“Salacious material”

From James Comey’s prepared testimony:

During the dinner, the President returned to the salacious material I had briefed him about on January 6, and, as he had done previously, expressed his disgust for the allegations and strongly denied them. He said he was considering ordering me to investigate the alleged incident to prove it didn’t happen. [January 27 dinner.]

He described the Russia investigation as “a cloud” that was impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country. 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. [March 30 telephone call.]

Strange: Trump circles back — twice — to the “salacious material” and denies wrongdoing. Was anyone besides Trump still thinking about that stuff in March? He doth protest too much, methinks. And I wonder: is “hookers” Comey’s word, or Trump’s?

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April 19, 2018: With the release of James Comey’s memos, we now know that “hookers” is Trump’s word: “can you imagine me, hookers?” And we now know that on February 8, 2017, Trump circled back once more to “the hookers thing,” as he then called it.