The Londoner: Comey swayed by Trump sex dossier

James Comey gets bashful around Trump  / Nigel Farage sells himself Down Under / Boris Johnson schooled by Cicero / Did Airbus take flight from Business Minister?
Wet work: James Comey
Getty Images
22 June 2018

Former FBI director James Comey, asked last night if “all the salacious” stories about Donald Trump in the Steele dossier were true, replied: “When I first saw it I didn’t believe it at all... [now] I think it’s possible that it’s true.”

His “view changed”, he says, as a result of “my encounters with the President”.

Comey was talking to Emily Maitlis at an Intelligence Squared debate to promote Comey’s book, A Higher Loyalty. Maitlis, BBC Newsnight’s star interviewer, pressed him on the specific point of “the prostitutes being ordered by President Trump to p*** on the bed in which the Obamas stayed in a Moscow hotel”. A bashful Comey replied: “Words that have never left my lips.”

Comey’s firing by Trump last May helped trigger Robert Mueller’s ongoing inquiry. He told the audience that mentioning the dossier to Trump was “such a stressful thing for me. I actually remember looking down on myself from the ceiling, like an out-of-body experience, ‘I’m talking to the president-elect about prostitutes. How did I end up here?’”

He explained how his own doubts about the President began to grow, most sharply during the excruciating moment that Trump asked for his “personal loyalty”.

Maitlis asked if the hairs on Comey’s neck stood up. “Yes,” he said, “it surprised me that all I could think of in the moment was ‘don’t move, don’t blink, don’t twitch’ so I just stared at him. If I’d been more prepared for that I might have had something better to do but I just stared.”

Maitlis asked: “Why wasn’t your response to say, Mr President that’s not my job?”

“That’s what I meant by something better,” he said.

Comey was also firm on his controversial decision to reopen the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton, but he confessed that after he sent his second letter clearing Clinton, “I went and got a margarita as big as my head.”

Bread and circuses... and Boris Johnson

Aaron Bastani, Jeremy Corbyn’s social-media champion, justified the expulsion of Our Future, Our Choice campaigners from Labour Live on the Daily Politics last week because they were “causing a public nuisance”. He didn’t mention that he was convicted of a public-order offence himself for ramming a bin into an HSBC branch during an anti-austerity protest in 2011.

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Business and Industry minister Richard Harrington visited an Airbus factory near Bristol yesterday. “The UK is a world leader in aerospace and the west of England is central to this,” he said. Shortly afterwards Airbus announced they might pull out of the UK. What on earth did he say?

A long night of Itchy Scratchy Patchy fun has the fashionistas turning out in force

Itchy & Scratchy: Christabel McGreevy and Edie Campbell (Photo Dave Benett/Getty Images) 
Dave Benett/Getty Images for The

Model Edie Campbell and artist Christabel MacGreevy welcomed friends to a summer solstice party in Fitzrovia last night. Campbell and MacGreevy founded Itchy Scratchy Patchy, which makes comic patches and T-shirts. Says Campbell: “We’re obsessed with the absurd, with vignettes of the ridiculous that we find in daily life — and it is this that amuses us and informs our patches.” Fashion designers Christopher Kane and Molly Goddard were among the attendees, as were model Jazzelle Zanaughtti and Vogue columnist Raven Smith. Guests had their palms read and tucked into a pagan-style feast that featured roasted wild mushroom, followed by chocolate truffles. The evening, held at the London Edition Hotel, celebrated Heroes, their latest collection which was inspired by Sappho and Boudicca.

SW1A

Labour MPs Jo Stevens, Cardiff Central, and Carolyn Harris, Swansea East, both received letters from Home Secretary Sajid Javid (below) saying “how proud he is that we as EU citizens have made our home in the UK and [how] this is a step towards his commitment that we can continue our lives here”. MPs must be British citizens. Stevens thinks she knows why he’s written: “Is it because we’re Welsh, Sajid?”

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Labour deputy leader Tom Watson’s no-carb, high-fat diet has seen him lose six stone so rapidly he was stopped going through the lobby in Parliament the other day because the teller didn’t recognise him.

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CULTURE secretary Matt Hancock, speaking about the future of tech, explained how, like Netflix, “I transformed politics in West Suffolk launching the Matt Hancock app.” He added that the combined userbase of Netflix, Airbnb and his app “is now over 300 million people”.

Quote of the day

'Happy to be barricaded in for such a great cause.' Sally Bercow, the Speaker's wife, says she doesn't mind not being able to drive out of Parliament tomorrow because of an anti-Brexit rally.

Farage bills himself the 495 dollar man

Nigel Farage is heading down under — but only temporarily. The ex-Ukip leader is somehow fitting a five-date lecture tour of Australia into his busy schedule as a committed MEP. “I come to you from the UK with a message of hope and optimism,” Farage tells his fans. The message is not cheap. AUD 495 (£276) buys “a VIP ticket with a backstage pass to an after-show champagne party with Mr Farage”. Or it’s AUD 295 for a VIP ticket and a one-on-one photograph”. Perhaps he is auditioning for a role as a post-Brexit trade envoy.

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Working Mum: Samantha Cameron
Dave Benett/Getty Images

Samantha Cameron attended Mothers2Mothers’ Midsummer Soiree last night. The fashion designer is a good advertisement for her own label, Cefinn.

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