Former FBI Director James Comey has agreed to testify before the Senate intelligence committee after Memorial Day.
The committee's chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, and the ranking Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner, announced Friday that Comey will testify in an open setting before the committee. The date of the hearing has not yet been set.
Burr says the committee wants to hear from Comey on his role in the development of the U.S. intelligence agencies' assessment that Russia interfered in last year's election.
He says he hopes Comey's testimony will answer some of the questions that have arisen since Comey was suddenly dismissed last week by President Donald Trump.
Comey will certainly be asked about encounters that precipitated his firing, including a January dinner in which, Comey has told associates, Trump asked for his loyalty. In the Oval Office weeks later, Comey told associates, the president asked him to shut down an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Comey is known to produce memos documenting especially sensitive or unsettling encounters, such as after the February meeting.
The new headlines were a fresh indication that Trump would not be able to change the subject from what appears to be an intensifying investigation reaching toward the president and his inner circle.
The White House repeated its assertion that a "thorough investigation will confirm that there was no collusion between the campaign and any foreign entity."
