Let's read the Comey transcript.

I watched about an hour or so live on TV, skipped some, and heard the end on the car radio, but I didn't want to write anything without the transcript. I can't bear to read the news analysis, which I have good reason to assume will be slanted. I could spend my time parsing the slantedness, but I've got the transcript, and I want to live-blog my reading of the transcript. Ready?

SEN. RICHARD BURR [Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence]: There are several outstanding issues not addressed in your statement... 

Here's where we discussed Comey's 7-page statement. I said I wanted to hear "what Comey and Trump meant by their shared silent gazing into each other's eyes, by their coming to rest upon the slippery phrase 'honest loyalty,' and the mystery of 'that thing' in 'we had that thing, you know.'"

The questions Burr stated at the outset were:

Did the president's request for loyalty, your impression, let the one-on-one dinner of January 27th was and I quote “at least in part” an effort to create some patronage relationship and March 30th phone call asking what you could do to lift the cloud of Russia investigation in any way alter your approach of the FBI's investigation into general Flynn or the broader investigation into Russia, and possible links to the campaign? In your opinion did potential Russian efforts to establish a link with individuals in the Trump orbit rise to the level we could define as collusion or was it a counter-intelligence concern? There's been a significant public speculation about your decision-making related to the Clinton email investigation. Why did you decide publicly, to publicly announce, FBI's recommendations that the Department of Justice not pursue criminal charges?...

Comey didn't read the already-released opening statement. Instead he offered what he called "some very brief introductory remarks." Comey concentrates on how he wanted to keep his job as FBI Director, and since Trump had "had repeatedly told me I was doing a great job," he was "confused " to hear he'd been fired. He knew the President could fire him for "no reason at all," it was disturbing that "the administration... chose to defame me" and to say the FBI "was in disarray" — "lies, plain and simple." That is, he let us see that he was angry about losing the job he dearly wanted to keep. 

BURR: Director, when the president requested that you, and I quote "Let Flynn go"... do you sense that the president was trying to obstruct justice or just seek for a way for Mike Flynn to save face...?

COMEY: ... I don't think it's for me to say whether the conversation I had with the president was an effort to obstruct. 

He says it's for the special counsel "to try and understand what the intention was there, and whether that's an offense." With the Hillary email matter, Comey went deeply into intent, but I think that was because there was no special prosecutor and the Attorney General had withdrawn herself from the decisionmaking and left it to Comey. That at least shows Comey can make decisions like that. Burr brings up that subject:

BURR: Director, Comey, you have been criticized publicly for the decision to present your findings on the email investigation directly to the American people. Have you learned anything since that time that would have changed what you said or how you chose to inform the American people?

COMEY: Honestly, no. It caused a whole lot of personal pain for me but as I look back, given what I knew at the time and even what I've learned since, I think it was the best way to try to protect the justice institution, including the FBI.

Protecting "the justice institution, including the FBI" is the only value he cites. It affected the presidential election, but I guess his position about that needs to be that he couldn't take that factor into account one way or the other. The protection for "both the FBI and the justice department" was needed largely because of Bill Clinton's "tarmac meeting" with Loretta Lynch. There were some other factors that he couldn't speak of openly, but he could say that he was "confused" and "concerned" when Lynch "directed" him to use the term "matter" instead of "investigation," when speaking of Hillary Clinton's email problem.

Comey says there were "all kinds of cyber intrusions going on all the time... a massive effort to target government and nongovernmental, near governmental agencies like nonprofits." Burr wants to know what the Obama administration tried to do about that. All Comey says is that the FBI notified victims of phishing. (Is phishing a "massive effort"? It may reach a lot of email inboxes, but it's piddling within the category "cyber intrusions." I wished they'd be clear when they're talking about anything other than phishing.)

The Vice Chairman Mark Warner went next and took a noticeably more partisan tone, pointedly underscoring and amplifying Comey's answers. First, he asked about Comey's decision to write a memo documenting his January 6th conversation with Trump. Comey's reasons were: 1. He was alone with Trump, 2. The subject matter ("the FBI's core responsibility"), 3. He believed that it might be in Trump's "nature" to "lie" about the conversation.

Comey never wrote memos after interactions with the 2 other Presidents he worked under, because the 3 factors weren't present with Bush and Obama. He doesn't break factor #3 out separately and opine on the comparative "nature" of the 3 Presidents and that only Trump struck him as a liar, but I would have asked a follow-up question there. What made him think Trump but not Bush or Obama might lie?

Warner asks about the January 27th dinner, where, according to Comey's written statement, Trump was trying to create a "patronage" relationship. What did that mean? Comey's answer is careful not to claim to know things that he doesn't know but full of guesses about what might have gone on in Trump's head:

COMEY: Well, my impression, and again it's my impression, I could always be wrong but my common sense told me what was going on is, either he had concluded or someone had told him that you didn't, you've already asked Comey to stay, and you didn't get anything for it. And that the dinner was an effort to build a relationship, in fact, he asked specifically, of loyalty in the context of asking me to stay....

Next, Senator James Risch asks about a NYT article that "suggested that the [T]rump campaign was colluding with the Russians." That wasn't true, was it? Comey says: "In the main, it was not true." Comey says he's not "picking on reporters about writing stories about classified information," but they're often talking to informants who "don't really know what's going on." And those who do know can't call up and tell them they got it wrong: "We have to leave it there."

Risch asks Comey if he knows "of any case where a person has been charged for obstruction of justice or, for that matter, any other criminal offense, where they said or thought they hoped for an outcome?"

COMEY: I don't know well enough to answer. 

In other words, he doesn't know of a case. Why not say so? Comey restates that he took Trump's words "as a direction."

COMEY: I mean, this is a president of the United States with me alone saying I hope this. I took it as, this is what he wants me to do. I didn't obey that, but that's the way I took it.

RISCH: You may have taken it as a direction but that's not what he said.

COMEY: Correct.

RISCH: He said, I hope.

COMEY: Those are his exact words, correct.

RISCH: You don't know of anyone ever being charged for hoping something, is that a fair statement?

COMEY: I don't as I sit here.

That felt like a successful cross-examination.

Next came Dianne Feinstein. She began by asking "Why do you believe you were fired?" Comey said he didn't "know for sure," but he'd take Trump at his word, and that would mean that there was something about the way he was conducting the Russia investigation that "created pressure on [Trump] that he wanted to relieve."

Feinstein asks about Trump's "request that you pledge loyalty and your response to that and what impact you believe that had."

COMEY: I don't know for sure because I don't know the president well enough to read him well. 

And yet so much of this testimony is about Comey reading Trump's mind.

I think it was — first of all, relationship didn't get off to a great start, given the conversation I had to have on January 6th. This didn't improve the relationship because it was very, very awkward. He was asking for something, and I was refusing to give it. Again, I don't know him well enough to know how he reacted to that exactly.

Feinstein asks one of the best questions of the morning:

FEINSTEIN: Now, here's the question, you're big. You're strong. I know the oval office, and I know what happens to people when they walk in. There is a certain amount of intimidation. But why didn't you stop and say, Mr. President, this is wrong. I cannot discuss this with you.

COMEY: It's a great question. Maybe if I were stronger, I would have. I was so stunned by the conversation that I just took in. The only thing I could think to say, because I was playing in my mind -- because I could remember every word he said -- I was playing in my mind, what should my response be? That's why I carefully chose the words. Look, I've seen the tweet about tapes. Lordy, I hope there are tapes. I remember saying, “I agree he is a good guy,” as a way of saying, I'm not agreeing with what you asked me to do. Again, maybe other people would be stronger in that circumstance. That's how [I conducted] myself. I hope I'll never have another opportunity. Maybe if I did it again, I'd do it better.

He's saying he wasn't strong enough or didn't have the presence of mind to stand up to Trump, but there are at least 2 other explanations. One is that he simply didn't think at the time that Trump had gone too far. Trump was approaching a line, but a little steely coldness was enough to signal to Trump to go no farther, and Trump did not, so wordless communication did the trick. The other is that Comey had not been fired yet and he dearly wanted to keep his job. He was working with and handling Trump, even as Trump was handling him. It was a delicate dance of power, and Comey was a consenting partner. You could put my 2 ideas together with what Comey said and blend them together and get an answer that might approximate the truth.

Feinstein asks what Trump mean when he asked Comey to "lift the cloud" that was the Russia investigation: "How did you interpret that? What did you believe he wanted you to do?"

COMEY: I interpreted that as he was frustrated that the Russia investigation was taking up so much time and energy. I think he meant of the executive branch, but in the public square in general. It was making it difficult for him to focus on other priorities of his. But what he asked me was actually narrow[er] than that. I think what he meant by the cloud — and, again, I could be wrong — but the entire investigation is taking up oxygen and making it hard for me to focus on what I want to focus on. The ask was to get it out that I, the president, am not personally under investigation....

FEINSTEIN: You told the president, I would see what we could do. What did you mean?

COMEY: It was kind of a cowardly way of trying to avoid telling him, we're not going to do that. That I would see what we could do. 

There's that delicate dance of power again, don't you think? I don't buy that Comey was just weak and weasely. I think both men wanted something — Comey wanted to keep his job — and they were working together.

Feinstein's next question makes an aggressive paraphrase which I will boldface:

FEINSTEIN: You have the president of the United States asking you to stop an investigation that is an important investigation. What was the response of your colleagues?

COMEY: I think they were as shocked and troubled by it as I was... Our primary concern was, we can't infect the investigative team. We don't want the agents and analysts working on this to know the president of the United States has asked, and when it comes from the president, I took it as a direction, to get rid of this investigation because we're not going to follow that request. So we decided, we have to keep it away from our troops....

Comey subtly rejected the Feinstein paraphrase.

COMEY: Is there anyone else we ought to tell at the justice department? We considered whether to tell -- the attorney general said we believe rightly he was shortly going to recuse. There was no other senate confirmed leaders in the justice department at that point. The deputy attorney general was Mr. Boente, acting shortly in the seat. We decided the best move would be to hold it, keep it in a box, document it, as we'd already done, and this investigation is going to do on. Figure out what to do with it down the road. Is there a way to corroborate it? It was our word against the president's. No way to corroborate this. My view of this changed when the prospect of tapes was raised. That's how we thought about it then.

Next is Marco Rubio, who begins with the important work of underscoring that Trump's "hope" about "letting it go" related only to the Mike Flynn matter, not the general Russia investigation. Comey agrees.

Going back to the mystery of why Comey didn't stand up to the President when he expressed that hope about Flynn, Rubio gives Comey an opportunity to present himself as somewhat incompetent and cowardly:

COMEY: I don't know. I think — as I said earlier, I think the circumstances were such that it was — I was a bit stunned and didn't have the presence of mind. I don't know. I don't want to make you sound like I'm captain courageous. I don't know if I would have said to the president with the presence of mind, sir, that's wrong. In the moment, it didn't come to my mind. What came to my mind is be careful what you say. I said, I agree Flynn is a good guy.

Rubio asks about the "cloud": If Trump was asking you to "tell the American people" that "he was not personally under investigation," did you tell him "it would be inappropriate for you to do so and then talk to the White House counsel or somebody so hopefully they'd talked to him and tell him he couldn't do this?"

COMEY: First time I said, I'll see what we can do. Second time, I explained how it should work, that the White House counsel should contact the deputy attorney general.

RUBIO: You told him that?

COMEY: The president said, okay. I think that's what I'll do.

RUBIO: To be clear, for you to make a public statement that he was not under investigation wouldn't be illegal but you felt it could potentially create a duty to correct if circumstances changed?

COMEY: Yes, sir. We wrestled with it before my testimony, where I confirmed that there was an investigation. There were two primary concerns. One was it creates a duty to correct, which I've lived before, and you want to be very careful about doing that. And second, it is a slippery slope. If we say the president and the vice president aren't under investigation[, w]hat is the principled investigation for stopping? So the leadership, at justice, acting attorney general Boente said, you're not going to do that....

RUBIO: On a number of occasions here, you bring up — let's talk about the general Russia investigation, OK? Page 6 of your testimony you say, the first thing you say is, he asked what we could do to, quote, unquote, lift the cloud, the general Russia investigation, you responded, we are investigating the matter as quickly as we could and there would be great benefit if we didn't find anything for having done the work well. He agreed. He emphasized the problems it was causing him. He agreed it'd be great to have an investigation, all the facts came out and we found nothing. He agreed that would be ideal, but this cloud is still messing up my ability to do the rest of my agenda. Is that an accurate assessment?

COMEY: Yes, sir. He went farther than that. He said, and if some of my satellites did something wrong, it'd be good to find that out.

RUBIO: That is the second part. The satellites, if one of my satellites, I imagine he meant some of the people surrounding his campaign, did something wrong, it'd be great to know that, as well.

COMEY: Yes, sir. That's what he said.

Comey clearly acknowledges that the "cloud" talk was not about ending the entire Russia investigation.  Rubio underscores that answer:

RUBIO: Are those the only two instances in which that back and forth happened, where the president was basically saying, and I'm paraphrasing here, it's okay. Do the Russia investigation. I hope it all comes out. I have nothing to do with anything Russia. It'd be great if it all came out, people around me were doing things that were wrong?

COMEY: Yes. As I recorded it accurately there. That was the sentiment he was expressing. Yes, sir.

RUBIO: What it comes down to is the president asked three things of you. Asked for your loyalty. You said you'd be loyally honest.

COMEY: Honestly loyal.

RUBIO: Honestly loyal. He asked you on one occasion to let the Mike Flynn thing go because he was a good guy. By the way, you're aware he said the same thing in the press the next day. He is a good guy, treated unfairly, etc. I imagine your FBI agents read that.

COMEY: I'm sure they did.

RUBIO: The president's wishes were known to them, certainly by the next day when he had a press conference with the prime minister. Going back, the three requests were, number one, be loyal. Number two, let the Mike Flynn thing go. He is a good guy, been treated unfairly. Number three, can you please tell the American people what these leaders in congress already know, which you already know and what you told me three times, that I'm not under personally under investigation.

COMEY: That's right.

RUBIO: We learn more from the newspaper sometimes than the open hearings. Do you ever wonder why, of all the things in the investigation, the only thing never leaked is the fact the president was never personally under investigation, despite the fact that Democrats and Republicans and the leadership of congress have known that for weeks?

It's a rhetorical question, but Comey offers an "I don't know."

Ron Wyden is next. I'm going to skip his segment for the sake of brevity and move on to Susan Collin, who asks (among other things) about the Michael Flynn conversation. Others have already asked why Comey didn't stand up to the President, and Comey had said he was "stunned," but what Collins wants to know is why afterwards he didn't "go to anyone at the department of justice and ask them to call the white house counsel's office and explain that the president had to have a far better understanding and appreciation of his role vis-à-vis the FBI?"

COMEY: In general, I did. I spoke to the attorney general and spoke to the new deputy attorney general, Mr. Rosenstein, when he took office and explained my serious concern about the way in which the president is interacting, especially with the FBI. As I said in my testimony, I told the attorney general, it can't happen that you get kicked out of the room and the president talks to me. Why didn't we raise the specific? It was of investigative interest to figure out, what just happened with the president's request? I wouldn't want to alert the white house it had happened until we figured out what we were going to do with it investigatively.

That's a bit confusing! I think the answer to Collins's question only begins after "Why didn't we raise the specific?" (in other words, the problem of the specific interaction about the hope of seeing the way clear to letting Flynn go). But I can't understand those 2 sentences! What "happened"?? Does that suggest that they decided to investigate whether Trump's statements at the meeting were criminal (e.g., obstruction of justice)?

Collins asks about the post-meeting memos. Did he show them to "anyone outside of the department of justice?" Why yes he did! After Trump tweeted about the possibility of an audiotape...

COMEY: ... I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday night because it didn't dawn on me originally, that there might be corroboration for our conversation. There might a tape. My judgment was, I need to get that out into the public square. I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. Didn't do it myself for a variety of reasons. 

What reasons?!

I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. I asked a close friend to do it.

Collins presses him and he identifies the "close friend" as "a professor at Columbia law school." Wow. We need more questions here, but Collins is out of time, and Martin Heinrich is up.

Heinrich asks about Trump's idea that "Russia's involvement in the U.S. Election cycle as a hoax and fake news," and that gives Comey the floor to speak very strongly on the subject:

COMEY: Yes, sir. There should be no fuzz on this whatsoever. The Russians interfered in our election during the 2016 cycle. They did with purpose. They did it with sophistication. They did it with overwhelming technical efforts. It was an active measures campaign driven from the top of that government. There is no fuzz on that. It is a high confidence judgment of the entire intelligence community and the members of this committee have seen the intelligence. It's not a close call. That happened. That's about as unfake as you can possibly get. It is very, very serious, which is why it's so refreshing to see a bipartisan focus on that. This is about America, not about a particular party.

I'd like to know why the Obama administration didn't do more to fend off this problem, but Heinrich seems to be working on the theory that if Trump didn't take it seriously, that's evidence of collusion. Comey doesn't buy into that game: He "can't answer that because I don't know what other conversations he had with other advisers or other intelligence community leaders."

Heinrich invites Comey to talk about why we should believe him, and Comey said his "mother raised me not to say things like this about myself so I'm not going to."

On to Roy Blunt, who needles Comey about why he was willing to keep working under Trump. Comey affirms that if he hadn't been fired, he'd still be working under Trump. Blunt suggests that the story Comey is telling today is the view "in retrospect," influenced by his having been fired. He didn't resign and, before the firing, he didn't let the Justice Department know about his misgivings.

Comey says that "at some point... I was sure we were going to brief it to the [Justice Department] team in charge of the case." And, Comey notes, he tried to keep the Attorney General from getting "kicked out of the room." He said to the Attorney General "I report to you. It is very important you be between me and the white house."

Blunt gets back to the subject of Comey's leaking the memo about the Flynn conversation.

BLUNT: So you didn't consider your memo or your sense of that conversation to be a government document. You considered it to be, somehow, your own personal document that you could share to the media as you wanted through a friend?

COMEY: Correct. I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the president. As a private citizen, I thought it important to get it out.... My view was that the content of those unclassified, memorialization of those conversations was my recollection recorded.

BLUNT: So why didn't you give those to somebody yourself rather than give them through a third party?

COMEY: Because I was [wary] the media was camping at the end of my driveway at that point. I was actually going out of town with my wife to hide. I worried it would be [like] feeding seagulls at the beach[, i]f it was I who gave it to the media. I asked my friend, make sure this gets out.

I had to go back to the video to understand the "feeding seagulls at the beach" remark. The bracketed material you see there is my correction of the transcript. I'm using Politico's transcript, by the way, and the mistakes, notably in punctuation, are irritating. The comma after "beach" is crucial to understanding. It's also important that the word was "wary," not, as Politico has it, "weary." Comey wasn't tired of the press, but vigilant. They were like seagulls, flocking where they anticipated feeding, and Comey didn't want to appear to be feeding these scavengers or didn't want to reward them for hanging out in his driveway.

Blunt hasn't got enough time left to do anything but muse that Comey "create[d] a source close to the former director of the FBI as opposed to taking responsibility yourself." Yes, but so what? Was this another instance of a failure of courage? Is Comey improperly tending to his personal image?

Angus King — an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats — goes next. There's what sounds like a rehearsed dialogue that gets bungled (perhaps because Comey doesn't trust King to get his line out:

KING: [W]hen a president of the United States in the Oval Office says something like, I hope or I suggest or would you, do you take that as a directive?

COMEY: Yes. It rings in my ear as, well, will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest.

KING: I was just going to quote that, in 1179, December 27th, Henry II said, who will rid me of the meddlesome priest, and the next day, he was killed. [Thomas a Becket.] Exactly the same situation. We're thinking along the same lines.

The bracketed name is heard in the video but missing (with no indication of an omission) in the Politico transcript. Lame.

King's "Exactly the same situation" is a tad overeager. And he screws up the quote. Not only is what Trump said not "exactly the same," Comey's quote "will no one rid me..." isn't even exactly the same as King's version "who will rid me...." In Senator King's version, Henry is asking who will do it. In Comey's version, Henry is expressing displeasure that it may not happen. Who got the quote right? It's not clear exactly what Henry said all those many years ago. There's no recorded recollection memo, but an oral tradition.

According to Wikipedia, the most common quote is "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" but according to the historian Simon Schama, what Henry really said was: "What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?"

We don't really know what Henry said, but we do know that it was taken as a directive to kill Thomas Beckett. And the analogue here is that Comey took Trump's remark as a directive. The puzzle remains whether it was a directive. We should all understand that leaders may express themselves in enigmatic ways that are useful to keep themselves above the fray but that the underlings know how to interpret. We still need to think carefully about particular assertions that something that wasn't said was implied.

Next is Senator Lankford, who wonders why Trump used such a light touch if he really wanted to stop the investigation. Why not be explicit? It is that "he doesn't have the authority"?

COMEY: I'm not a legal scholar, [so smarter people answer this better,] but as a legal matter, the president is the head of the executive branch and could direct, in theory, we have important norms against this, but [direct that anybody be investigated or anybody not be investigated]. I think he has the legal authority. All of us ultimately report in the executive branch to the president.

If the President can do that but didn't, does that mean he didn't mean for his vague expression to be taken as a directive? That would have been my follow up, and I assume Comey's answer would have been that it would have been more convenient for Trump to avoid taking responsibility for the action if Comey had done what Trump wanted.

Lankford gets back to the subject of Loretta Lynch's telling him to call the Clinton investigation ad "matter" and not an "investigation."