The US Secret Service said Monday it does not have any audio recordings or transcripts of US President Donald Trump’s White House conversations, The Wall Street Journal reported.
After Trump again intimated last Friday that he could have recorded his controversial discussions with fired FBI director James Comey, it remained unclear if that claim was true.
The Secret Service, which protects the president and his family, maintained a secret taping system for the White House in the eras of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.
But in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Journal, the agency said it did not have any such records for the Trump adminstration.
On May 12, three days after he fired Comey, Trump suggested in a tweet that he had recorded their private discussions.
The claim came in response to reports, since confirmed, that Comey himself had kept detailed notes on those discussions in which, he alleges, Trump demanded a pledge of loyalty and pressed the then-FBI director to pull off on an investigation into Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn.
“James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Trump wrote.
On Friday, after explosive testimony from Comey in Congress repeated the claims that Trump pressured him over Flynn, Trump responded angrily, calling Comey a liar.
Asked if he had tapes of their conversations, Trump replied demurely, “I’ll tell you about that maybe in the very near future.”
That left open the possibility that other White House staff, or Trump himself, could have been involved in recording their talks, if anyone.
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