr and Senator Mark Warner, they want to learn from Komi about his role in the investigation of Russia's intervention in the 2016 presidential election.