(CN) - FBI Director James Comey opened his much-anticipated testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday by saying the Trump administration defamed him and flat-out lied about the internal state of the FBI as it struggled to explain why President Donald Trump fired him.
“I was confused by initial explanation ... that I was fired because of the decision I made during the election year," Comey told the committee in his opening remarks, referring to his handling of the investigation into Democrat Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.
"That didn’t make sense for a bunch of reasons, including the time and all the water that went under the bridge since those hard decisions had to be made," Comey said. "And though the law required no reason at all to fire an FBI director, the administration chose to defame me and more importantly the FBI, saying the organization is in disarray, poorly led and that they lost confidence in their leader.
"Those were lies plain and simple," Comey continued. "The FBI will be fine without me. Their mission will be relentlessly pursued. The FBI is honest, the FBI is strong. And the FBI is and always will be independent."
The former FBI director was also unequivocal two other points: "There should be n fuzz on this, the Russians did interfere with our election," he said.
And: "It is my judgment that I was fired because of the Russia investigation, to change it in some way."
Comey later admitted that after accounts of his conversations with Trump about former NSA Chief Michael Flynn became public, he leaked a memo detailing his account of those exchanges to the press through a professor at the Columbia Law School.
He did not identify the friend who acted as a conduit to The New York Times, beyond mentioning his profession.
But in a May story about Comey, the Times quoted Columbia Law professor Daniel Richman, who it described as a friend of the former FBI director who had spoken with him "several times since he was fired." After Comey's revelation, the server at the Columbia Law School crashed due to a surge in traffic. Richman later confirmed to The Washington Post that he was indeed the conduit to the Times.
Comey said he made the decision to do so after the president tweeted he better hope there were no tapes of their conversations.
"I woke up [that] night and realized that there might be corroboration of the account that was emerging and that I needed to get that out to the public square," Comey said. "I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. I thought that might prompt an appointment of a special counsel."
Sen. Roy Blunt, R.- Missouri, asked whether Comey considered his memo a government document.
"I understand this to be my personal record of the conversation," Comey said.
The former FBI director went on to say he hopes there are tapes of his conversations with the president and encouraged the White House to release them if they exist.
"Lordy, I hope there are tapes," he said.