A typical Senate committee hearing can expect a sparse number of live viewers. Not so for Thursday’s Senate Intelligence hearing, featuring fired FBI Director James Comey. It’s the first time Comey is speaking publicly about his termination by President Donald Trump.
In addition to CPSAN 3 (and the CSPAN radio app), news networks CBS, NBC, Fox, and ABC all plan to preempt their programming to carry the 10 a.m. hearing live.
Cable news outlets CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News will also carry the hearing live, but that’s far less rare. (Also commonplace: both CNN and Fox News are employing a countdown clock in the corner of their screens, ticking down to the start of the testimony.)
A bevy of D.C. bars are treating the hearing like it’s the Super Bowl, opening early and offering drink specials. One is even promising a round of free drinks every time President Donald Trump tweets about Comey during the testimony, as The Washington Post reports the commander in chief might do.
It all begins at 10 a.m. EST. Here are the best ways to watch:
- Senate Intelligence Committee website
- PBS is livestreaming
- So is CNN
- Plus, Bloomberg is streaming the testimony on Twitter
In the meantime, prepare yourself by reading Comey’s opening statement, which the Senate Intel Committee released on Wednesday afternoon.
The statement chronologically explains Comey and Trump’s interactions from the former FBI director’s perspective. Comey made it a practice to create a written record of each time he spoke with Trump, though he had not done so with the previous president. He notes that the number of times he spoke directly with Trump over the course of four months—three in person and six over the phone—was significantly more than the two times he spoke with President Barack Obama alone over three years.
Comey describes a series of interactions that “concerned me greatly,” with Trump engaging in an effort to “create some sort of patronage relationship.” During a one-on-one dinner, Trump told him “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.”
According to Comey, Trump asked him to “lift the cloud” of the Russia investigation. “He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia,” the testimony reads.
That bit about hookers refers to an unverified dossier often referred to as “The Pee Tape.” That’s because it claims that Trump hired Russian sex workers to urinate in front of him in a hotel room, and the entire escapade was taped by the Russians to be used as blackmail.
The testimony ends with the poetic line, “That was the last time I spoke with President Trump.” Less than a month after their final conversation, Trump fired Comey.
Comey Opening Statement by Rachel Kurzius on Scribd
Rachel Kurzius