Washington: US President Trump suggested Friday that there may be "tapes" of his private conversations with FBI Director James Comey, whom he fired earlier this week, in an apparent attempt to warn Comey before he starts "leaking to the press".

The tweet: "James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"

In his tweet, Trump appears to suggest that he may have recordings of his communications with Comey. It is unclear if such tapes exist, however.

White House spokespeople did not immediately respond to questions about whether Trump had in fact taped his conversations with Comey.

The tweet was one of seven sent by Trump within a period of two hours in the early hours of Friday morning.

The others targeted the media, with the president threatening to cancel regular White House press briefings. 

Trump put the word tapes in quotation marks, indicating that perhaps there may be a record of some kind if not an actual audio or video recording.

He used a similar construct in two of his March 4 tweets accusing former President Barack Obama, without any evidence, of wiretapping his campaign offices. Trump put the words "wires tapped" in quotation marks, which White House press secretary Sean Spicer later argued meant surveillance activities more broadly as opposed to physical wiretapping.

Trump's tweet about Comey was likely a reaction to a New York Times report, published Thursday night, detailing a one-on-one dinner Trump had with Comey shortly after the inauguration.

The report said that Comey has told associates that Trump twice asked Comey during their conversation to pledge his loyalty to him, something the FBI director declined to do.

Trump said on Thursday, in an interview with NBC News anchor Lester Holt, that he spoke three separate times with Comey about whether he was the subject of the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election – once over dinner and twice in phone calls.

In other tweets on Friday morning, Mr Trump targeted the media, arguing that "it is not possible" for his staff to speak with "perfect accuracy" to the American public.

Mr Trump's comments come after his description on NBC of his decision to fire Mr Comey flatly contradicted the accounts provided by White House officials, including Vice-President Mike Pence, exposing their explanations as misleading and in some cases false.

Fresh attacks on the media

In a pair of tweets sent on Friday, Trump suggested he might do away with the daily press briefings at the White House and instead have his spokesmen communicate to the public only via "written responses."

The explanations for Mr Comey's firing from the Trump White House have shifted repeatedly since the move was announced late on Tuesday afternoon, undermining the credibility of Mr Pence as well as White House press secretary Sean Spicer, principal deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and counsellor to the president Kellyanne Conway.

The Washington Post