WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump on Friday denied asking fired FBI Director James B. Comey for a loyalty oath or requesting that he drop the investigation into former national security adviser Mike Flynn, and said he would be "100 percent" willing to testify under oath.
"I hardly know the man," Trump said of Comey during a Rose Garden news conference with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis. "I'm not going to say 'I want you to pledge allegiance.'"
Of Comey's Senate Intelligence Committee testimony that Trump asked him to drop the Flynn investigation. the president said, "I didn't say that."
He added, "And there'd be nothing wrong if I did say it, according to everybody that I've read today."
Trump said in response to a reporter that he would be willing to answer questions from Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is running the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and possible coordination with the Trump campaign.
Trump declined multiple times to say whether he had recorded his White House conversations with Comey, despite previously suggesting in a tweet that he might have.
He said he would answer the question "over a fairly short period of time," and then said cryptically to assembled reporters, "You're going to be very disappointed when you hear the answer."
He repeated his insistence that Comey's testimony on Thursday cleared him of wrongdoing.
"No collusion, no obstruction. He's a leaker," Trump said, adding, "But we want to get back to running our great country."
"We are doing really well," Trump said. The allegation of collusion with Russia "was an excuse by the Democrats" for their election loss in November.
