The New Yorker Radio Hour - James Comey Makes His Case to America

Episode Date: April 20, 2018

In a long career in law enforcement, the former F.B.I. Director James Comey aimed to be above politics, but in the 2016 election he stepped directly into it.  In his book, “A Higher Loyalty,” Comey makes the case to America that he handled the F.B.I. investigations into Hillary Clinton’s e-mails and Donald Trump’s campaign correctly, regardless of the consequences. Even after being fired by President Trump, the former F.B.I Director says he doesn’t dislike the President; he tells David Remnick that what he feels is more akin to sympathy.  Trump “has an emptiness inside of him, and a hunger for affirmation, that I’ve never seen in an adult,” Comey says. “He lacks external reference points. Instead of making hard decisions by calling upon a religious tradition, or logic, or tradition or history, it’s all, ‘what will fill this hole?’ ” As a result, Comey says, “The President poses significant threats to the rule of law,” and he chides Congressional Republicans for going along with the President’s aberrations. “What,” he rhetorically asks Mitch McConnell and others, “are you going to tell your grandchildren?”  Nevertheless, Comey remains hopeful about the resilience of American institutions. “There isn’t a ‘deep state,’ [but] there is a deep culture,” he believes. “It is [about] the rule of law and doing it the right way,” and it serves as “a ballast” during political turmoil. David Remnick’s interview with James Comey was taped live at New York’s Town Hall on April 19, 2018. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

New Yorker Radio Hour is supported by The Great Courses Plus, the streaming service created for people who love to learn. From politics to scientific discoveries, get unlimited access to learn about anything from the world's best professors. Start your free month now at the great courses plus.com slash radio hour. Good evening. Good evening. And welcome everybody to the first ever live taping of the New Yorker Radio Hour. Yeah. It is a co-productive. of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker and I'm David Remnick. Welcome. Now after his electrifying congressional testimony last year which we will discuss James Comey has largely stayed quiet offering no new details on one of the most

controversial and significant boss employee relationships in recent history. That is of course until now with the publication of his new book a higher loyalty truth lies and leadership This book, this testimony, reaches us at a time of deep political division when explosive stories related to the Trump administration are breaking at a dizzying and disturbing rate. We can discuss Mr. Giuliani later on. Tonight we will hear directly from a man who, among other distinctions, has become the sworn enemy of both Hillary Clinton, who claims he shived her and lost her the presidency. and President Donald Trump, who just this past week is called Comey,

slippery and the worst FBI director in history. Mr. Comey will likely use these blurbs for his paperback edition. James Comey began his career as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he worked to prosecute, among others, the Gambino Crime Family. He left to serve as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, then became the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, York and eventually Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice. He's also worked as a general counsel for companies including Lockheed Martin and Bridgewater

Associates or hedge fund. In 2013, he was sworn in by President Obama as the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a position that he held until May 9th, 2017, when he glanced at a television and saw the breaking news of the day that the President of the United States has to be. had just fired him. Please silence your phones. Join me in welcoming James Comey. I have 400,000 questions.

I almost didn't come out. Yes. So you're in the midst of this whirlwind book tour supporting a book that your publisher paid a considerable amount of money, reported $2 million, and you've done long government service, but you've also worked in private industry. You're not doing this solely to support a book or for money. You're out to do what? What do you say to those who think that this book in the midst of an investigation is selfish, self-aggrandizing, and just not a good idea?

Yeah. What I'd say is, first, I hope that the person who feels the way will read the book. I hope they'll walk away with a different sense of what I'm trying to accomplish. But the practical question as to the impact on an investigation is an important one. Normally as a prosecutor, you want to wrap your potential witnesses in duct tape so they don't talk to anybody. but here, so I get it in a perfect world, I suppose, they wouldn't want me speaking because I could be a witness. Nobody's asked me not to, both the FBI and the special prosecutor have known for a long time. I'm working on a book.

And I think the reason for that is my testimony is locked down. I testified in front of Congress. I submitted written testimony. I wrote memos at the time. And so the chances of me varying materially from my prior testimony are pretty slim. is how I would think about it. I haven't talked to them about it, but were I, Director Mueller or one of his people?

Now, is the book, in some sense, beyond being a memoir, an apoloja, is it an explanation? Is it, or is it really, in the end, and it seems to accumulate in this book, a brief on the character of the President of the United States? Well, let me tell you what it is, because it doesn't feel like any of those things.

I wanted to, I didn't know what I was going to do, after I got fired. And I started having conversations with my wife about, so what would be sensible to do next? And she's a great believer and has taught me this, and I talk about it in the book, that when something bad happens, you should try to make something good come from it

just because you're going to go on living. And so I said to her, well, I want to write a book about leadership. Because especially now, I think people, especially young people, could benefit from a picture of what ethical leadership looks like. And her response was, that'll be really boring. That was very supportive of her. Yeah, and she said that, she said to me, I know you don't want

write a memoir. I've always said I don't want to write a memoir. And so as we talked about it, we decided, you know what, we could actually do both and neither that I could write a story-driven book that in a way tricks people into reading a leadership book without them realizing they're reading a leadership book. That's not a memoir. There's lots of stories from my life that are very, very important to me that are not in that book because they didn't connect to the leadership themes. And so write a story-driven book to illustrate what I think are the principles of ethical leadership and do it through stories taken from my own life. But to no degree do you think it's an epilogia or a self-explanation or an unburdening?

Because you, let's face it, you know that a lot of people on a lot of sides of the political spectrum are furious with you. Yeah. On all sides, as best I can tell. And so in a sense it is because to tell the stories, what I wanted to do was illustrate how decisions are made about hard things. And so I talk about Martha Stewart, where everyone's forgotten, but I got a lot of hate for that back when I was U.S. attorney here with the Hillary Clinton email case. The same thing, I wanted to explain the decision making. And so it ends up in a way being explanation from my actions, but that was not the primary purpose. The primary purpose is to show

here's how I think you grapple with and make hard decisions and here are the values you should focus on, especially in a government role like my own, in trying to make those decisions. Now, I think in an effort to be relatable or writerly, you kind of fell into a feature writing mode and there's a passage in the book about the size of President Trump's hands

and his kind of Cheeto-like glow And you've walked that back. You were on the view the other day, and you said, I think if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't have written that because distraction. Are you apologizing for that? No. Anybody who reads the book?

First of all, I didn't say Cheeto-O-like, just to be clear. No, if you had had a decent editor, you would have. The reason it's in there is I had a decent editor who said, who said, bring the reader with you. On that section in particular, if you read the book, and I hope you do, you'll see I describe my first boss when I was in high school in great detail. I described John Ashcroft lying in a hospital bed in great detail. The coaching I got, which makes sense, was bring the reader with you. And when I first wrote about meeting Donald Trump for the first time, there wasn't detail like that.

And my editor said, look, many people look different in person than on TV. Describe what you saw. What was in your head? How did you experience it? But everybody thinks about that. I mean, that's not disingenuous. It didn't seem to be a schick that... No, it wasn't in there when I drafted it.

And I was not taking a shot at the man's hands. As I say in the book, his hands seemed of normal size to me. And so... Even to you. Yes. Remarkable. I'm sorry. This is going to get me in big trouble.

I can already tell. I'm hoping. Now, you've been called so many things. A hero, a villain, a person. patriot, a careerist. Trump has called you a slime ball. Among other things, Hillary Clinton says you were the deciding factor in losing the election. Now, let's be serious here. Not all accusations are born equal. Do you feel that you have anything to apologize for? I don't. I have some regrets. One of them being

that I didn't have an opportunity to explain what I've tried to lay out in the book. Why was I making, why was the FBI making the decisions that we made? But I've spent a ton of time trying to think back on those decisions, and I screwed some small things up, but in the main I really don't. And given the facts that I had, which were a nightmare, but given the facts that I was facing, I think we always made the least bad choice and for the right reasons. Now, your wife and your daughters, as I understand it,

voted for Hillary Clinton. They were very enthusiastic about having, among other things, the first woman to be president. Yep. Were they angry at you? No. Not in any way. No, my wife was angry at the situation

and was very frustrated because she loves me dearly. She was frustrated that I was in the middle of it, but not, they know me well enough to know. I'm not trying to help a candidate or hurt a candidate, but I think they hated the situation. You know, the nature of memoir is exposure. It's the desire in some way to be known.

Do you feel, is this an exercise because you feel grossly misunderstood? No. And I don't crave, this may sound odd because I'm sitting here promoting a book. I don't crave to be known. And it's one of the reasons I would never want to seek elective office. I don't. I think I have an obligation, given the experiences I've had, to try to contribute to a conversation in this country

because I'm really worried about what's happening especially to the core values that are so important to us. And so I think it would be a cowardly deal to not, to do what I'd actually be most comfortable with is not doing something like this. You said something so interesting the other day. You said this. Even if you leave the book still thinking I'm an idiot,

you actually realize I'm actually kind of an honest idiot. Now, is being honest enough in a job like being the FBI director isn't it necessary to be wise so my hope tonight is to discuss patiently and openly some of the crucial this questions about the dilemmas that you faced and how you made the decisions you did before we jump to that I do want to get to some points about your your past and in fact one of them relates to something that just happened a couple of hours ago One of the major figures early in the book,

or sort of partway through the book, is Rudolph Giuliani, with whom you worked. You describe him as someone who's skilled, who's smart, tough prosecutor, someone you would admire it on one level, but you also said that the worst place to be, or you were quoting somebody else, I think, the worst place to be was between Rudolph Giuliani and a microphone.

That he's described, not to mince words, here, and it's my word, not yours, but as an egotomaniac. Now, tonight comes the news that Rudolph Giuliani is going to join Donald Trump's legal team. What do you make of that? I honestly, I don't know what to make of it. There's no doubt that Rudy Giuliani is a very smart, as I said, you're right. That's how I described it, smart and skilled attorney. And I don't know what the attorney-client dynamic is like around the president. And so it may be, he'll be successful in areas where others weren't, or maybe it'll precipitate a clash. I just don't know.

Now, another precedent that you were in deep contact with before we get to the Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Drum, which is at the center of our conversation here, was Barack Obama. And you describe him largely in admiring terms, in terms of his temperament, his deliberative nature, but you had a real dispute with him on something really central to American life that, I confess, surprised me. He routinely used the phrase, mass incarceration. You objected deeply to this, and you had a meeting where you talk this out.

What's your beef with mass incarceration? We imprison people at a rate tremendously higher than anywhere in the world. There are obviously systemic reasons for this, having to do with racism, sentencing laws, all kinds of factors that are in the legal. eyes of many people, I'm one of them, a disgrace, a national disgrace. Why do you object to the term mass incarceration? And what was your argument with President Obama? Yeah, thank you for that. The President invited me to come to the Oval Office to talk about law enforcement and race, and I had been expressing concern about dramatic increases in homicides of African-American men in

major cities all over the country. And I was worried nobody was going to talk about that. And he asked me to come, and we had a really interesting conversation about that, and started with him sharing with me words that I had used that struck him. And one was weed and seed. I talked about a program that I thought you can't, and I've said this many times, you can't arrest your way to a healthy neighborhood, that if you have to arrest people, you do it only so you can fill the space with something healthy to make the neighborhood grow in a better way. But he said, look, I want you to think about how that term would strike the ears of an African-American. you're speaking about people you're arresting as weeds.

And I said to him, you know, Mr. President, I actually had not thought about it that way. It's a program that's been worked by the Justice Department through different administrations, Democrat and Republican, but hadn't thought about it that way. And then he talks some also about the trade-off between- Did you think he was right? I think he was right. Had I thought about it better, I'd have either not used the term or explained what I meant. And so I think his perspective was really useful.

And so we were doing it back and forth, and I said, Mr. President, there's a term that you use. I just want to know strikes law enforcement's ears, especially those of us who spent so much of our lives trying to rescue predominantly black communities. And I did a lot of that work in Richmond, and it's mass incarceration. And I said, the reason that sounds an odd note in our ears is that it connotes an intentionality, almost a Korematsu type intentionality. And as all, in fact, I agree with your list. There's a list of tragedies associated with the huge number, especially of men of color, black men in particular in jail. But there's nothing mass about it in that sense. I mean, everybody was charged individually, represented individually, appeared in front of a judge, contested guilt or pled guilty, had an opportunity for appeal.

Would you say their level of representation? I mean, most of them plea. 90% of them are in plea situations. Their representation is horrendous for the most part. African-American man. Isn't that a systemic problem? It is, but I think you can talk about those systemic

problems in a thoughtful way without, and this is how I told him the mass incarceration term, without making it sound like there was an intentionality where law enforcement decided we're going to round up huge numbers of black men and put them behind bars. There's no doubt it's a tragedy. But I said, I just want to let you know that's a term

that at least the law enforcement's years strikes a discordant note and then we went on and talked about a bunch other things. We had a great back and forth. I assume you didn't convince him. Well, maybe I did secretly, but he did not say... I think it's a secret then.

It's still a secret. But it's interesting. After that, I tried to watch his public remarks and it could be, I'm just projecting, that I saw it far less frequently than I had before, and I don't know whether that's

because I was useful to him or not. Well, let's dig in with the business at hand. You've made headlines by comparing President Trump's craving for loyalty and approval to that of the mafiosi that you investigated as a U.S. attorney. So let's dig into that. Why did you not investigate the Trump organization when you were U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York? Mr. Trump's casinos were under investigation for money laundering violation.

He was linked to several mafia figures, including Fat Tony Salerno, of sainted memory and Paul Castellano. Roy Cohn, who defended the mob, was his role model. Trump famously used mob originated concrete and overpaid for it for its buildings and overpaid for it at a time when steel was far more common. Was Trump just a standard-issue New York real estate guy who had to swim in those waters or had to pay off the mob sometimes? Or was he running a criminal operation?

The answer is I don't know. I had no personal involvement with any investigations that related to him when I was an assistant in the 80s into the early 90s, and I don't remember anyone in the early 2000s. Was there no interest in him in that sense? Well, there's always interest in adequately predicated investigations. That is, we don't investigate people because we think they must have done something wrong. The FBI opens investigations, and the U.S. attorney opens grand jury investigations where there's a factual predicate, where someone comes forward a witness

or a regulatory authority brings something to the U.S. attorney. And so I don't have any personal knowledge. That could have happened, I don't know. But it's not a musta, woulda, shoulda. So do we have facts that justify the opening of an investigation? If I'm not mistaken in 2013, the FBI, and now you were there,

went after an international money laundering, sports gambling, an extortion ring, run by Russian mafia figures out of the unit 63A in Trump Towers. The investigation never implicated Trump, in fairness. You were aware of the FBI's work. I don't think I was at the time. Does Donald Trump have an FBI file?

And if so, how many filing cabinets is... The answer is, I don't know, and if I knew I wouldn't tell you. I was thinking that was possible. Now, and again, I don't know how you can react to this, but the New Yorker published, and the other... journals have published other newspapers have published things about Trump's business before becoming president. Adam Davidson published a piece about a branding deal in Azerbaijan,

in which the president's business partners were the Mehmetta family, a uniquely corrupt family in Azerbaijan, and two brothers who were a front group for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which by U.S. law, I believe, is considered a terrorist group. Those were his business partners, and according to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, you have to know who your business partners are. You can't get away with it. Again, and there are many, many deals like this, well documented in the press.

What is the nature of his business in your view, particularly in the recent years in the last decade? Yeah, I don't have a view to offer you. At all. At all. Because? Because I, well, it's a mix of, I don't want to talk about things I don't know about, and I also don't want to, to the extent I know anything that's non-public, that falls in that bucket of investigative.

That's as public as can be. What you said is public, but your question about what the FBI knows calls for, I'm not saying we know anything about those matters, but I can't comment on stuff like that. Do you get a sense that these matters are of interest to the Mueller? investigation. I don't have a view to offer. This is not your first time with the rodeo, is it? No, sorry. Let's start with the Clintons. That's a welcome change. Yeah. I only have 1,200 questions of views.

Is there a commercial break? You are none. How do you feel about the Clintons personally? Obviously, you're a trained professional, but no one is absent of any politics at all. You've said before, that you are or were a Republican until very, very recently. Is that correct? Well, I really wasn't. Last time I really thought of myself as a Republican was in 2012, but I've made a clear decision this year that I'm not going to register as a Republican,

not going to be a Republican. You're going to be a Democrat? No, I think I'm going to be a neither. And not be associated with a partisan effort, but try and be useful in talking about things that I hope. are above that. But yet you have to exist in a political world. Do you plan on voting next time around?

Yes. That's former FBI director James Comey. I spoke with Comey at Town Hall in New York, and this podcast is a lightly edited version of that conversation. There's much more ahead after the break. New Yorker Radio Hour is supported by the Great Courses Plus, the streaming service created for people who love to learn, gain political insights, explore human behavior,

or discover great works of art from the world's best professors and experts, with unlimited access to watch and listen to thousands of lectures in virtually any topic. For a limited time-only, New York or Radio Hour listeners will get the first month free. Sign up now at the greatcoursesplus.com slash radio hour. This is David Remnick. We'll continue now with James Comey, the former FBI director. I sat down with him in front of a live audience at Town Hall in New York on April 19th. So, and you briefly worked on the Whitewater investigation, I'm correct?

You're here for the Senate Whitewater, the banking committee's Whitewater investigation. Right, and I know also that you were deeply frustrated, to put it mildly, from reading your book, about the Mark Rich pardon. Yep. Do you think of the Clintons as, from those experiences and other observations, as how to put it morally fallen or corrupt? you suspicious of them in that way? I don't. At first, I don't think of the Clintons as a thing, just as my wife wouldn't want the comies being thought of as a package.

So let's divide them out then. So I have serious concerns about things I've seen President Bill Clinton do, especially with the Mark Rich thing being most prominent among them. I don't have similar experience or concerns about... Did Whitewater give you moral concerns? No. It did not. You thought it was a fake investigation? Now, my piece of it was small, and it was only there five months,

so we never reached a conclusion. I was assigned to look at the Vince Foster suicide and handling of documents from his office, and I don't remember reaching a conclusion. But I had serious concerns about President Clinton's pardon of Mark Rich, the fugitive. Did you think that was a one-off, a kind of aberration, or was it typical of Bill Clinton's behavior? I don't know that I connected the pardon to similar activities, but I remember, and this is just from following in the media,

concerns that someone I admire a lot, Louis Free, who was the FBI director, had about President Clinton's fundraising in connection with the 96th election, as I recall. And I remember, because everybody in federal law enforcement heard it, that Director Free had surrendered his White House pass because he considered the president a criminal subject. But that was all kind of noise in the background. The one that I knew something about was the Mark Rich case, and that gave me concerns. I asked this partly because we all live in a media universe. I don't know what your media diet is or has been. But if you watch Fox and things like it, it's hard to be completely unaffected by the drumbeat about the Clintons over the years. and I think people would want to know

if you approached your decisions about Hillary Clinton with a head completely clear of that. I think by and large with respect to Hillary Clinton, that's true. Yes. Because I didn't know much about her. I'd never met her. I'd read in the paper. She was a hardworking senator

who had been successful across the aisle, which is the kind of thing that appeals to me philosophically. And the reservations I had, were especially connected to the Mark Rich case, she had no connection to that I recall. And so I don't remember approaching it with any kind of predisposition about, I guess, then Secretary Clinton, former Senator Clinton. So let's go to one of the crucial episodes in your career at the FBI and obviously in this book. On July 5th, 2016, as FBI director, you called an extraordinary press conference to describe in detail why there were no charges to bring in the Clinton email investigation to people who asked whether going outside of normal channels did unfair damage.

to Mrs. Clinton, you said recently on ABC that you wanted to, quote, offer unusual transparency to the American people about the investigation, which the Department of Justice policy permits in an unusual case. At that press conference, clearing Hillary Clinton of criminal wrongdoing in the email investigation, you still criticized her behavior calling her handling of email extremely careless. And as you described in the book, you thought about this phrasing a lot. Why did you bother at all? Why not come out and say nothing to see here and go home? Because I thought that without transparency, public trust and confidence in the integrity of our work would be severely undercut. and that and I meant what I said about although it's unusual as I explained in the book

the Department of Justice has done it in cases where a similar amount of transparency is important to a public understanding of the result so that's why the policy allows it and that was the motivation but you struggled over the terms but you had to know that this would have a political effect you live in the world it's not a you're not living in a pure world of a vacuum known as justice you had to know that that would have a political effect yeah Yes, although I don't, I intentionally was disciplined about not trying to consider what a political effect might be. The question we asked, and I keep saying, I, this is a big team of very smart people who debated this and decided what to do, said public trust, if we just do the normal thing, which is no announcement or a one-liner saying the matter's closed,

corrosive doubt about the integrity of the institutions will bake in to America. because of the crazies of the wing. But is that your job to erase doubt? Is that your job to deal with what people will say on Fox or wherever or in the Republican caucus of Congress? It's our job. Is it not, is it not your job to decide we're prosecuting, we're not, we're going forward with this or we're not? No, it's more than that because you're leading, I was then leading, a organization that depends upon the public's trust and confidence. And It's essential to the success of the Department of Justice and the FBI, which is why there's an exception to the policies and extraordinary cases to maintain that public trust and confidence. And it wasn't, at least to my mind, the loud voices on the right that made that important.

If the Internet had not been born yet and there was no television, it would still be of intense interest to the American people that the FBI was completing a criminal investigation of one of the two candidates for presidents of the United States. If all they were reading were broadsheet papers, the American people would want to know and be assured this was done in a quality way. Now, it wouldn't involve taking a shot at her that would inevitably keep alive great doubt. But I don't think of it as a shot. Telling the truth to the American people about conduct that was extremely sloppy. I still haven't figured out what the right phrasing would be, but not criminal. That involved eight top secret... The conduct also done by General Powell, by Jared Kushner, by any number of people.

That's wrong. And this conduct involving eight top secret emails, dozens of secret emails in an unclassified forum, was significant. And so just to say there's nothing to see here would be to risk, even if there never been a Fox News, would be to risk significant doubt by reasonable people about whether the fix was in in some form or fashion. And a number of things had added up to that concern. But my judgment was, and again,

reasonable people could have seen it differently, but my judgment and the judgment of the entire FBI senior team was, if we don't give transparency in detail, we will not have earned and retained the public's trust that it was done competently and honestly and independently. Mr. Comey, let me just read from here. Paid 186. Hindsight is always helpful.

And if I had it to do over again, I would do some things differently. I would avoid the Sechresting mistake. Sechresting, by the way, means... My kids, that's their term. It means the not giving people, bearing the lead, basically, not giving people the answer at the front, but saying, but first, this commercial,

and then coming back to it. So I thought it was a Ryan Sechrest thing. The TV host, Ryan Seacrest. I would avoid the seacresting mistake by saying at the beginning of my statement that we weren't recommending charges. At the same time, I thought there was a risk.

People wouldn't listen carefully after the headline, but looking back, the risk of confusion for me, delaying the conclusion was greater. More important, I would have tried to find a better way to describe Secretary Clinton's conduct than extremely careless. Like what? Really sloppy?

And here was the problem that we faced. All the time we are referred matters to consider whether to open an investigation that involve carelessness. Somebody left a document on an unsecured table or somebody made a phone call that should have been on a secure line but an insecure line.

That's sloppiness, and that's, we don't even usually open investigations on that. It's never prosecuted. There are crimes that the Justice Department will prosecute, but only if there is something that makes it clear. This is really bad, intentional type misconduct. Well, Hillary Clinton's conduct fell in between, and just to call it mere sloppiness wouldn't be credible.

But it didn't rise the level of, in my view, conduct that would be prosecuted by a reasonable prosecutor. So how to describe credibly in trying to offer transparency that middle ground. And we chose extremely careless. We wrestled with this for quite a while because there's a statute that makes it a felony that was passed in 1917 to be grossly negligent. In my first draft of this, I was going to explain that statute. Talk about it, and the team's reaction was, no. No. We ought to use another term, and elsewhere in my first draft, I'd said extremely careless.

Did anybody in the team argue for nothing? No. Nobody. No, because they all believed that without transparency, which had to include some characterization of the conduct, the result would not be credible. On October 28th, you announced the reopening of the Clinton email investigation. did this by letter to Congress. You said recently that if you had it to do all over again,

you would have still done it because your reasoned that if it eventually came out, it would destroy the Department of Justice and the FBI because it would have concealed that information from the American people. As you know, a lot of people whom you respect, disagree with your decision. Previous Attorney General's for, Attorney's General for President Bush,

Ford, Obama and others say it was a terrible mistake and that you should not have broken what they say is long-standing Justice Department norms against revealing information like this at the real end stages of the campaign. We're talking about a week away, just a bit more than a week. 11 days. Were you doing this out of fear of leaks from your New York FBI office? You make no mention of this problem. You had a lot of people in the FBI office in New York that were hooked into Rudy Giuliani,

who was going on television and talking about what was coming, what was coming, who were possibly hostile to you and certainly hostile to Hillary Clinton. That had to be on your mind, no? It wasn't. And it came up, if you read the book, you'll see, actually was raised with me by Loretta Lynch after I made the decision to inform Congress.

She said to me, would they feel better if it had leaked on November the 4th? And my reaction was exactly, but that's not why I made this decision. There was an issue, and I don't know, I mean, you stated it like a fact, I don't know whether people inside the FBI, New York, were giving information to Rudy Giuliani. Well, I know. I mean, they were leaking to the press.

I mean, we know. Okay, well, I don't know. But I was sufficiently concerned about it that I ordered an investigation that wasn't complete. by the time I was fired, to find out whether there were people having unauthorized contact with the press. But that's not why I made the decision. Did you know that it would go public immediately? Let's face it, you're sending it, in essence, to Jason Chaffetz in the House of Representatives.

The time it was going to take him to leak it would be about six and a half seconds. You had to know that. Yeah, it took him nine minutes, but the, yes. His forwarding function was broken on his computer. I don't know what it was. We probably sent it in a tricky piece. PDF form or something. But we sent it

to the chair and the ranking members of any committee that we had made that I testified under oath to or made submissions of information to. And yes, although I was notifying Congress not the public, I assumed that somebody was going to put it out into public.

That's why we spent so much time again working with the leadership of the Department Justice to craft that letter to say as little as possible but still speak. Nate Silver of the polling website 538 has analyzed the polling data and concluded that Hillary Clinton would be president today, were it not for your letter to Congress about her emails. Do you feel any ownership about the 2016 election and its results? I feel tremendous pain over the prospect that we played any role.

I once said in testimony that I think the president misunderstood that it made me mildly not. And one of my kids said it should have been nauseated dad, but that's the way I feel today. I hope that's not true. And I'll be totally honestly, I secretly root that someone will come out with an academic study that shows actually the difference was she failed to go to this state or that state or this state. But I don't know. I hope not. And the honest answer is, as painful as it is, and as strange as it may sound to you, it wouldn't change how I think about the decision that we made. made. Please explain that. I had a set of facts before me on the October the 28th that were a nightmare.

There are hundreds of thousands of Hillary Clinton's emails on Anthony Wiener's laptop, including emails from the blackberry.net domain from her first three months of Secretary of State that we'd never been able to find. And so if there was ever going to be a smoking gun to establish intentional misconduct, it would likely be at the beginning when someone said, you can't do that or you shouldn't do that. And so we had the very real prospect of the whole thing changing. And so I agree very much, by the way, with those attorneys general who say there's a powerful norm that we don't speak, we don't do anything that might have an impact on election. Amen, I totally agree. I couldn't find a door that was labeled no action. I saw two doors.

I saw one that said speak. I saw one that said conceal. I had told, and Loretta Lynch had told, the American people were done here, nothing to see, move along, and gotten hammered for it, but stood our ground. There's nothing to see here.

Move along. And now that's not true. In the end, how many days did it take you to look through those emails and realize they were duplicative? Do you want me to finish this? Sure.

Okay. And at the end of the day, we're choosing between saying something, really bad and concealing something, which as you quoted me earlier, I think would be catastrophic. And so as between the two, we chose really bad. In my mind's eye, I just wish, was there some alternative that I missed? Could I go back in time? I can't think of it. I can't. And so that's what I mean by saying, and I've said this to people who've asked me. I said, come to October 28th,

sit there with me. Tell me what you would do. Which door would you choose and why? You might choose a different door, but you really can't fairly say that it was crazy or unprincipled or lawless that we chose the door that we chose. And I think even in hindsight, it was the only door we could choose. It took, to answer your question, let's see, so we sent the letter on Friday. The following Sunday, late Saturday night, the team told me they thought they would be done reviewing the emails, which they'd assure me was impossible, but they came up with something that was a breakthrough. They finished it by Sunday morning. morning before the election. So I went in and met with the team to hear their assessment of what

they'd found. Meaning that it could have been done in time. That in the end. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. But again, that's the October 28th problem. You can only act from here going forward. I can't live my life backwards. And so, yeah, if I could go back and say, I know it'll be done by Sunday, then I could take a gamble that our, And I'm not sure I would even have taken that gamble, but that our results, our conclusion about the Hillary Clinton case might change and change on the Sunday before the election. But if you'd known that it could be completed by then, you might have thought about it differently. Mr. Cormor, there's an extraordinary passage in the midst of all this. And you write this.

The stuff that gets me the most is the claim that I am in love with my own righteousness, my own virtue. I have long worried about my ego. I am proud of the fact that I try to do the right thing. I am proud of the fact that I try to be truthful and transparent. I think my way is better than that of the lying partisans who crowd public life today. But there is danger that all that pride can make me blind and closed off to other views of what the right thing is. So when some people say that James Comey's pride or ego or sense of virtue overwhelmed you, and we now have Donald Trump as president,

do you feel a sense of guilt or do you persist in your sense of rightness and the sense of you had to be there in time with me to know? I think I feel two things. One is a sense that we did do it the right way and in part the we is really important, that we had a team of smart, thoughtful people just agonize over this, but also a tremendous sense of pain and not guilt

because I'd feel guilt if I thought I should have done it differently, just a sense of pain and then probably a sense of suckiness, is that a word? I don't think that's a word. But just the fact that I was there at all. If I could change time,

Hillary Clinton would never have had a personal email server. Anthony Wiener would have certainly not had a laptop. Probably never would have been born if I could go back and change it. People have no, I think people know, but let me just say it. You cannot imagine how much we did not want to be involved. Your leadership is questions sometimes when it comes to the Loretta Lynch question.

She was, Attorney General at the time, and you criticized Lynch for asking you to describe the FBI's Clinton investigation as a matter, rather than as an investigation, which you said was overtly political, you say in the book. Okay. But there's also something very mysterious here in the book. You say that any decision to excoriate Clinton's actions resulted in part from some unverified, classified materials that emerged in early 2016 and that if publicly known, quote, would undoubtedly have been used by political opponents to cast serious doubt on the Attorney General's independence in connection with the Clinton investigation. and you assist that you've never seen Lynch interfere. No way. But you remain, quote, bothered by the existence of this classified information that someday could be used to question the independence of the FBI.

What is that all about? Yeah. And this is, I'll go as far as I can. The FBI has approved that language in my book. That's as far as I can go in describing it. But early in 2016, the intelligence community came into possession of information that I didn't think is real, but that I didn't think was accurate in casting doubt on Loretta Lynch's independence. And I thought, someday that's going to come out, right? It's highly classified. 50 years from now, it'll come out, and historians will say, I wonder if the fix was in.

Loretta Lynch was somehow controlling the investigation for the Clinton team. But I'll have to worry about that. I'll probably be dead by then, so what am I going to do? And then, mid-June, Russian government starts dumping stolen documents and emails, and all of a sudden the prospect of that material coming out moves from 50 years to now. And so it became one of the bricks in the load that led me to conclude as much as I like Loretta, and I've known her for years, I've got to step away from her

and announce the FBI's view separately. And I get, and I thought very carefully about how to write that in the book, because I don't believe Loretta Lynch acted improperly. But at the same time, I do believe, there's material that could have been used by even reasonable people to question that. And so I've tried to be fair to Loretta

and say in there, I don't credit it, I really don't, because I never saw any involvement by her in the case. My last conversation with her about it was that one the year before when she told me to call it a matter. But it was a significant factor in the decision I made for July 5th to step away. And so I had to find a way to describe it, and I've done my best in the book. Now, if you didn't have enough going on in that season, you also had Russia to contend with. You did not want the FBI to sign on to a formal Obama administration statement in early October about Russia. interference in the election,

writing that you thought at the time that, quote, it would change nothing and be inconsistent with the way we hope to operate on the eve of an election. Wasn't that a missed opportunity? I don't understand. I've never understood your rationale for not joining in

with the intelligence chiefs on that statement when you thought it was true. And you thought it was true, and that caused by not signing a lot of places, Fox, among other places, to come up with conspiracy theories that, aha, the FBI doesn't agree. Comey hasn't signed it.

Yeah, I don't remember seeing that. Oh, I do. It wouldn't change how I think about it. Remember the norm. If we can avoid it, we take no action in the run-up to an election that might have an impact on the election. The problem on October 20- Well, wait a minute.

The problem on October 28th, I hope you all heard me say this. Right. The problem on October 28th was avoid action was not an option. There were two options, and they're both actions. I can speak or I can conceal. In early October, by the time they got around to saying, we'd like to put out a statement, my judgment, the judgment of the rest of the FBI team working on this was

the inoculation effect that this statement is designed to achieve has by and large been achieved. I wanted to put out a statement and wrote an op-ed to put out in August. I wrote it and offered it to the administration saying, I am willing to tell the American people, Russia's coming for us. Russia is trying to mess with this election. Here's their history of trying to interfere in our elections. And I wasn't taken up on the offer.

They finally got around in October saying we'd like to put out a statement. But by that point, senators and congresspeople and lots of government officials had already been talking about it. And if you go back and look at the media from that period of time, everybody was talking about the fact that the Russians were trying to interfere in the election. And so my judgment was the FBI's name at the bottom behind the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security is inconsequential. You think that's trivial?

Oh, I do. And I think the statement itself is of marginal benefit coming in October. We should have done that in August. And so I said to the Director of National Intelligence, look, the statement is accurate, but the FBI has take no action as an option now because we don't think this statement means. anything. And so I can appropriately not speak in October. Now, when was the first time you saw the dossier compiled by the former MI6 agent Christopher Steele? Sometime in the fall, I think of 2016. Did John McCain show to you first? No, I'd seen it before that. So,

Jane Mayer wrote a very comprehensive piece in the New Yorker about Christopher Steele's dossier and about Christopher Steele. Is he considered reliable, according to your sources, as an intelligence agent? Yes. What's your assessment of that dossier? How should we consider it? As raw intelligence, as unverified,

as rock-solid true, what? As it was described to me when it came in, it was raw intelligence, so a series of reports from a credible person with a reliable track record and a known experienced and source network in Russia. And so it was something to be taken seriously.

It didn't mean that it was all true, but it was to be taken seriously. And its core assertion was corroborated by other intelligence. Its core assertion being the Russians have a campaign going on to interfere in the American election. Lots of other assertions off of that, spokes off of that hub, that hadn't been validated, ruled in or ruled. out at the time that it was given to me and then in the months after that, but that's how it was presented to me. You got the lucky job of going to see Donald Trump as well as President Obama, and in the midst of a larger briefing, explained, or at least summarizing what was in this steel

dossier. President Obama has, as I understand it, I think was vice president, President Biden said while sitting there, I cannot believe we're discussing a golden showers tape here in the Oval Office. And you can hardly deny him as incredulous reaction. How did Donald Trump react to this? I briefed him at the end of our briefing to him of the intelligence community chiefs about the broader Russian intelligence community assessment. And I, as I explained in the book, I spoke about prostitutes in my own. Moscow. I didn't go into the rest of that. I was uncomfortable enough.

Were you nervous going into that meeting? Yes. Yeah. I was. I was about to meet with a new president and talk about prostitutes in Moscow. And so it was a bit of an out-of-body experience for me, honestly. Us too.

Yeah. And so I didn't go into that other detail. I figured that that was notice enough. And he reacted, as I recounted in the book, very defensively and interrupted me and do I look a guy who needs the services of prostitutes? As I say in the book, I assume that was a rhetorical question. And so I didn't answer it. Just for the record, did you answer that?

No, I assumed it was rhetorical. You just let it go. And so then he went on and was defensive. And I explained that I wasn't saying we believe this. I just explained that we felt duty bound to alert him to this for a couple of other reasons, which I explained. Do you find as time has gone by that your regard for the steel dossier has changed? In other words, do you believe it more?

I don't. I don't believe it less. But the work that was underway to try to replicate it, try and understand the source network and all the information that was in there hadn't been completed. I hadn't gotten an update on it by the time I was fired. Former Obama administration security chiefs have said that they are if not absolutely convinced that very much of the mind that it is deeply possible

that the Russians, the Putin government, has, as it were, something on the president of the United States, either because of financial reasons or other reasons. How do you feel about that? I think something I never thought it'd ever say, but I think it's possible.

That's an astonishing statement from the ex-director of the FBI Yeah, and it feels astonishing coming out of my mouth, but it's possible. I would say it's unlikely, given my common sense and experience. But hasn't common sense exploded in the last year? So I agree with Jim Clapper and others that it's possible. I'm not saying it is true, but it's possible. Now, one last point on this, and this was right before the election,

on October 31st, 2016, the New York Times, a metropolitan newspaper of some regard, Published a story headlined investigating Donald Trump, FBI sees no clear link to Russia. And that story, sourcing FBI sources, said, quote, law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into democratic emails, FBI and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the president. presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump, unquote. FBI sources also said that no evidence has emerged that would link him or anyone else in his business or political circle directly to Russia's election operations.

The Times quoted an FBI official saying, it isn't about the election, it's about a threat to democracy. In fact, didn't the FBI already know about George Papadopoulos' involvement with the Russians? the intelligence agencies knew that the Russians were engaged in efforts to meet with members of the Trump campaign and do damage to the Clinton campaign. The CIA director Brennan at that point strongly believed that the Russians were supporting the Trump candidacy in many ways. Why would the FBI push that story on the New York Times a week before the election? Yeah, that's a hard one to answer.

I don't know who the FBI is in this context. the FBI didn't, as to my knowledge, push any such story. By that point, we had concluded that there was an ongoing effort, that it had three goals to dirty up the American democracy, to hurt Hillary Clinton, and to help elect Donald Trump. And so I don't know who was talking to the New York Times, but that's my reaction to it. You're saying the FBI sources, or the Times as FBI sources,

on that story a week before the election, were wrong. I don't want to react to all of that because I'm being careful to abide my early rule where I'm not going to talk about details of the investigation but at least with respect to the bit about what the goals of the Russian effort were, it's just wrong

and that's the challenge of an organization of 38,000 people. I don't know who the FBI is in this context. Let's talk about dinner with Donald Trump which is an episode that's played out at at real cinematic length in your book.

And by the way, you've got two scoops of ice cream. Most guests apparently only get one. That's what I've heard. He was really putting the arm on you. That's actually why I made sure to include the two scoops because I'd read in the newspaper people get one scoop. No, that's a good detail. Yeah.

That's a good detail. And I was not doing that either to pick on the president. Absolutely. Absolutely not. So you arrive and you're in the residency of the White House, and it's night, and you're thinking, what's this all about? I'm thinking, I hope I see the other guests soon. And I'm not being, I'm not, I mean, that's funny, but I'm not being funny. I mean, is it customary for the director of the FBI to be invited to dinner at the residence of the president? No, and it, and it freaked me out. And so

I was consoled that afternoon by recently departed, Director of National Intellectual. Jim Clapper, who I was giving a recognition to at the FBI. And I told them about this invitation. The president had called me at my desk while I'm having a sandwich and asked me to, could I, did I want to come over for dinner that night? And I said, I don't know what this is about. It makes me very uncomfortable. He called you for that night?

That seems rude. Yeah. It's funny you should say that. He said, you want to come over for dinner tonight? And I kind of paused a little bit. And he said, because if you can't do it tonight, we can do it tomorrow night. I'm here all weekend. I said, whatever works for you, Mr. President.

And he said, how about tonight? Is six or six-thirty better? And I said, whatever works for you, Mr. President? And I had a date with my wife to get Thai food, which I should have kept. You really should have. I hung up as I explained in the book, and I broke the date with Patrice. And what Clapper said to me was, no, it's going to be a group thing. I've heard other people are being invited to dinner.

And so I was relieved. I thought, okay, well, that kind of makes sense. It'll probably be leaders of Homeland Security and other agencies so the president get to know his team or something. Fun. And so I go over and you say fun? Fun, yeah. Yeah, an FBI director is nothing but fun.

Yeah. And so I went over to the White House. My security team drove me and I went in and then was escorted through the West Wing, then into the lower level of the residence and up a flight of stairs and that emptied right by the entrance to the green room where we were going to have dinner.

I thought the group was going to have dinner. Now, you said earlier today in an interview that you don't hate the president. You don't even dislike him. I'll let that pitch go by. It's funny. My wife asked me the same question if she saw the interview.

And the answer is, I dislike many of the things he does. Him as a person, I actually, I was going to sound out, I actually kind of feel sorry for. How so? I think, I've said this before. It's a hard thing to say, but I think he has an emptiness inside of him and a hunger for affirmation I've never seen in an adult.

And I'm not saying that to be funny. I think that he lacks external reference points. And instead of making hard decisions by calling upon a religious tradition or logic or tradition or history, it's all what will fill this whole? Wouldn't it be easier to feel sorry for a person who had those qualities or lack of qualities if he didn't have a nuclear button over here and the capacity to cut off immigration over there? I mean, do you really have sympathy for him in that way? Sympathy is probably the wrong word. I kind of, I feel sorry.

Something, yeah. You think something's missing? Something is missing in his life that has created this orientation that I've meant what I said. I've not seen in an adult before. So I am. So how does he go at you? In other words, what we're looking at in the days and weeks to come is a series of an attempt at seduction and then at pressure. Let's talk about the seduction at dinner.

How does he do it? Does he have charm? How does he try to reel you in? He began the dinner. First of all, I figured I was just the two of us by standing in the doorway and seeing this little table in the middle of the green room. That's the director of the FBI. I can figure that out. Investigator.

Your tax dollars were well spent with me. Exactly. And so at the beginning of the dinner, he said, so what do you want, in substance, so what do you want to do? And I explained this in the book. And then we had a conversation about whether I intended to stay as FBI director, which was so strange because he had by that point, I think three times said that he hoped I was going to stay. and in the episode where I was trying to hide in the drape in the blue room, which is not made up, by the way, and the whole world, including my children, thought he kissed me.

It was not a kiss. He was whispering in my ear. I really look forward to working with you. And so now, at the beginning of the dinner, he's acting like we never had those conversations, and did I want to stay at FBI director? And he would understand if I wanted to walk away, lots of people want my job, that kind of thing.

And so I answered that. And then a short time later, he just looked at me and said, he needed loyalty. He expects loyalty. And I was stunned by that. So I just stared at him. And it seemed like an eternity was probably a couple of seconds. And then he dropped his eyes and continued eating. And I continued eating.

And then he started talking more. And he came back to that late in the dinner. He clearly noticed that I just stared at him when he asked for loyalty. and so he came back to it. And I tried during the dinner between the first request for loyalty and the second request to interject, which is what it required, to interject things that would explain to him

why it's so important that the Justice Department be at a distance from the president. You describe him with two characteristics, both at this encounter and others. He never laughs, and he never stops talking about himself and never really asks you anything except for loyalty. Yeah, that's fair.

I think he asked me one question, maybe two questions the whole dinner. And I never, there's a risk I'm over interpreting this, but I never, I've never seen the man laugh. And the reason that's important to me is, first of all, it's noticeable in an adult. And it's, and I think laughter is a tell that someone has a balance of confidence and humility. Because it takes a certain amount of confidence as a leader to risk yourself by laughing. Because when I laugh at something you say, I've just made an admission that you said something funny, and I've also risked myself. I look a little silly. And so really insecure people don't want to do that.

And never having seen the person laugh just struck me. You said that the president was looking for a, quote, patronage relationship, which is mob language. I think, look, you write this book very, very deliberately. The gaudy stuff, the Gambino family stuff, is. there for memoristic reasons, but it also, you know damn well that it resonates later when the Trump stuff comes along. I'm an author. How far do you think he wanted to push you in such a patronage relationship?

What would he want it from an FBI director if you had been willing to be quote unquote loyal? I don't know. I don't know. And I don't know that even in that moment he would know what he was going to expect. So I can't answer that. It's been reported by NBC that the former CIA director, Mike Pompeo, was present at a meeting in which Trump was looking for help in leaning in on you to drop investigations. Is that true?

I don't know. I wasn't at such a meeting. Does it concern you that Pompeo is now in line to be Secretary of State? I don't know whether it's, I don't know the facts, so I really can't say. Now, you, do you feel fortunate to have been fired? No. I don't miss... Would you have resigned at a certain point? No. In fact, I was determined never to resign. And thought, as I told President Obama during our final conversation, that I felt tremendous

pressure to stay to protect this organization I loved. I loved being FBI director. And so that I missed deeply. I love the people and the mission. It's really a group of good people. And so I miss it terribly. And I thought I was going to stay for another six years. Does it concern you that Donald Trump now has full access to the powers of the U.S. surveillance system? Should it concern people who are trying to organize against him

or reporters, for example, or civil activists? No. Here's why. The good news about the American bureaucracy in general, but especially the intelligence community bureaucracy, including the FBI is it's really stubborn and its culture is deep. There isn't a deep state. There's a deep culture. And it's at NSA.

It's at CIA. It's an FBI. And it is to the rule of law and to doing it the right way. And I know if you read books, you don't think this. I'm telling you this is true and this should console you. There's a ballast in American life and it's that culture. A president simply can't. and I'm sure President Trump is discovering this in some way.

President simply cannot what? Cannot by fiat direct surveillance. Cannot by fiat, although he certainly tried, with some citizens direct the people be incarcerated. But we have a long history in the Central Intelligence Agency, in the FBI. In fact, you are, to your great credit, pass around to your colleagues, I believe,

and have printed up. Jay Edgar Hoover's order to surveil Martin Luther King Jr. I made everybody in the FBI study that history. I mean, who are we kidding? These are, let's

just say, imperfect institutions. They are imperfect histories. To put it very, very lightly. That's true. But the good news is the framework of regulation and oversight and law that's been pressed on those agencies since Watergate is extraordinary. and it's not just the framework, it's the people who grew up under that framework believe deeply in it.

And so no president serves long enough to screw it up in any lasting way. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be concerned, but that should be a source of comfort. I'm telling you, I've been there, I know these people, and it is, to me, a source of great comfort. You're a private citizen now. I realize there are limits on what you can say, but you are a private citizen now and can assess this. Let's talk about investigations. Collusion, obstruction of justice, money laundering, campaign finance, perjury, other lying. What do you think are the biggest areas of legal jeopardy for President Trump?

You want to rank them? I don't want to answer that at all. Why not? Why not? Because I don't know where Director Mueller's effort stands. It's now been going on for almost a year since I left. You think Michael Cohen is? that situation presents great jeopardy to President Trump?

I don't know. I can't tell from the outside. What do you make of President Trump's use of the pardon power so far on somebody like Scooter Libby? Is that a kind of message that he's sending to allies like Cohen or Manafort? I don't know whether it's intended that way. There's obviously a reasonable basis for concluding it will be read that way by people. That pardon is an attack on the rule of law. There's a reason that President George W. Bush, for whom Libby, worked, refused to pardon the guy after deeply going through the case. He commuted his sentence as a matter of mercy, but George W. Bush said the justice was done.

There was overwhelming evidence. It was a fair trial. There was appeal. A jury of 12 convicted this person. And it's a serious matter to lie in the middle of an investigation. And to have now Donald Trump, without consulting the prosecutors who did the case and the investigators, pardon the guy, is an assault. on the rule of law. You've spoken very harshly.

Is it your assessment after a year plus that rule of law is in real jeopardy in this country, in this presidency? I might say it's slightly differently. This president poses significant threats to the rule of law. It is not yet in jeopardy because of its strength and its resilience,

but it requires constant attention. It's one of the reasons I've been so frustrated with myself and so many others when we see him tweeting at me saying you should be in jail. That's breathtaking. But my reaction is, eh, there he goes. But even I'm wrong to do that, right? That's a sign I'm becoming numb. And yet you say you don't want to see impeachment happen, that you would prefer that this play itself out until the end of his term and that you and you and you and everybody up there and even beyond the confines of our theory. get off their chairs, to put it mildly, and vote.

You think that's a preferable outcome to impeachment, even if he is endangering rule of law, and even if he has all these things that you say he is, and many other people believe he. Yeah, that's a great question. What I was trying to express is, in a way, as odd as it may sound, I kind of hope that he isn't impeached

and removed from office because of what it will do to us. It will lock in our dysfunction and our divide when what we need is a moment of clarity and inflection in this country. And that would postpone it. You know, when you were fired, the Republican leadership did not show itself to be a profile in courage and standing up for you. Senator McConnell, Speaker of the House, Ryan, you would have thought it was an average day. What did you make of that? Those people need to ask themselves a question, and not just those leaders, but lots of Republicans, what am I going to tell my grandchildren? Because I understand that they have policy priorities, but your grandchildren, because they'll be in high school someday studying this, you were there.

What did you do? You decided that the tax cut was important, that the Supreme Court justice was important, really? in trade for these things that make us what we are? Because all we are is a collection of ideas and values and aspirations. Really? What are you going to tell your grandchildren? And I know you like your seat in Congress and the base is fired up. What are you going to tell your grandchildren? That's what I'd ask them to ask.

In a sense, when you tell me that you don't, through it all, no matter how difficult your decisions were, that you don't feel that you really made a basic mistake, that you don't feel guilty about the decisions you made. Is there not some glimmer in you, in the middle of the night, that thinks, had I done it this much different, I'd be sitting in an entirely different political environment? Oh, yeah.

And I've often asked myself this in moments of great frustration, should I have done something deeply unprincipled? And the answer is, no, you don't. As painful as it is, you don't want. You don't want me trying to make a decision based on whose political fortunes would be affected. And so there isn't that glimmer. Without accepting necessarily accepting the premise that it would be unprincipled, do you think we'd be a lot better off with Hillary Clinton as president than Donald Trump?

Certainly given her commitment to our traditions and our norms and our values and the rule of law, yes. But I also think, and I think this will bug people, but I do think we bear responsibility for the choices put before the voters, that the two least trusted and most unpopular people to run for president ran against each other in 2016. James Comey, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Former FBI director James Comey.

He spoke at Town Hall in New York. Comey's book, A Higher Loyalty came out last week. And that's our show for this week. I'm David Remnick, and I want to thank you for joining us, and I hope you'll join us next time. Be sure to keep in touch on Twitter, and you can always. find us at New Yorker Radio. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tuneiards,

with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Rianne and Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Frillman, David Frillman, David Frillman, David Hennick, Mithelie Rowe, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Rhonda Sherman, David O'Hanna, Ed Haber, Rick Kwan, Melissa Le Case, Alicia Allen, Emily Mann, and Jessica Henderson. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.