Politics

Trump Used Wife Melania in Ploy To Get FBI To Prove 'Pee Tape' Was a Lie, Claims James Comey

The fired FBI director writes in his memoir that Trump worried his wife might believe dossier on him with Russian prostitutes

By Diane Herbst

Published on April 13, 2018 12:45 PM

Donald Trump wanted then-FBI director James Comey to investigate the alleged existence of the infamous “pee tape” to reassure wife Melania he was not with hookers in a Moscow hotel room as the women urinated on a bed, Comey alleges in his soon-to-be-released book.

Trump “brought up what he called the ‘golden showers thing’ … It bothered him if there was ‘even a one-percent chance’ his wife, Melania, thought it was true,” Comey writes in “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership,” The Washington Post reported Thursday.

Trump told Comey to consider having the FBI investigate the allegation about the prostitutes to “prove it was a lie.”

The conversation took place during a private dinner with Trump at the White House on Jan. 27, 2017, when Comey has said Trump demanded “loyalty” from him.

Trump was president-elect when Comey first brought up the widely circulated intelligence dossier containing unconfirmed allegations that in 2013, Russians had filmed Trump with prostitutes he had instructed to urinate on the same bed at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton where President Obama once slept.

President Trump Hosts The Inaugural Law Enforcement Officers And First Responders Reception At The White House — Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty

Donald Trump and James Comey

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Trump denied the allegations in his conversations with Comey, the former FBI director writes. The White House also did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s requests for comment on the former FBI director’s claims.

“I’m a germaphobe,” Trump told Comey in a follow-up call on Jan. 11, 2017, according to Comey’s account. “There’s no way I would let people pee on each other around me. No way.”

Comey writes that Trump repeatedly brought up the Russian “pee pee tape” allegations, saying he didn’t like how they affected Melania.

“For about the fourth time, he argued that the golden showers thing wasn’t true, asking yet again, ‘Can you imagine me, hookers?’” Comey writes of their March 30, 2017, call.

“In an apparent play for my sympathy, he added that he has a beautiful wife and the whole thing has been very painful for her. He asked what we could do to ‘lift the cloud.’”

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Comey writes that he told Trump that the FBI was investigating it as quickly as possible.

Trump fired Comey as the head of the FBI in May, which led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller.

According to the New York Post, Comey writes that he wondered why Melania might think there was even a 1-percent chance the allegations were true, claiming there is “zero chance” his own wife would believe such a claim.

“In what kind of marriage, to what kind of man, does a spouse conclude there is only a 99 percent chance her husband didn’t do that?” Comey writes.