Comey agreed to sit down for a closed-door deposition on Friday. Republicans on the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee pledged to provide Comey with a full transcript within 24 hours of his testimony, and he will be permitted to "make any or all of that transcript public," Comey’s lawyer David Kelley told Reuters in a statement.
Comey and the Republican lawmakers reached the new agreement the day before lawyers were to appear at a court hearing. A judge had been set to issue a ruling on Comey’s request to quash the subpoena and halt congressional proceedings - a request that has never previously been granted by a judge in the United States.
At the heart of the case is whether the panel should be able to force Comey to testify in secret about the FBI’s investigations into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and whether President Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia.
The Republican-led inquiry has been lambasted by Democrats as a partisan effort to undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
Moscow denies meddling and Trump denies campaign collusion, calling the Mueller investigation a political witch hunt.