Article snippet: abruptly fired in March. Mr. Bharara said the contacts with Mr. Trump made him increasingly uncomfortable because they broke with longstanding Justice Department rules on communicating with the White House. Mr. Bharara, who first publicly disclosed the contacts and his concerns about them after he was fired, said Mr. Trump’s communications were strikingly similar to those between the president and those described by the former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, who was fired last month. “When I’ve been reading the stories of how the president has been contacting Jim Comey over time, felt a little bit like déjà vu,” Mr. Bharara said Sunday on “This Week” on ABC. In his Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Thursday, Mr. Comey said he became uneasy with the president’s repeated conversations with him, including a private White House dinner in February. Mr. Comey said he believed that Mr. Trump, who requested his loyalty during the meal, was trying to “create some sort of patronage relationship.” Mr. Bharara said he had a similar feeling about his conversations with Mr. Trump. “I was in discussions with my own folks, and in reporting the phone call to the chief of staff to the attorney general, I said it appeared to be that he was trying to cultivate some kind of relationship,” he told ABC News, calling the exchanges “a very weird and peculiar thing.” The first contact between Mr. Trump and Mr. Bharara took place on Nov. 30, on the 26th floor of Trump Tower in Man... Link to the full article to read more
Preet Bharara Says Trump Tried to Build Relationship With Him Before Firing - The New York Times
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