From 'loyalty' dinner to indictment, how the TrumpComey relationship imploded Josh Meyer, USA TODAY September 26, 2025 at 10:44 PM 3 WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump's nowfraught relationship with his first FBI director, James Comey, started off friendly, with mutual praise and a fancy dinner bac...
- - From 'loyalty' dinner to indictment, how the Trump-Comey relationship imploded
Josh Meyer, USA TODAY September 26, 2025 at 10:44 PM
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WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump's now-fraught relationship with his first FBI director, James Comey, started off friendly, with mutual praise and a fancy dinner back in the early days of Trump's first term in 2017.
But it quickly went downhill after that, with Trump firing Comey and launching a long-lasting vendetta against him.
Here are the key events in the Trump-Comey feud that ultimately resulted in the first-ever federal indictment obtained by the Justice Department Sept. 25 against a former head of the nation's premiere law enforcement agency.
July 5, 2016:
Comey, three years into a 10-year term as FBI director, holds a news conference to say Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton would not face charges over her handling of classified information on her private email server as secretary of state. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, is outraged, saying it was proof "the system is rigged" against him. "Very unfair!" Trump posted on Twitter. Comey's FBI, meanwhile, had begun investigating Russia's hacking of Democrats' emails and other interference in the election.
Oct. 31, 2016
Trump praises Comey for announcing publicly that he was notifying Congress about additional developments in the FBI's Clinton email investigation in the final days of the campaign. Critics, including Clinton, were furious, saying Comey's move would unfairly help Trump win. Trump was elated, saying, "It took a lot of guts. … He brought back his reputation. … What he did was the right thing."
Jan. 6, 2017
After an intelligence briefing on Russian interference in the election, Comey privately briefs President-elect Trump "on some personally sensitive aspects of the information" contained in the now-infamous Steele dossier about Kremlin efforts to influence Trump's campaign. Comey documents the exchange immediately afterward in contemporaneous notes, he will later testify, fearing future disputes with Trump over what transpired. "To ensure accuracy, I began to type it on a laptop in an FBI vehicle outside Trump Tower the moment I walked out of the meeting," Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating Russian election interference on June 8, 2017. "Creating written records immediately after one-on-one conversations with Mr. Trump was my practice from that point forward."
Jan. 27, 2017
Trump and Comey have a private dinner at the White House, with Comey saying Trump wanted it and that he felt "uneasy with it." Trump says Comey "asked for the dinner" because "he wanted to stay on" as FBI director – even though the 10-year FBI terms are designed to stretch beyond presidential administrations to ensure the director's independence from politics. Trump repeatedly presses Comey to pledge loyalty to him despite the ongoing Russia investigation, Comey later testifies. Comey resists, offering honesty – and the two settle on 'honest loyalty.'
Feb. 14, 2017
In an Oval Office meeting, Trump tells all attendees but Comey to leave – and then tells his FBI director to "let Flynn go," which Comey interprets as an attempt to influence the FBI investigation into Trump's first National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, who had just resigned over contacts with Russian officials. "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go," Trump said, according to Comey's contemporaneous notes. "He is a good guy."
May 9, 2017
Trump stuns the political world by firing Comey at the height of the Russian election interference investigation. Trump initially claims it was due to Comey's handling of the Clinton email server investigation he had earlier championed, but later admits "this Russia thing" was indeed a factor. In his termination letter, Trump refers to that FBI investigation, telling Comey he appreciated him "informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation" – a claim Comey would later deny.
May 12, 2017
Trump tweets a warning to Comey, hinting that their conversations might have been recorded and would embarrass his former FBI director. "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" Trump tweets. Comey later tells senators, "Lordy, I hope there are tapes." Then, on June 22, Trump flip-flops, tweeting that, "I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings."
Ousted FBI director James Comey listens during a hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Capitol Hill June 8, 2017 in Washington, DC..June 8, 2017
Speaking publicly for the first time since his abrupt firing, Comey delivers bombshell testimony before a Senate committee, including saying he believed Trump ordered him to drop the investigation into his former top aide Michael Flynn's ties to Russia. Comey also tells the Senate Intelligence Committee that he now believes Trump fired him to relieve pressure from the ongoing FBI investigation into possible collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russia.
April 12, 2018
Excerpts emerge from Comey's tell-all memoir, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership," in which he blasts Trump as being "unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values." Comey also writes: "His leadership is transactional, ego driven and about personal loyalty" and doing serious damage to the country's norms and traditions.
Dec. 9, 2019
The Justice Department's Inspector General delivers a report on Crossfire Hurricane, the code name for the FBI's Trump Russia investigation. It debunks Trump's longstanding claims that political bias played a role in the FBI's decision to launch the probe and target Trump's campaign, saying there was a valid factual basis to do so. It also finds serious problems in the way FBI applications for secret FISA surveillance warrants were obtained.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump and Former FBI director James Comey (R) appear in Washington, DC, U.S., on May 24 and April 30, 2018 respectively. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque (L) and Jonathan Ernst/File PhotoSept. 30, 2020
Comey is called to testify before Senate Republicans as part of their effort to reexamine – and, critics say, undermine – the FBI's Russia investigation as Trump campaigns for a second White House term. Comey defends the investigation as being done "by the book" and essential. Comey also makes statements that will later form the basis of the criminal charges against him, including about whether he authorized anyone else at the FBI to serve as an anonymous source in news reports about investigations into Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
May 15, 2025
The Secret Service and FBI say they're investigating Comey after he posts an image of '8647' on social media, which Trump claims was Comey's way of "calling for the assassination of the president." "Cool shell formation on my beach walk," Comey said in his Instagram post, with sea shells forming the number 8647 on a beach. Comey later took down the post, saying he was unaware the apparent political message could have been associated with violence. In U.S. parlance, the number 86 can be used as a verb, meaning to throw somebody out of a bar for being drunk or disorderly, and 47 is code for Trump, the 47th president. "He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant," Trump said in an interview with Fox News.
July 16, 2025
James Comey's daughter, New York federal prosecutor Maurene Comey, who worked on the prosecutions against Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Sean "Diddy" Combs, is fired by the Department of Justice. Maurene Comey was given a memo on her firing that noted the president's broad constitutional powers to terminate employees, according to Reuters.
Lindsey Halligan followed by Jim Trusty, part of former U.S. President Donald Trumps legal team, leave the Paul G. Rogers Federal Building and Courthouse in West Palm Beach, Florida, on September 1, 2022.Sept. 20, 2025
Trump calls on Attorney General Pam Bondi to go after his political adversaries, including Comey, in a post on Truth Social, saying the former FBI director is "guilty as hell," without explaining what Comey is allegedly guilty of. "We can't delay any longer," and "JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!" Trump said. Critics took that to mean Trump wanted Bondi to act on Comey before the statute of limitations ran out on Sept. 30 with regard to his 2020 testimony before Congress. In a separate post the same day, Trump said he fired Erik Siebert, who until recently had served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and reportedly declined to bring charges against Comey. Trump replaced Seibert with a former personal defense lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, who brought he case to indictment.
Sept. 25, 2025
Comey is indicted on charges of lying to Congress and obstruction regarding his 2020 testimony. Prosecutors claim Comey falsely said that day that he hadn't "authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports" regarding an FBI investigation. He claims his innocence, saying he will fight the charges and prevail. Trump hails the indictment as vindication of his claims that the Russia probe was politically motivated. "One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey, the former Corrupt Head of the FBI," Trump posted on Truth Social. "He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation."
Contributing: Aysha Bagchi
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Here's how Donald Trump and James Comey's relationship turned bad
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