James Comey is going for the gold in his opening statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee, addressing head-on the unconfirmed accusation that Donald Trump once hired Russian prostitutes to perform a “golden showers” routine.
When BuzzFeed first reported on the unverified dossier containing the claim, many news outlets considered it so baseless that they didn’t report on it. So it will be fun to see how they cover Comey’s discussion with the president about “hookers in Russia” when he delivers his statement Thursday.
“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,” Comey writes in the opening statement, a copy of which was released in advance of his testimony.
The comments were apparently made during a March 30 phone call between Trump and Comey. The classified dossier, written by former British spy Christopher Steele , was presented to President Barack Obama and then-President-elect Trump. While the documents have not been verified in their totality, many of Steele’s findings have panned out.
Trump publicly denied the “golden shower” allegations in January, telling reporters: “I’m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way. Believe me.”
The dossier suggested that Trump could be blackmailed for hiring prostitutes to urinate in a bed in the presidential suite of the Moscow Ritz-Carlton Hotel, where President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama had stayed in during one of their official visits.
The re-emergence of the “golden showers” story is good news for late night comedians: In January, “The Daily Show” host Trevor Noah opened his show by spoofing the opening of the 1964 James Bond movie “Goldfinger.” His opening title was “Goldshower.” (You can watch Trevor Noah’s intro above.)
Also, heres Stephen Colbert calling the accusation “juicy”:
It’s going to be a rough couple of weeks for germaphobes.