John Cassidy and Ryan Lizza live-blogged during the former F.B.I. director James Comey’s testimony on Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

That's it, then. Since Comey scooped the hearing by releasing his opening statement on Wednesday, there wasn't very much new news. But Comey's appearance went beyond the daily news cycle. Here was a former F.B.I. director calling the sitting President a liar and detailing how he tried to interfere with an ongoing federal investigation of his aides and associates. Comey didn't come out and say that Trump attempted to obstruct justice in putting pressure on him to drop the Flynn probe. He said that would be a matter for Robert Mueller, the special counsel, to sort out. But Comey made it patently clear that he believes this is a huge and serious matter that merits close investigation.

The other thing I took away from the hearing was what a Shakespearean turn this story has taken. If the Russia investigation does end up destroying the Trump Presidency, Trump will have brought much of it upon himself. Until he leaned on Comey and then fired him, he was facing a counter-espionage investigation in which he himself wasn't a formal target. Obviously, that was an irritation and a potential danger, but one from which he was still partly removed. But, rather than sitting it out and protesting his innocence, he let hubris get to him. Now, like Flynn, he is really in the soup.

—John Cassidy, 1:10 P.M.

A final thought as the public portion of the hearing wraps up. Comey made as strong a case as he could that Trump’s actions amounted to obstruction of justice, without actually using the words. The President is never going to be criminally charged, of course. Most legal scholars believe that you can’t indict a sitting President. That leaves this case in the realm of politics, with impeachment as the only remedy. Republicans control Congress, and I’m skeptical that Comey’s testimony, as thorough and troubling as it was, will change the minds of many Republicans whose instinct is to defend Trump from the worst accusations hurled at him by Democrats. But what to watch for is this: Are any Republicans so troubled by the President’s credibility that they will hedge their bets and join Democrats in supporting the continued investigation of Trump and his aides?

—Ryan Lizza, 12:52 P.M.

Senator John McCain's questioning was rambling, confusing, and embarrassing. Was he suggesting that there might have been some collusion between the Clinton campaign and the Russians? Hard to know. He did say, "She was already involved in this whole situation with fake news." He also said that he thought there had been a "double standard" in the way the F.B.I. closed the Clinton e-mail investigation but left open the Trump-Russia investigation. Comey seemed as confused as the rest of us.

—John Cassidy, 12:43 P.M.

So far, there hasn't been much about Trump repeatedly asking Comey to issue a public statement confirming that he wasn't personally under investigation. Senator John Cornyn, of Texas, brought the topic up, though. He asked Comey whether it was "unreasonable" for the President to want the F.B.I. director to help remove "the cloud" of suspicion that hung over him. "I think it is a reasonable point of view," Comey replied. "The concern is if the boomerang comes back, because there will be a duty to correct." He was referring to the Hillary Clinton case, of course, where the boomerang hit her just ten days before the election. Comey also said, to Senator Jack Reed, of Rhode Island, that he didn't say no to Trump but told him to address his concerns to the Justice Department. This raises the intriguing possibility that if Trump had left Comey in place, rather than firing him, he could eventually have gotten the public statement he wanted. If the Justice Department had ordered Comey to make a public statement saying Trump wasn't personally under investigation, he may well have done it.

—John Cassidy, 12:36 P.M.

In Comey’s exchange with Senator Kamala Harris, of California, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s role in helping insulate the F.B.I. director from having to meet alone with Trump was raised. Sessions’s part in this drama has been underplayed so far today. Comey noted that when he brought his concerns about Trump’s unusual practice of private meetings to Sessions, who was his boss, the Attorney General shrugged, as if Sessions didn’t know what to do. It’s one of several moments where interpreting body language and other cues was important to Comey. Republicans have argued that Trump wasn’t as forceful as he could have been in getting Comey to do his bidding. Harris, a former attorney general of California, noted that body language is sometimes important when determining intent. "When a robber held a gun to somebody’s head," she noted, "and said, ‘I hope you will give me your wallet,’ the word “hope” was not the most operative word at that moment."

—Ryan Lizza, 12:33 P.M.

We now know for sure what sort of soup Flynn is in. Asked by Senator Tom Cotton, of Arkansas, whether Flynn lied to federal investigators about his contacts with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian Ambassador to Washington, Comey replied, “That was the subject of the criminal inquiry.” Somewhere, Scooter Libby may have smiled to himself. Lying to federal investigators was the charge a special prosecutor brought against Libby, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, in 2005. In 2007, Libby was convicted and sentenced to thirty months in jail. President George W. Bush commuted the prison sentence but didn’t pardon Libby.

—John Cassidy, 12:21 P.M.

It’s worth noting that while Comey has not stated whether he believes Trump’s actions amount to obstruction of justice, he has repeatedly left the door open. Some legal scholars, like Alan Dershowitz and Jonathan Turley, have argued that there is no case for obstruction. Comey is not so sure. When asked, “Do you believe this will rise to obstruction of justice?” Comey replied, “I don’t know. That’s Bob Mueller’s job to sort that out.”

—Ryan Lizza, 12:17 P.M.

Almost two hours in, Comey finally said something that could reflect well on Trump, at least indirectly. Asked about Robert Mueller, the special counsel, Comey called Mueller "one of the finest people and public servants this country has produced." He added, "You can have confidence that when he's done, he will have turned over all the stones." It was Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, who appointed Mueller. And it was Trump who nominated Rosenstein. Of course, Comey may well have mixed feelings about Rosenstein, who wrote an internal memo saying that he should be replaced as F.B.I. director.

—John Cassidy, 12:13 P.M.

Again, Comey seems supremely confident about his version of events. Asked about the tapes that Trump has hinted he may have of their conversations, Comey said, “I hope there are, and I will consent to the release,” adding that, if Trump did tape him, “my feelings aren’t hurt. Release all of the tapes.” My own view is that there is little chance that the White House has a taping system installed. Nearly everything that goes on inside the Trump White House leaks out, and surely someone would have confirmed the existence of a taping system by now.

—Ryan Lizza, 12:08 P.M.

Several attempts by Republicans to dismiss Trump’s actions as somehow routine have resulted in Comey responding with a more dramatic account of how he viewed them. For instance, Senator James Lankford, of Oklahoma, tried to argue that it was well known that Trump hated the Russia investigation because he’s repeatedly tweeted about it. Lankford then asked Comey what the big deal is if Trump simply conveyed that same view to his F.B.I. director. Comey did not agree. He said that Trump’s actions posed a “real risk of a chilling effect on their work.” And, with that, Lankford shifted to another line of questioning.

—Ryan Lizza, 12:03 P.M.

Interestingly, Comey, in response to questions from Senator Angus King, of Maine, said that shutting down the Flynn case would not necessarily have affected the over-all Russia investigation. In his answer, Comey did offer a tantalizing clue as to what prosecutors may have wanted from Flynn, noting that sometimes with witnesses you want to “squeeze them and flip them.” He offered no comment on whether he successfully did that with Flynn. But more broadly he said that the Flynn investigation is not the Russia investigation. They are “touching each other but separate,” he said. This comports with what a source close to Comey told me earlier this week when he noted that the Flynn case was just an “eddy” feeding into “a much larger river.”

—Ryan Lizza, 11:52 A.M.

Senator Roy Blunt seized on Comey’s leak of his memo to Comey’s friend, the Columbia Law School professor and former federal prosecutor Dan Richman, asking Comey if the memo was a “government” or “personal” memo. Comey defended the anonymous leak to Richman as necessary given the media’s heightened interest in the case. “I was going out of town with my wife to hide,” he said. “The media was camping out at the end of my driveway. . . and I worried that it would be like feeding seagulls at the beach if I gave it out myself.” Expect Comey’s critics, and perhaps Trump himself, to seize on this leak as inappropriate.

—Ryan Lizza, 11:45 A.M.

Heinrich elicits an important point from Comey: Trump can’t say Comey testified honestly on some things but not on others, though he put it more colorfully. Comey said that when he was a federal prosecutor he told jurors that they had to choose whether they believed all of a witness’s testimony or none of it. You can’t say Comey has vindicated Trump on some aspect of the investigation, and then argue that in more inconvenient areas “he’s a dirty rotten liar.”

—Ryan Lizza, 11:38 A.M.

Another broadside at the President from Comey. Under questioning from the Democrat Martin Heinrich, of New Mexico, he said repeatedly that the Russian government carried out an "active-measures campaign" to interfere in the 2016 election. "It happened. That's about as unfake as you can possibly get." Trump, of course, has still not come out and said that the Kremlin interfered in the election.

—John Cassidy, 11:35 A.M.

More news: Senator Susan Collins, of Maine, elicits from Comey that the President wasn't under investigation personally on May 9th, when he fired Comey. This confirms that Trump made a huge error in trying to pressure Comey into dropping the Flynn case and then firing him. In doing so, he transformed an investigation that wasn't targeting him to one that very well may be.

—John Cassidy, 11:32 A.M.

Comey just outed the source of reporting on his memos as Dan Richman, a longtime friend who teaches at Columbia University. Comey stated that he leaked the existence of unclassified memos about his Oval Office meetings with Trump to Richman, who then leaked it to the Times. Comey said that he hoped the disclosure would be a way to force the Department of Justice to appoint a special counsel, which is exactly what happened. Comey was playing chess; Trump was playing checkers.

—Ryan Lizza, 11:30 A.M.

A little more than an hour in, perhaps the biggest news so far is Comey's suggestion that Trump will now come under investigation for obstruction of justice by the special counsel, Robert Mueller. Others have suggested as much before, but this was the former director of the F.B.I. saying it. This suggests that Trump's actions since the election are now at the center of the legal story, not just the allegations of collusion with the Russians before the election.

—John Cassidy, 11:23 A.M.

Wyden is emblematic of many Democrats: over the years, he has swerved from severe Comey critic to Comey defender. They have tangled in the past on privacy issues, and, as with many Democrats, he was outraged about Comey’s handling of the Clinton e-mail matter. But here he gets another blockbuster response from Comey on whether Comey’s job security was linked to his obedience to Trump. “I got the sense my job would be contingent on how he felt I conducted myself and whether he thought I demonstrated loyalty,” Comey said.

—Ryan Lizza, 11:21 A.M.

The Trump legal defense emerged in the questioning of Risch, a Republican from Idaho. Addressing Comey, Risch brought up how Trump, in one of his meetings with the former F.B.I. director, expressed the "hope" that he would drop the investigation into Flynn. "He didn't direct you to drop the case," Risch said. "Not in those words," Comey replied. Risch repeated the question. "His words are not an order," Comey conceded. But then he added, "I took it as a direction. . . . I took it as, this is what he wants me to do." Risch wasn't done. "You don't know anyone who has been charged for hoping something," he said. "I don't," Comey replied.

—John Cassidy, 11:18 A.M.

Rubio’s line of questioning tries to drain some of the drama and outrage about Trump’s actions. He summarized Trump’s three requests to Comey as somewhat bland: Trump asked Comey to be loyal, he asked him to let the Flynn matter go, and he asked him to tell the American people that Trump wasn’t personally under investigation. This is the standard response from many Republicans: maybe these weren’t totally aboveboard actions, but they don’t amount to a full-court press to get Comey to end the investigation. It’s not very convincing, in my view, but this is how many Republicans view the series of events—as overblown.

—Ryan Lizza, 11:13 A.M.

This line of questioning from Feinstein gave Comey another chance to add some drama to his interactions with the President. In discussing his Oval Office meeting with Trump, Comey said, “I was so stunned by the conversation that I just took it in, and the only thing I could think to say, and I was playing in my mind—what should my response be?” Comey seems extremely confident in his version of events. “I’ve seen the tweet about tapes. Lordy, I hope there are tapes.” He also added that his colleagues at the F.B.I. were “as shocked and troubled by it as I was.” Again, Comey is feeding the obstruction narrative far more than not.

—Ryan Lizza, 11:06 A.M.

Whoa! What an opening sequence. Straight away, Comey accused the White House of defaming the F.B.I. and lying about the reasons for his firing. And, in answering the first question put to him by Burr, he suggested that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, is looking into whether Trump obstructed justice.

Rather than reading the statement that he released on Wednesday, Comey said that he would make some additional remarks, which centered on the circumstances of his firing. He began by saying that he had understood he could be fired, but that Trump had repeatedly told him he was doing a great job and expressed the hope he would serve out his term. “So it confused me when I saw on television the President saying he actually fired me because of the Russian investigation.” He said that he was also confused by the White House’s explanation that he was fired because of decisions he had made in an election year. “That didn’t make any sense to me.”

It was clear that what really irked Comey was the disparaging remarks Trump and some of his aides made about the job he had done at the F.B.I. “Although the law required no reason at all to fire an F.B.I. director, the Administration then chose to defame me and, more importantly, the F.B.I. by saying the organization was in disarray,” Comey said. “That it was poorly led, that the workforce had lost confidence in its leader. Those were lies, plain and simple. And I am so sorry that the F.B.I. workforce had to hear them. And I am so sad that the American people were told them.”

Burr brought up Flynn. He asked Comey two questions: Did he believe Flynn was in serious legal jeopardy when Trump expressed the hope that he would drop the case? And did he think that Trump was trying to obstruct justice? Comey replied, “Generally, Flynn was in legal jeopardy.” There was an open F.B.I. criminal investigation into the statements that he had made in regard to his Russian contacts, and the contacts themselves. Moving on to the second question, Comey said that he didn’t think it was up to him to say whether Trump’s statement amounted to obstruction of justice. But he did say, “I took it as a very disturbing thing, very concerning,” he said. “But that is a conclusion I am sure the special counsel will work towards to try and understand what the intention was there and whether that was an offense.”

Quite remarkable.

—John Cassidy, 10:57 A.M.

Risch homed in on whether Trump’s statement to Comey about letting go of the Flynn probe was really an “order” or a “direction.” Comey did not seem to satisfy Risch. “I took it as a direction,” he said. Reading between the lines, Comey is doing his best to strengthen those who believe Trump’s actions were indeed obstruction.

—Ryan Lizza, 10:56 A.M.

Another important nugget from Comey. He said that Trump never asked him about any other investigation. Trump was singularly focussed on the Flynn matter and the larger Russia probe. So this is not a President who simply took an interest in the F.B.I.’s over-all work. Trump just cared about the probe involving him and his campaign.

—Ryan Lizza, 10:50 A.M.

Comey expanded on his view of what he called the “patronage relationship” that he believed Trump was trying to create. He believed that Trump had concluded or been told that Trump “didn’t get anything for” letting Comey stay on. At the time of the dinner, Trump had already told Comey, and Trump had already talked with Comey three times, about him staying on as F.B.I. director. So the dinner conversation seemed highly suspicious. “He’s looking to get something in exchange for granting my request to stay in the job,” Comey testified. For lawyers, this episode speaks to Trump’s intent when it comes to obstruction.

—Ryan Lizza, 10:48 A.M.

As expected, Comey declined to say whether Trump’s actions amounted to obstruction of justice. Earlier this week, I asked a person close to Comey whether Comey believed that Trump’s actions amounted to obstruction. “No comment,” he said. I asked the source close to Comey if he himself believed it was obstruction, and he responded without hesitation, “Yes.” I may be over-interpreting his answers, but it suggested to me that that is the general mind-set of Comey’s circle of close advisers.

—Ryan Lizza, 10:30 A.M.

“Those were lies, plain and simple,” Comey said about the White House’s statements about him after he was fired.

—Ryan Lizza, 10:25 A.M.

I agree with Ryan that this is a political event, not a judicial one. It's obviously a very bad day for Trump. The question is how bad? If the White House gets out of it without Comey giving any additional support to the theory that the President's statements about Mike Flynn amounted to obstruction of justice, it will be happy enough. I expected the committee to split along party lines, and the opening statements certainly did. Richard Burr, the Republican head of the committee, brought up Comey's handling of the Clinton e-mails. That as was a none-too-subtle effort to raise questions about Comey's judgment. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat, took a very different line, calling Comey "a straight shooter," who is "willing to to speak truth to power.”

—John Cassidy, 10:24 A.M.

Comey has decided not to repeat his statement that was released last night and is now adding additional context and reflections on his firing. He said that Trump’s actions “confused me and increasingly concerned me.” He’s moving beyond his factual account and adding some context that will give fodder to people who believe that Trump’s actions were obstruction of justice.

—Ryan Lizza, 10:22 A.M.

Burr made an important point that I’m surprised more Republicans don’t make: Republicans were the beneficiary of the Russian interference campaign in 2016. But eventually they will be the target of something similar.

—Ryan Lizza, 10:14 A.M.

Here are the Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee. The senators most likely to be outraged by Trump’s conduct are probably Susan Collins; Burr, who is the chairman; and perhaps even Marco Rubio. Tom Cotton and John Cornyn are the most likely to simply defend the White House.

Richard Burr, North Carolina
James Risch, Idaho
Marco Rubio, Florida
Susan Collins, Maine
Roy Blunt, Missouri
James Lankford, Oklahoma
Tom Cotton, Arkansas
John Cornyn, Texas

And here are the Democrats:
Mark Warner, Virginia
Dianne Feinstein, California
Ron Wyden, Oregon
Martin Heinrich, New Mexico
Angus King, Maine
Joe Manchin, West Virginia
Kamala Harris, California

—Ryan Lizza, 10:09 A.M.

Burr: the American people “need to hear the President’s description of the events.” Interesting. Wonder how the committee will obtain those descriptions?

—Ryan Lizza, 10:08 A.M.

In his opening statement, Senator Richard Burr notes that he’s looking forward to an “open and candid” discussion, perhaps a reference to yesterday’s committee at which the director of National Intelligence and head of the National Security Agency refused to answer questions about whether President Trump pressured them to intervene in the F.B.I.’s Russia probe.

—Ryan Lizza, 10:07 A.M.

Welcome to The New Yorker’s live blog. John Cassidy and I will be covering the Comey hearing. I’m writing from room 216 of Hart Senate Office Building, where there is enormous group of reporters and photographers awaiting Comey and a line of perhaps hundreds of people snaking down several hallways. Very few of them are likely to get in as the public gallery is already full. (I’m told the first person in line was here at 4:15 A.M.)

The one big thing I’ll be looking for today is this: Will any Republican break with the White House on the question of obstruction of justice? During Watergate, the end for Nixon came when the so-called “smoking gun” tape emerged that showed Nixon had tried to get the C.I.A. to shut down the F.B.I.’s Watergate investigation. Key Republicans in Congress abandoned Nixon and he soon resigned. Congress is much more polarized today, and the incentives for elected Republicans to defend Trump are much stronger, especially considering Trump’s resilience with GOP voters (though that has started to slip).

But the analogy with the smoking-gun tape is clear: Trump pressed Comey, his F.B.I. director, to end the bureau’s investigation of Michael Flynn, the former national-security adviser, and later fired Comey and admitted his action had to do with the Russia probe. Many Democrats and left-leaning legal scholars see these events as clear evidence of obstruction. Will any Republicans join them?

—Ryan Lizza, 10 A.M.