NBC, CNN, Associated Press, and Reuters have all independently confirmed the original NYT story.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/05/16/comey-memo-says-trump-asked-him-to-shut-down-flynn-probe-nyt.htmlThe memo in question was a contemporaneous record, a memo to file written by the FBI director immediately after the event and subsequently shared with senior colleagues within the FBI. Such contemporaneous records by serving FBI agents have in general a very high evidential value in court proceedings.
James Comey has an excellent track record when it comes to evidential trails in disputed matters of record. His detailed memory of an attempt by then-White House chief of staff Andy Card and then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales to convince then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, sick in the hospital, to reauthorize the domestic spying program in 2004, wound up being validated.
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/16/politics/trump-comey-fbi/index.htmlIf you think reports of James Comey's account are 'fake news', then ask yourself two questions:
i. Why would a serving FBI director misrepresent the content of a private discussion with the president back in February and do so in a contemporaneous record written at the time ?
ii. Why did Trump ask both his VP Mike Pence and his AG Jeff Sessions to leave the room before starting a private discussion with FBI director James Comey ?
There doesn't seem to be any dispute from the WH that this is exactly what happened, that AG Sessions tried to linger in the room, possibly because he was aware of the potential impropriety of such a one-on-one meeting, and was ordered out of the room by Trump before the conversation with the FBI director began.
Then there is the context within which the conversation took place, namely Trump's manifest wish not just to protect a personal friend Michael Flynn from prosecution, but also to shut down an ongoing FBI enquiry into possible connections between his 2016 presidential campaign, and Russian intelligence operatives. An enquiry that had been ongoing since the previous June of 2016.
There seems to be a lack of comprehension amongst members of Trump's camp, that this FBI investigation is not a simple criminal investigation. It is a very large multi-bureau counter-espionage operation being led by the FBI which is the mandated agency in charge of all counter-intelligence operations within the USA.
For president Trump and his increasingly beleaguered press officers to try and insist that the FBI's enquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election is nothing more than 'fake news' invented by political opponents is a form of wilful ignorance and self-serving hubris that is likely to be very destructive indeed.