YouSaid · the spoken record

James Comey

lines on the record: 78
first: 2024-07-28
most recent: 2024-07-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Work. I read the indictment which had pictures of the gold bars found in his closet, and I said chef's kiss for that. She said, Dad, I can't talk to you about my work. I said, I don't need you to talk about it. I'm just telling you, chef's kiss for that. So I think good people have chosen to do that work, even during the Trump administration, because they're not at that top frothy level. So I still feel optimistic about it.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so I think a lot of what was said about Kamala was, I don't know because I don't have insight into how her office worked, but had to do with the turnover in her staff and what a tough boss she is. Another thing you don't hear a lot about men leaders, you know, how tough they are. It's suddenly a black mark on a woman, like my friend Amy Klobishar. I went to school with Amy, and she got some of that same hit. But I think on balance, many of the so-called weaknesses are unanticipated strengths in 2024 in a cool way. So now to the reservoir of trust and credibility, I think by and large the reservoir is intact. And my view is warped, obviously, because my daughter is the chief now of the public corruption unit in the Southerns Committee, and her prosecutor's just convicted a democratic sitting United States Senator named Robert Menendez. And she won't talk to me about her.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go with the thanks of a grateful nation. That's a lot. I love the show Hamilton, which may not be seen the same in the UK because it's about our independence, but they have this line in there where Washington talks about I need to teach this country how to say goodbye. And so that I think Joe has done something extraordinary, but it has unclogged the pipe in a way that I didn't see. And now I see it rushing. And I see the swifties and the Beyonce fans and all people are coming out of the woodwork to take the goofiness of Kamala Harris, the dancing, the funny stories, and turn it and make a power out of it. And you see all kinds of funny things like she's challenging Donald Trump to walk down a ramp, right? To have a contest. And so all of a sudden Donald Trump is holding the ticking age bomb. And he's this old white guy in makeup, for God's sakes.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And but she's a mixed race woman in the United States of America. So, you know, this is one of those things in our basement that no one will admit, but there is a strain of misogyny and racism in my country, in all countries. But I know my country best, and then no one will ever admit. And if my wife were here, she said, we also have a problem with a lack of female loyalty, right? Men will insist on voting for a man. Women don't feel that way because women are more thoughtful. What are you going to do? And so I think that's an obstacle to her that people will talk about, but no voters will admit that's the reason they're changing a view. But I think she has an opportunity with her energy. That's what I meant by Joe Biden, who I admire, and I said on British television the other night, the first time I've talked about it publicly, I said, I think he should.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mr. Comey, in your first book, Higher Loyalty, you speak about a reservoir of trust that federal prosecutors before they've served have built up in your years since leaving government. Do you still have faith in that reservoir? And do you have concerns about it depleting? Yeah. And so thank you all for these thoughtful questions. I'll start with I knew Senator Harris, not personally, but I had appeared in front of her a number of times and been questioned by her during hearings. And so her strengths are she's very smart. She's very well spoken, some very articulate. And those are both strengths that Barack Obama had. But she's got something else that maybe cuts both ways. She's goofy in a way that Obama is not and funny in a way that Obama is not. And so I actually think that's a superpower, especially with the young.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so my kids are hilarious, but they're probably right. It will likely, this is knowing my complicated, wonderful, messed up country is there's an imperative that it be a white man, I think. And so if I were going to bet and I have no inside knowledge, I would bet someone like Josh Shapiro from who's the governor of Pennsylvania. Very highly regarded in Pennsylvania, hugely popular across the aisle married white man with four children, very attractive family, very attractive guy in lots of respects. And so if I were putting my money on someone, I would say that. The governor of Kentucky is also an attractive political figure, but you're not winning Kentucky. And so I would bet the governor of Pennsylvania.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the first one is a very interesting question. I don't know the answer. I don't know the history well enough to know how the Cosa Nostra got its fingers into the electricians, the dock workers, the truckers, the construction trades in New York. I just don't know. My kids sent me a picture from a wine shop with a bunch of wine bottles on a counter. And above it it says, interesting whites. And they said, this is Kamala's task now.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My office at the FBI and it was the head of MI five. Everybody else had to meet outside the skiff. So they institutionally were not trusted to come inside Andrew Parker was the head of MI5 and became a friend of mine. Then only he was allowed in, and I said to him one time, there are people alive in my country today who are alive today because of you. They don't know it, but I know it. And the day I was fired, he ordered the flag hauled down over MI five headquarters and ordered a box built for it with a glass front, had them take it out to Heathrow, give it to a British Airways pilot, and they delivered it to my house two days later, and I still have it in my office at home, and it's covered in London grime because it's the actual flag that was hanging on the top of it. And that's a symbol, but a symbol of something enduring. It won't change because...”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The US and UK, I know the intelligence and law enforcement relationship, which is extraordinarily wide and deep and will not change. Because that relationship is below the thermocline. It's below the frothy layer. And we had a time during the George W. Bush administration where President George Bush was saying nasty things about the French. And that's a relationship which is important to both sides, but nowhere near the depth and breadth of the relationship between the UK and the US. But I also knew that was going to have no effect on our ability to cooperate when it comes to intelligence or counterterrorism or these things. Because what characterizes the relationship is self-interest. I mean, I used to say there was only one foreign official allowed him.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The humility to worry they're wrong and the ability to look and find those North Stars so that they will be proud to tell a group of 12-year-olds why they did what they did in 10 years. Okay, so that's good. Second question was.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“sector of all kinds people prepared to be wrong to be stupid, to be mistaken, to be fools. Those are the best leaders, and the second is the best leaders are people who make decisions by lifting their eyes. The problem with making decisions in a storm is that your review becomes obscured by all the lower level considerations, hunger, fear, personal loyalty, politics, money. These are all pressed up close against you when people are saying, what should we do? What should we do? The best leaders, in my experience, are somehow able to lift their eyes above that and say, so what would make this the decision I be proud of in ten years? What are the things that you guide decision? What are the things above? And they can be tradition, norms, precedent, faith in some circumstances, but they're all above and hard to see. But the best leaders are the ones.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Two more good ones. Wow. So most important lessons, probably two. One is maybe both about leadership. The nature and quality of our leaders is everything. We talk about systems and structures, but I can remember I'd been in the Java FBI director for probably two months, and I was on the phone talking about Mueller, my predecessor. And in those two months, I'd come to realize just how complex the FBI is, and that it's everywhere in the world. And it's involved in so many different things that no one from the outside really can oversee it. Effectively. And so I was saying, I was struck by this. I mean, I've known the FBI my whole career, but I'd never been inside in that way. And he said, yeah, no shit. Now you know why the character of the people chosen as director matters more than anything. And so I think about leadership all the time. Most important aspect of a leader is humility, way too little humility in leaders in the private public.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Following through on a thread is a sign of weakness, which he can ever have. And so having threatened to go after his enemies, he has to follow through. It isn't just talk, and so, having promised to deport millions of people, threatened to do it very hard for him not to follow through on that. And so there's probably lots of other pieces of darkness I could offer you. But that's why it's so important that we force a decision on the American people because the majority of them do not want Donald Trump to be President of the United States. They just don't, forcing them to think about it, to stare at it, and to face an enthusiasm on the other side that was absent before is our best chance in not living that future.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Great harm and that we've been trying to guardrail against that harm since Watergate. But you could take us back to that era without a lot of consequence. I mean, you could say, oh, the courts will find that you're engaged in improper behavior. And then do what? Issue an order. Well, who executes on the orders issued by the United States federal courts? The US Marshals. Who do the US Marshals work for? The executive branch. And so we could find ourselves in a place where a lawless president is not able to be constrained because the courts are unable to have their orders trying to stop certain behaviors followed. Now, that's probably too dark because the culture of the courts is impossible to change in a four-year period, but that's one of the many reasons why it's so important. And then one other thing, Donald Trump's promises mean nothing, but his threats mean something, because he's always believed that not...”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is to a certain extent at the political appointee level, the highest level, the cabinet level, but not really. It's where the political level intersects with the career civil service level, that thin layer, you imagine American government, I think probably like the UK government, there's a warm, frothy political layer at the top. And if you've ever jumped in a lake in the summertime, you know that there's a thermocline that down below is a cold still layer. That's our civil service, I suspect like yours. And there's an intersection with an opportunity to try and shape that lower level. That's what I see this project 25 aimed at, trying to change the government more substantially than just replacing the people at the top who really can't run things first. Second, being smart enough to realize that you can use the FBI and the justice department in ways I don't want to describe publicly, but you could really go after people and cause them.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because Donald Trump is not a smart person, and he's such a self interested person with such a small attention span that he can't execute on anything. But he will be surrounded if he gets to be president again by people who are much smarter and are as bad as he is. The last time he didn't have the top of our team, but he didn't have the bottom of the barrel around him. He had enough people around him who said, that's freaking crazy. We're not doing that. And so we'll hide this paper from him, or we'll just talk about it, he'll forget about it, which he would. Those people won't be there anymore. And one of the mistakes that he made last time is not understanding where the power is in the federal government.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It turns out Joe was a blockage in the pipe because now what's flowing through that pipe is a roaring stream of enthusiasm and energy and possibility that I, because I have five kids in their 20s, I'm seeing the world through their eyes and seeing people jumping in to participate who had no interest in participating before. And so I think what's coming through that pipe now is a combination of fear, which still animates me, but also almost a 2008-like enthusiasm about what a time to turn a page in America. Wow. And so I think I'm not a political expert and there are no one could foresee this future fully, but I think it's a very significant possibility you're going to see something dramatic happen in the next hundred days in a good way to come to the second question. And we better”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, thank you. Both good questions. The first one is do not give her money. You cannot give her money. That would cause all kinds of legal problems. Encourage the Americans you know to participate. So I'm going to answer my own question before I get to the second question. The reason I'm optimistic is... In a way that I couldn't fully see, I Joe Biden, the stream that was flowing through the Democratic pipe was a stream of fear, motivating people to support Joe, to participate understandably through a stream of fear. What's happened in the last few days is”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Does the Secret Service have the resources it had at the time and why it deployed them in the way they did and how did they think about the trade-offs by asking the local police to cover outside a much more narrow perimeter than I would have expected? But all of that, I think, can be known, is knowable. And I think we'll be understood by responsible people. But it's conspiracy theories, you know, I like that expression, never attribute, especially with government to malevolence, that which is adequately explained by incompetence. And so I think you saw security failure that I'm sure is not the product of evil intent on the secret services part, but mistakes of logic and of deployment.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have two reactions in the moment to watching that. The first was horror and a fear that America might be returning to the time of my childhood when violence directed against political and cultural leaders was a part of who we were, the death of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X. And I think that worry was misplaced given what we know about the misguided young guy who appears to have tried to kill him. But the second was How the hell did that happen? It's just, you're securing a venue that has clear fields all around it. How could you not secure that adequately? And so I think the security is appalling. I don't know the answers to the whys. I hope that Washington has, as you know, because you've covered it, it has a hard time with what you would call deeper wise, getting to root cause. But I'd like to understand more about why.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the way you deal with that, the way you conduct counterinsurgency is, you first have to get the charismatic motivator away from center stage, and then you can try to de-radicalize. And I thought, well, maybe if we pardoned him, he'd be in his bathrobe shouting at cars, at Marlago, and that would make it harder to radicalize. And in a way, that's proven to be true.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“the incompetence of a federal judge, and we have plenty of incompetent federal judges. And what the Supreme Court did on presidential immunity was in a way not a crazy decision. It's a question we've never had to answer as a country. What is the president's protection from prosecution for acts in office? We had hoped we would never have to wrestle with such a thing, and they reached a conclusion consistent with the majority's view of what our Constitution intends for presidential independence. I disagree with it, but it's not a crazy decision. And so these things are all part of the process. I actually said from the beginning, I was of a mind that maybe Joe Biden should pardon Donald Trump at the beginning, because I was heavily influenced by a former CIA Kenner insurgency officer who wrote in the New York Times that you need to think of Trump as an insurgent leader. He has radicalized a large part of your population.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they held to that norm in a way that I think was inspiring. And the case in New York, the case involving the hush money paid after his affair with a porn actress, I thought, well, it's not the most important case in the world, except it's a great demonstration that the rule of law holds in America, that no one is above the rule of law. This is what it looks like. No matter who you are, you shut up, you sit at the defendant's table, you speak when you're called upon, you respect the jury at all times, and as a way this works is regular order, and it will be held here, and I thought what a great civics lesson for the American people, even though I might have preferred that other cases go first, and the other cases as a lawyer or someone who knows the system well, I'm not so fast to say that it's the product of corrupt Republican judges. I'm not so sure that that's what's delaying the case in Florida. I think it's like...”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I don't know that I would say it that way. I think one of the parts of America that has passed its stress test in the last five years is the justice system, especially the way our courts have conducted themselves. And I'll get to parts of the court system that haven't been so great. But overall, it's been remarkable to watch because you can say anything you want about how the election was stolen with mascara running down your face outside of four seasons total landscaping or something. But if you step into an American courtroom or a British courtroom and you raise your right hand or you represent a client, you better be saying the things you believe to be true and you better support them or there will be severe consequences. And so look at what happens all the lies. sixty some court cases overseen by Republicans, Democrats, independent judges all shut down because the court system is based on facts.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mueller did the job that he was assigned to do, except I'm about to subject him to hindsight, and I've been subjected to a lot of that. In a way, he is such a principled fair person that he was unfair to everybody. He thought, well, if I accuse the president of a crime, he won't be able to vindicate himself with a trial because we can't indict sitting presidents, and that's unfair. So what I'll do is I'll just lay out all the facts and stop short of drawing the ultimate conclusion. And this may sound strange coming from me, but that was brutally unfair to Donald Trump, right? To lay out all the facts, the dirty facts, and then stop before giving your final evaluation of them. And so I kind of wish Bob Muller had either said I'm not going to provide a summary of the evidence because I don't believe I can charge a sitting president.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here. What's interesting is what Mueller didn't do was a counterintelligence investigation, that that was sort of dropped during the Trump administration. Very different analysis than the criminal investigation. And so the closest you can come to getting a real clear view of what went on during the election is the United States Senate's intelligence committee's report, which is a thousand pages long, Republican-run committee put out a report that is breathtaking. Nobody really paid attention to it because it came out after the Mueller report when this was sort of old news. But they found that there was massive connection, that there was the passing of information between the chair of the campaign and a suspect known Russian intelligence officer, according to the Senate. And so what do I think at the end of the day?”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, first I start with the facts. There is no doubt that there was a massive Russian intelligence directed and approved at the highest level by Putin effort to help elect Donald Trump president, motivated in part by his antipathy for Hillary Clinton and his desire to devrump be president. And there is also no doubt that there were many, many, many, many contacts between that Russian effort and the Trump campaign and people in it. And what Bob Muller set out to do was to conduct a criminal investigation to see whether there was sufficient evidence to charge someone with conspiring under the law with the Russians. And he found that there wasn't sufficient evidence. And I didn't know what the response would be. What his conclusion would be, I began the investigation because I thought we have to know. There's no doubt that the facts I laid out for you are true. Is there criminal liability?”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, not by the time I got there, but a long history that goes back to Jaggar Hoover made a pitch to President Roosevelt during World War two to take over the worldwide intelligence mission and not have a CIA created. And Harry Truman ended up disagreeing, and Hoover was so angry at that decision that the FBI had been covering the western hemisphere. He ordered his personnel withdrawn from every station in the Western Hemisphere and forbade any communication with the new CIA. And so there was, it really started to be reborn after his death, and it took a long time. 9-11 was a tragedy and part born of the lack of communication. And so a lot of progress has been made by the time I got there. And my table every morning as FBI directors sat among my senior most staff as senior CIA officer.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think if you put a lot of Donald Trump stuff in a book proposal, your publisher would send it back, right? There's no way a felon is running for president of the United States, all these sorts of things. I'm actually with nudging from my publisher, I've already started to conceive of a DC-based series. And it's easier for me to do now after seven years out because I do think it would be fun. good for readers for me to take them to those places, to the FBI, to the CIA, to the White House. And there's some cool stories to be told there. So I'll get there. And God willing Donald Trump will be in his bathrobe, but Mar Lago when I'm writing it.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yahi, we throw these words around we become numb to them, but he is amoral in the truest sense. There are no principles, no norms, no traditions, no history that influence the way he thinks about things. It's only how will this make me feel in the next moment? And yeah, it's a terrifying thing. And so it's really important that he not be president again. And I'm increasingly optimistic about that.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And look, Joe Biden reacted, I think understandably, with a certain stubbornness and pride. stubbornness and pride in the last few weeks, but ultimately relented because there are other values in his life besides this Donald Trump is not that way and would never have made a similar decision.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. I mean, he is a, I don't know what happened to him as a young person, but he's a severely damaged person and is unable to see anything other than that whole in himself. And so he doesn't give a rat's ass about anything else except and really in this moment, how do I get what I need, which leads him to say things that make no sense and contradict what he said in that moment three moments later, but it's all about that, that insecurity, that hunger for affirmation over and over and over again. It's as if a child became the president of the United States. And I have five grandchildren, and almost all of them are old enough to be more mature than this, but it's this need to be loved that I'm not being exaggerated. I'm not exaggerating. I had never seen it like this in an adult before. And so that's a terrifying place to be. There are no other considerations.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Eerily so and so much so and so immediately that I thought I was being dramatic, and I pushed it away, tried to push it away. But this image of Cosinostra kept coming into my head in part because he talks that way, but also his style of leadership is like that. Or Cozinoster boss, it's not about anything other than the boss. It's not about not that you can call a mafia family an institution, but it's not about values, principles, people. It's about me, what you can do for me. And Trump struck me as you all know because you've seen him now. I had never seen an adult with a greater hunger for affirmation than this person. And so it was all about what can you do to fill the hole in me? And I thought that reminds me of a Cosanostra boss. And the more and more I encountered him, the deeper. That reaction became.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Look, this was in some ways funny, but the point was I lead an institution that has to be an other in American life, since Watergate, the American people have said we don't want you on anybody's team politically because you're too powerful. And so I need to be in the executive branch, not of the executive branch. And so I cannot be on his team. And that culminated him inviting me to a room just down the hall for what I thought was a group dinner or a private dinner. A week later, yeah, actually, and where he asked me one-on-one to promise to be loyal to him. And that's when it started to come apart because I wouldn't do that.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is live on television, and I extend my hand and he pulls me in for a hug. And so I'm not a real strong person, but I tighten my right lats as much as I can and I resist him, and so it stays a handshake, and then he leans forward and whispers in my ear. And what he said was I really look forward to working with you. But here's why this was a double disaster. The cameras were to my left. And so what the American people saw was Donald Trump kissing me. All they saw was his lips disappear behind my chin, and then go back, and then he says, Stay up here with us, and I go Oh no, no, sir, please, sir, and I'm like I'm not worthy and I'm thinking I'm not freaking crazy and so I back all the way up to the curtain and at the first break when they brought in drinks I fled.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Goes to a person off to my side, actually Joe Clancy, they had a secret service. And so I'm thinking, I'm six, eight. How is this possible? And I looked down and I realized I'm wearing a blue suit. And it's almost the same color as the curtain. And so I back farther into the curtain and I'm leaning back as the curtain thinking I may get away. I may get away with this. And so then all of a sudden he sweeps back the other way and my camouflage fails me. And he goes, Jim Comey's here. And then I remember what he said. He said, he's more famous than I am. And he said, get over here. And so I start walking across this room, and my wife was watching this live on television. And she turns to one of the kids and she says that's dad's oh shit face. Because I'm walking thinking, this is a disaster.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Up television Klee lights by the front door of the room, and I thought this was going to be a private reception. And I'm like, oh, damn. And then I see reporters being ushered in. And then I'm like, oh, damn. And so I start backing up and backing up to get as far away from the camera lights as possible. And then in comes the new president, and he's waving to the group and he's talking to the group. And so I back all the way up. And I can't get any farther without getting out the window. And then Trump's eyes start sweeping the room and he starts calling on people like, hey, Joe's here. And he skips over me.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And he just wanted the chance to talk. And so we talked about philosophy and religion and all kinds of things because he's a really interesting, thoughtful person. And then at the end, he said, okay, you and I will never speak this way again because I had to be in an arm's length from him. And so I couldn't hang out with him. I would know when he was playing basketball in the FBI gym, downstairs he used to play there. I never went down, even though I liked the game of basketball. And so I thought I can't be hanging out with Donald Trump, and my team said no, no, it would be a big insult if you don't go. And so I went, and it was in the blue room on the main floor of the White House residence, an elliptical room with two windows that looked, or maybe it's more than two, the lookout towards the Washington Monument. As I came in the room, I noticed staffers coming in setting.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So Trump was inaugurated on either Friday or Saturday, and we got word that he wanted to have a reception to thank the law enforcement leadership of the agencies that had secured the inauguration. So Secret Service, much in the news today, FBI, the police departments, the park police, all that sort of thing. And I thought, what a nice thing, but I don't want to go because I don't want to be hanging around with Donald Trump. And one thing that I had seen and that President Obama had made clear to me, made something I didn't say. So I met with Obama during an interview for an hour. He asked me to come back. Before he nominated me, and he explained that the moment he nominated me our relationship would change forever.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because it would have looked my letter to Congress just had like two lines. It just said additional materials come to our attention that requires investigation, and we kept it as oblique as possible because to start talking about hundreds of thousands of emails and maybe the new emails would have been, I thought, unfair.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In a game that you were supposed to win by ten goals? But I don't know. It was honestly, I believe it was the right decision. I would have given anything not to make the decision. And I can remember saying to my team, no one will ever understand this or see it the way we do because everyone will look back on this moment because we're going to choose a path. They'll all be looking down that path, back towards this intersection. No one's ever fully going to get it. And I couldn't explain it at the time because to explain it would have done more damage, I thought.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So what happens to the newly elected president in that circumstance? What happens to the institutions of justice in that circumstance? And so that's what I mean when I say both doors led to hell. There was not a good way to do this. And so sometimes when I've gotten frustrated, I've said, you know, blaming me is a little bit like blaming the ref for making a handball call and stoppage time.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think I could have done either And it was difficult to talk about norms because we'd never been in a situation like this. And I don't like playing the games of imagining alternative lives, but I even, I sometimes have tried to imagine, so what would have happened if I had not spoken about it and it had come out after the election. And Hillary Clinton had won and the result had changed in our investigation. And the FBI had known since before the election and didn't tell the American people this.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even with hindsight, I don't think I could have done the other. And I hope someday a PhD candidate in political science proves that given what happened in 2020, the way the undecided vote moved and all that, that when I was home in my pajamas, that I had no impact, but it doesn't change how I think about whether the decision was the right one.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Review. They found new emails. They found classified emails, but they came to me the Sunday before the election and said, our assessment of her has not changed. And I did, and I wrote a letter, and then I went out and had it margaritas because my head. But it was, and so we were out of it at that point. And I've heard lots of voices tell me that from the left in American politics, they think I caused Hillary Clinton the election. I don't know whether that's true. I hope and pray it's not true. It just increases the pain a little bit. But”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and tell her that I would welcome a conversation with her, and the answer came back. She disagrees with your course of action, but she does not wish to speak to you. And I've been around a while, and so I knew what that was. That was you will take this hit. You personally will take this hit. And so I said, all right, well, I'm totally screwed regardless, and so let's do it. And so we did it, notified Congress, it leaked immediately, which I expected. And then the team began reviewing, and they had told me they couldn't finish before the election because it's maybe more detail you need. But in those days, the FBI did not have a deduplication software program that worked on its classified, its secret networks. And these documents all had to be held on the secret network. And what happened was over the week, while I was sleeping, they wrote a program and figured out how to deduplicate. And so they cut it down to just thousands.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was a moment that I remember, I can close my eyes and be in it at one of my best people was a woman named Trisha Anderson, one of my top lawyers, and during our deliberations she said, I Should you consider that what you're about to do may help elect Donald Trump president of the United States? And it kind of took the air out of the room, and I said Thank first of all, Tricia, thank you for asking that question. But the answer has to be no, because down that path lies the death of the FBI, as an independent institution, I can't start making decisions based on who I think should be president. I'm not trying to help elect Donald Trump. I'm not trying to help or hurt anybody, but I can't make a decision on that basis. We have to decide what is the right thing to do among these two terrible options. And so we chose. And I was a little bit of a coward. I asked my chief of staff to tell of staff that I think I have to tell Congress that the testimony was inaccurate.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the thing that a lot of the press at the time missed is I didn't reopen the investigation. The Department of Justice did. They had actually said, we're going to get a search warrant to look at these emails. I had to decide, what do I do in light of the fact that I now know my testimony all summer long is false and that the American people are relying on it because I told them passionately this is over. There is nothing here. So what do I do? And people can see this differently, but those are the two doors to hell. You could conceal what you now know by being silent, or you could speak, and both of those are awful, awful options, and I'll spare you the reasoning, but we went through it in great detail and decided you know what, the thing we gotta do is tell Congress that the testimony is not accurate anymore, and then work as fast as we can to review it as fast as we can.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they said, and it's more than that. They said, we think we see the emails that we never found from her early in her tenure as Secretary of State when she was using a BlackBerry device. And I already knew the significance of that. The heart of the case was there was no doubt that Secretary Clinton did something she shouldn't have done, which was talk about classified topics on an unclassified email system. The question was, did she know she wasn't supposed to do that? And if there was going to be evidence that she knew, it would likely be at the beginning when someone might have got an email from her and then said, hey, boss, you can't do that. And so they said, so we think we've found the beginning emails. We can't review them before the election. And we think this could change the result.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“and said we need to speak to you. And that's an oh shit moment. Why would they interview the, reach out to the director at 5.30 in the morning? And so when they told me that we have found we had only ever found thousands of her emails, they said we have found hundreds of thousands on the laptop of this strange guy named Ethiener, who was married, I don't know what it was, a strange.”
2024-07-28 · Intelligence Squared · Former FBI Director James Comey on Trump, his new Crime Thriller and The Politics of Justice · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT