President Donald Trump on Friday warned his sacked FBI director against “leaking” information to reporters, as the White House refused to deny that the president records his conversations with visitors.Capping a week in which Trump faced a slew of criticism for firing the man investigating his campaign’s possible ties to Russia, Trump told James Comey there could be retribution if he tells the press about their private conversations.”James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Trump said, in a morning Twitter tirade that painted a picture of a president under siege and lashing out.Furious with the news coverage of the White House’s shifting explanations on Comey’s sacking, Trump suggested the media was wrong to expect his spokespeople to be 100 percent accurate.”As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!” he tweeted.Trump then went on to suggest scrapping the traditional White House briefings that have existed in some form since the Woodrow Wilson administration almost a century ago.A briefing was nevertheless held Friday, and spokesman Sean Spicer pushed back against charges that the Republican billionaire president had threatened Comey.”That’s not a threat. He’s simply stating a fact,” Spicer said tersely. “I’m moving on.”When pressed about whether Trump recorded his conversations with Comey or others, Spicer responded: “The president has nothing further to add on that.”Trump’s bareknuckle comments immediately fueled fresh comparisons between his administration and that of disgraced president Richard Nixon, who famously recorded his conversations — a fact that sped his downfall during the Watergate scandal.”Presidents are supposed to have stopped routinely taping visitors without their knowledge when Nixon’s taping system was revealed in 1973,” tweeted presidential historian Michael Beschloss.Congressional Democrats fumed, with House Intelligence Committee vice-chairman Adam Schiff challenging Trump.”The president should immediately provide any such recordings to Congress or admit, once again, to have made a deliberately misleading — and in this case threatening — statement,” Schiff said.In his morning tweetstorm, Trump brought the issue back to Russia, referring to the assertion by the former head of national intelligence that Trump was, to his knowledge, not colluding with Moscow.”When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?” Trump tweeted.The White House initially asserted Comey’s dismissal had nothing to do with the Russian investigations, which continue to be an albatross around the neck of Trump’s presidency.Instead, they said, the president fired Comey on the advice of senior Justice Department officials including Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who in a memo expressed concern about Comey’s handling of a 2016 probe into Trump’s election rival Hillary Clinton.But Trump shattered that explanation himself Thursday when he said he had always intended to fire Comey, and that his decision was linked to the ongoing investigation into his campaign’s Russia ties.
