Trump, Citing Flight Logs, Says He Overnighted in Moscow in 2013

(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump said he spent the night in Moscow for the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, rebutting a claim by former FBI Director James Comey that the president twice told him otherwise.

In an interview Thursday with Fox News’s program “Fox & Friends,” Trump cited the existence of flight records for the trip. Bloomberg obtained the records and published a story about the Moscow trip earlier this week.

“Everybody knows, the logs are there, the planes are there,” Trump said. “He said I didn’t stay there at night. Of course I stayed there. I stayed there a very short period of time, but of course I stayed.”

According to Comey’s memos, Trump denied spending the night in Moscow during the 2013 trip as he explained to the former FBI director why a salacious report regarding his time in Russia couldn’t be true. The Justice Department turned over the memos to Congress last week.

The flight records obtained by Bloomberg show that the jet Trump reportedly flew on arrived in Moscow on Friday, Nov. 8, 2013, and departed on Sunday, Nov. 10, at 3:58 a.m., just hours after the pageant ended.

To contact the reporter on this story: Vernon Silver in Rome at vtsilver@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Robert Blau at rblau1@bloomberg.net, Alex Wayne, Kevin Whitelaw

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.