Hey, welcome to In The Thick. This is a podcast about politics, race, and

culture from a POC perspective. I'm Marianne Hosa. And I'm Julio Riccalo

Barella. And we are back again this week bringing you a I'm

Holy Orica Loberella. And we are back again this week bringing you another in the thick FYI.

What a day it has been.

Former FBI Director James Comi testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday morning.

I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting and so I thought it really important to document.

Either he had concluded or someone had told him,

you've already asked Komi to stay and you didn't get anything for it.

And that the dinner was an effort to build a relationship. In fact, he asked specifically of loyalty.

We called up our friend Tarini Partee, who is a Capitol Hill reporter for Buzzfeed News,

to do a quick check-in.

So, Tarini, tell us your reactions to the testimony,

both the one that he released on Wednesday night

and then the one he delivered on Thursday morning.

So there was obviously high expectations for this hearing today.

I mean already even before he put out his opening, his seven page opening statement yesterday,

everyone was expecting fireworks. I actually was telling some of the reporters, you know, maybe, you know, it is a congressional hearing, some of these things can get pretty boring, but it actually didn't get boring. I mean, it was interesting throughout.

There were several, you know, sort of fiery moments.

The one that struck out to me sort of the most was Komi repeatedly essentially calling President Trump a liar.

The administration then chose to defame me and more importantly the FBI

by saying that the organization was in disarray, that it was poorly led,

...