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cleared a meeting of its other attendees and privately asked Comey to "let this go, to let Flynn go." The indictment accepts Comey's understanding that the President was "requesting that [the FBI] drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December." On March 30, 2017, ten days after Comey told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the FBI was investigating links between the President's campaign and the Russian government, the President asked Comey to "lift the cloud" of the Russian investigation, further telling Comey that the investigation was creating problems for him and expressing the "hope" that Comey “would find a way to get it out that [the FBI] [wasn't] investigating him." On April 11, according to the indictment, the President asked the FBI Director what he "had done about this request that [Comey] ‘get out’ that [the President] is not personally under investigation," saying that "the cloud" was "getting in the way of his ability to do his job." Comey asked the President to send his request to the appropriate parties at the Department of Justice. The President agreed but reminded Comey that he had been "very loyal to you [Comey], very loyal; we had that thing, you know." On May 9, the President fired Comey, publicly saying that the “Russian thing" played a role in his decision to fire the FBI Director. The next day, the President said he'd "faced great pressure because of Russia," and as a result of the firing, that pressure had been "taken off." On May 17, soon after learning about the appointment of the Special Counsel by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein—in his role as acting Attorney General, after the recusal of Attorney General Jefferson Sessions—the President accused Sessions of "disloyalty" for recusing himself from the Russian investigation. In June 2017, the indictment alleges, the President ordered Robert Mueller to be fired, reversing course only when the White House counsel, Don McGahn, refused to implement the order. On July 8, after reports of a meeting between the President's son, Donald Trump, Jr., and a Russian agent, Natalia Veselnitskaya, during the 2016 campaign, the President, in furtherance of a cover-up, the indictment alleges, directed his son to state that he and Veselnitskaya had "primarily discussed a program about the adoption of children," when, in fact, according to the indictment, the meeting was organized so that "Russia and its government" could provide the Presidential HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_029168