WASHINGTON — The acting director of the F.B.I. contradicted the White House on two major issues on Thursday: the support of rank-and-file agents for the fired F.B.I. chief James B. Comey and the importance of the agency’s investigation into Russian election interference.
In a striking repudiation of official White House statements, the acting director, Andrew G. McCabe, said the inquiry was “highly significant” and pledged to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the F.B.I. would resist any attempt to influence or hobble the investigation.
“Simply put,” he said, “you cannot stop the men and women of the F.B.I. from doing the right thing.”
That Mr. McCabe felt compelled to assert the F.B.I.’s independence was itself remarkable, a byproduct of the unusually public effort by Mr. Trump and his aides to take focus off the investigations into Russia’s election meddling. He also said the F.B.I. investigation had the resources it needed, partly disputing an account that Mr. Comey had sought more aid.
Mr. McCabe did not hesitate to make clear where Mr. Comey stood in the eyes of F.B.I. agents and employees.
“Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the F.B.I. and still does,” he said, adding that “the vast majority of F.B.I. employees enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey.”
A spokeswoman for the president, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, disputed agents’ support for Mr. Comey for a second straight day, saying she had heard from “countless members of the F.B.I. that are grateful and thankful for the president’s decision.”
Pressed by reporters, however, Ms. Sanders acknowledged that she did not “even know that many people in the F.B.I.”
Mr. McCabe made clear that the Russia inquiry was a priority for the F.B.I., rejecting another assertion by Ms. Sanders a day earlier that it was “probably one of the smallest things that they’ve got going on their plate.”
He was also adamant that Mr. Comey’s dramatic firing had not affected the investigation, though Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the committee, was skeptical.
“It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the president’s decision to remove Director Comey was related to this investigation, and that is truly unacceptable,” Mr. Warner said.
But Mr. McCabe, in only his second full day as acting director, made clear that he had witnessed no covert effort by the White House to influence the inquiry. He said that he had not talked to anyone at the White House about it and that there had been “no effort to impede our investigation.”
Mr. Warner sought assurances from Mr. McCabe that if the White House or others tried to intervene, he would sound the alarm.
“Our committee will get to the bottom of what happened in the 2016 presidential election,” said Mr. Warner, who has called the Intelligence Committee’s own inquiry into Russian election interference “probably the most important thing I’ve done in public life.”
Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico and a member of the panel, said he appreciated Mr. McCabe’s candor.
“Clearly, he took a moment and thought about this and had a personal and professional conviction he was not willing to deviate from, and I think that’s what we look for from people who run the F.B.I.,” Mr. Heinrich said in an interview after the hearing. “He deserves credit for not dodging the tough questions.”
When asked to help unravel some of the explanations that have swirled in the news media about Mr. Comey’s firing and interactions between him and the president, Mr. McCabe, who worked closely alongside Mr. Comey as the F.B.I.’s deputy director, was more circumspect.
He said he could not describe any conversations that his former boss might have had with the president and would not comment on Mr. Trump’s claim that Mr. Comey had told him three times that he was not under investigation. When asked whether it would be wrong to tell the president he was not being investigated, Mr. McCabe said, “We typically do not answer that question.”
He also sought to sidestep delicate questions about the number of agents working on the Russia inquiry, assuring the committee that the bureau had the resources it needed.
Days before he was fired, Mr. Comey had asked the Justice Department for more prosecutors to aid in the investigation, according to four congressional officials, including Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois. Mr. McCabe was not asked on Thursday whether Mr. Comey had specifically sought more prosecutors, but he was asked whether Mr. Comey had requested additional resources more broadly.
Mr. McCabe said he was unaware of any such appeal. “We don’t typically request resources for an individual case,” he said. He also said the F.B.I. had secured and preserved Mr. Comey’s files after he was fired.
Thursday’s hearing was supposed to be about the range of threats facing the United States around the world. At its outset, Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the Republican chairman of the committee, signaled his intent to keep the focus global — and away from the political drama over Mr. Comey’s firing that has engulfed Washington.
“I understand that many people tuned in today are hopeful we’ll focus solely on the Russian investigation of their involvement in our elections. Let me disappoint everybody up front,” Mr. Burr said in his opening statement.
“The committee certainly views Russian intervention in our elections as a significant threat,” he continued. But, he added, “the purpose of today’s hearing is to review and highlight to the extent possible the ranges of threats that we face as a nation.”
He told Mr. McCabe, “Welcome to the table and into the fray.”
But with Mr. McCabe on the dais, the hearing invariably turned back to the Russia investigation, and Mr. Comey’s firing.
“It is impossible to ignore that one of the leaders of the intelligence community is not here with us today,” Mr. Warner said.
In firing Mr. Comey, the Trump administration chose not to wait for the results of a review by the Justice Department’s inspector general into Mr. Comey’s actions in the Clinton email investigation. On Wednesday, Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah, the Republican chairman of the Oversight Committee, asked that the inspector general’s investigation be expanded to include an examination of Mr. Comey’s dismissal.
Mr. Burr and Mr. Warner slipped out of Thursday’s hearing briefly to meet with the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, who has come under scrutiny for his memo criticizing Mr. Comey, which was cited by the president in the F.B.I. director’s ouster.
Although their meeting caused a brief stir when the senators’ exit disrupted the hearing, Mr. Burr said afterward that he and Mr. Warner had requested the meeting before Mr. Comey was dismissed. He called the timing a coincidence.
At least part of the conversation centered on ensuring that the committee’s inquiry into Russian meddling in the election did not impede the government’s investigation of the same thing, Mr. Burr told reporters afterward.
Mr. Warner called the private meeting “fairly productive,” but quickly added, “I still have concerns about Mr. Rosenstein in terms of his role in the circumstances of Mr. Comey’s departure.”
Mr. Rosenstein left without talking to reporters, save for responding “no” to a shouted question about whether he had threatened to quit.
The senators also noted that they had asked Mr. Comey to brief them next week to learn more about the Russia investigation, but had not heard back. It was not clear what he might reveal.
“It just gets stranger here by the day,” Mr. Heinrich said.
