House Oversight Committee chair Jason Chaffetz demanded that all correspondence be presented by 24 May.

US media have quoted a memo by Mr Comey that reportedly says Mr Trump asked him to drop an inquiry into links between his ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn and Russia.

The White House denied the allegation.

“The president has never asked Mr Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn,” it said.

Mr Trump fired Mr Comey last week in a move that stunned Washington.

Meanwhile Russian President Vladimir Putin promised to release to Congress records of a White House meeting between Mr Trump, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.

Mr Putin said Mr Trump had passed on no secrets at the meeting.

Critics have questioned the timing of the meeting, which came a day after Mr Comey was sacked, and on Tuesday US media quoted officials as saying Mr Trump had passed on classified information there.

During a White House meeting with Mr Comey in February, the alleged memo quotes Mr Trump as referring to Mr Flynn and saying: “I hope you can let this go.”

The memo was written immediately after the meeting, a day after Mr Flynn resigned, according to media reports.

In a letter to acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, Mr Chaffetz said the memo, along with others made by Mr Comey from his meetings with the president, “raise questions as to whether the president attempted to influence or impede the FBI’s investigation”.

He adds that the FBI should “provide, no later than May 24, 2017, all memoranda, notes, summaries and recordings referring or relating to any communications between Comey and the president”.

Mr Chaffetz had earlier tweeted that he would force the FBI to comply if necessary.

“@GOPoversight is going to get the Comey memo, if it exists. I need to see it sooner rather than later. I have my subpoena pen ready,” he said.

Mr Flynn was forced out in February after he misled the vice-president about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador before Mr Trump took office.

The latest Russian twist, first reported by the New York Times, comes a week after Mr Trump fired Mr Comey over his handling of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while at the state department.

Mr Comey’s dismissal sent shockwaves through Washington, with critics accusing the president of trying to thwart the FBI investigation into Russia’s alleged interference in the US election and any ties to Trump associates.

What’s the latest allegation?

Mr Comey reportedly wrote a memo following a meeting with the president on 14 February that revealed Mr Trump had asked him to close an investigation into Mr Flynn’s actions.

He reportedly shared the memo with top FBI associates.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” the president told Mr Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy.”

Mr Comey did not respond to his request, according to the memo, but replied: “I agree he is a good guy.”

In response to the report, a White House official pointed out that Mr McCabe had testified last week that there had been “no effort to impede our investigation to date”.

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Source: BBC

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He tweeted that Mr Comey had “better hope there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations”, suggesting such tapes, if they existed, might contradict him.

Mr Comey, who had been leading an inquiry into possible collusion between Trump election campaign officials and Russia, was fired on Tuesday.

Mr Trump has insisted Mr Comey told him that he was not under investigation.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer later said Mr Trump had nothing more to say on the “tapes” but that the tweet the president had put out was “not a threat” to Mr Comey.

Mr Trump has said that Mr Comey has told him three times that he was not a target of the FBI inquiry, comments that have raised accusations among opponents that the president was interfering in the investigation.

Mr Trump also said this week that he alone was responsible for the decision to sack Mr Comey, calling him a “showboat” and “grandstander”.

But this appeared to undermine earlier comments from administration officials that Mr Comey had been fired on the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy Rod Rosenstein.

The first line of Mr Trump’s letter sacking Mr Comey refers to a memo written by Mr Rosenstein and says: “I have accepted their recommendation”.

But he later told NBC he was “going to fire him regardless of the recommendation”.

The White House said Mr Comey was fired over his handling of the Hillary Clinton email affair, but Democrats have asked, if that is the case, why it took so long.

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Source: BBC

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