Indirectly. He was defending his version of events as truthful.
HEINRICH: Fair enough -- told the (ph) reporter he did -- never did that. You've testified that the president asked for your loyalty in that dinner. The White House denies that. A lot of this comes down to, who should we believe? Do you want to say anything as to why we should believe you?The word "liar" in there is a quote that Comey attributes to his mother.COMEY: Probably (ph) -- my mother raised me not to say things like this about myself, so not I'm going to. I think people should look at the whole body of my testimony, because, as I used to say to juries, and when I talked about a witness, you can't cherry-pick it. You can't say, "I like these things he said, but on this, he's a -- he's a dirty, rotten liar."
HEINRICH: Right.
COMEY: You got to take it all together. And I've tried to be open and fair and transparent and accurate. A really significant fact to me is, so why did he kick everybody out of the Oval Office?
Why would you kick the attorney general, the president (ph), the chief of staff out, to talk to me, if it was about something else? And so that -- that, to me, is -- as an investigator, is a very significant fact.
HEINRICH: And as we look at -- at testimony, or as -- communication from both of you, we should probably be looking for consistency.
COMEY: Well, in looking at any witness, you look at consistency, track record, demeanor, record over time, that sort of thing.
I do agree though, that Comey is suggesting that taking the totality of remarks, his compared with Trump's, Comey is the truthful one, and Trump is not. But he never made a direct statement that he might be mistaken on the point of Trump asking for loyalty. Comey says he was asked for loyalty. Trump says he never asked Comey for loyalty.
I don't find that on its own, asking for loyalty has any real significance. Meaning I don't care who is telling the truth on this, for the "truth of the matter."
Looking at the exchange the way Comey put is, taking him at his word, Comey is one weird dude. Why would he immediately jump to the conclusion that he was being asked to take an oath to the code of Omerta or something like that? By his own testimony, Comey never liked or trusted Trump. The two of them would have had a poison working relationship. If he could have, Comey would have fired Trump.
I can see your point on that exchange. It was very delicately handled. In other instances, Comey was more direct. According to CNN, Comey called Trump a liar five times. According to me, CNN is Fake News, so I’m quoting from Townhall:
‘First, Comey strongly refuted the President’s classification the FBI is in turmoil and that Comey was unpopular inside the Bureau.
“Although the law required no reason at all to fire an FBI Director, the administration chose to defame me and more importantly the FBI by saying that the organization was in disarray. 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 FBI workforce had to hear them and I’m so sorry the American people were told them,” Comey said.’
The article contains other direct instances also: