White House refuses to say ‘if Trump tapes conversations’

Bloomberg

The White House repeatedly refused to say whether President Donald Trump secretly records his official conversations, after Trump suggested in a tweet that he had “tapes” of discussions with former FBI director James Comey.
Trump issued a series of inflammatory Twitter posts, including a barely veiled threat against Comey, an assertion that it’s “not possible” for his spokesmen to accurately represent him, and a suggestion he may end the White House’s practice of briefing reporters on most weekdays. The missives raised new questions about Trump’s May 9 dismissal of Comey, and re-focused attention on the government’s investigations of Russian meddling in the US presidential election. “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!” Trump wrote in one of six tweets that began at 7:15 a.m. The first question to White House spokesman Sean Spicer at his briefing: Did Trump record his conversations with Comey?
“I’ve talked to the president. The president has nothing further to add on that,” Spicer said.
The reporter asked whether there are “recording devices” in the Oval Office or the White House residence. “There is nothing further to add on that,” Spicer repeated. Trump, in a Fox News interview that will air on Saturday night said he “can’t talk about” the idea that there might be tape recordings. “I won’t talk about that,” Trump will say on “Justice with Judge Jeanine,” according to a transcript released by the network.

Not Aware
Later, Spicer said he was “not aware” of a recording of a January 27 dinner between Trump and Comey at which, the president said in an interview with NBC News on Thursday, Comey pleaded to keep his job and first assured Trump that he wasn’t a target of the FBI’s Russia investigation.
Then, asked to answer a yes or no question about whether Trump records his official conversations, Spicer again refused to say.
“The point I made with respect to the tweet is the president has no further comment on that,” he said. As he ended the briefing, Spicer ignored a shouted question about whether he had asked the president if White House conversations were recorded.
The search for Comey’s successor will begin in earnest on Saturday, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein plan to interview four candidates for a nominee that Trump will send to the Senate. The initial contenders they will see are acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, former Justice Department official Alice Fisher and Michael Garcia, a former US Attorney in Manhattan, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Comey, meanwhile, has declined to testify in private next Tuesday to the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Becca Watkins, a spokeswoman for the panel’s chairman, Richard Burr of North Carolina. Burr and Mark Warner of Virginia, the committee’s senior Democrat, had invited Comey to talk to the panel after he was fired. The committee is investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

‘This is Normal’
Among White House staff and close allies, the day’s events were no more unusual than countless past controversies — on the trail and as president — that Trump has sparked and then enthusiastically fueled, often through the use of his @realDonaldTrump twitter account, now followed by 29 million people.
“This is normal from the point of view of the Trump campaign, the Trump White House,” said former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a close Trump adviser. “They don’t overreact; everyone knows the president puts out his own messages. I don’t think there’s any feeling that there’s any major problem.”
One senior White House official conceded that his staff could have better communicated the Comey decision and Trump’s reasoning behind it. There’s frustration that the Russia investigation continues to dog the administration, the person said. Trump’s tweets on Friday resulted from his instinct to counter-punch against attacks in the media, the person said.