COMEY BURIES TRUMP
James Comey in ABC Interview: Trump Is a Serial Liar, Treats Women Like ‘Meat’ and Is a ‘Stain’ on All Who Work for Him
James Comey in ABC Interview: Trump Is a Serial Liar, Treats Women Like ‘Meat’ and Is a ‘Stain’ on All Who Work for Him
By
JACEY FORTINAPRIL 15, 2018
George Stephanopoulos, ABC News’s chief anchor, interviewed the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey. Ralph Alswang/ABC News
When President Trump fired James B. Comey as the director of the F.B.I. last May, that did not mean the end of Mr. Comey’s time in the public eye — far from it. His memoir,
“A Higher Loyalty,” is about to be released and Mr. Comey is featured in a wide-ranging
interview with ABC News that is set to air on Sunday at 10 p.m. Eastern.
ABC is airing one hour of its conversation with Mr. Comey, it conducted a five-hour interview with him, a transcript of which was obtained by The New York Times. In it, Mr. Comey called Mr. Trump a serial liar who treated women like “meat,” and described him as a “stain” on everyone who worked for him.
[Read more from The Times’s Michael D. Shear and Peter Baker and read annotated excerpts from the interview »]
An escalating feud
For days, Mr. Trump has waged a ferocious counterattack against Mr. Comey, who portrays the president in his book as an unethical and dishonest leader. On Sunday morning, Mr. Trump unleashed a barrage of Twitter posts, calling Mr. Comey a liar and denying he had asked him for loyalty.
Mr. Trump suggested Mr. Comey
should be jailed, accusing him of leaking classified information and lying to Congress. He referred
to the Clinton email investigation, saying Mr. Comey “was making decisions based on the fact that he thought she was going to win, and he wanted a job.” He also called Mr. Comey a “slimeball” again, and said he had thrown the former attorney general, Loretta Lynch, “
under the bus.”
Here is an overview of The New York Times’s coverage of Mr. Comey, who earned a reputation for being fastidiously nonpartisan yet has found himself, repeatedly, at the center of some of Washington’s fiercest political storms.
All eyes were on Mr. Comey during a Senate hearing in June 2017. Doug Mills/The New York Times
A letter to Congress, weeks before the election
Mr. Comey made a fateful decision in October 2016, when he was the F.B.I. director. In a letter that was immediately made public (
you can read it here),
he told Congress the agency was reopening an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.
It was not standard protocol for the F.B.I. to make these kinds of announcements publicly. But
Mr. Comey determined that this time was different, in part because
he believed that failing to disclose the investigation could tarnish both the F.B.I. and the presidential election.
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These Are the Bad (and Worse) Options James Comey Faced
When federal officials concluded their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, had a decision to make on how to announce that news. The choices he made in July set the F.B.I. on the path toward the predicament it faces today.
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Here is a deep dive into the back story of that decision, which
may have contributed to Mr. Trump’s upset victory.
An inauguration and a termination
Here is a timeline of Mr. Comey’s short tenure as F.B.I. director under Mr. Trump.
Mr. Comey met the president-elect for the first time in January 2017,
during an intelligence briefing about
Russian meddling in the election. In meetings and conversations afterward,
Mr. Comey has said, the president tried in vain to secure his loyalty.
James Comey with President Trump at the White House in January 2017. Mr. Comey told a friend he had hoped Mr. Trump would not spot him at the event. Pool photo by Andrew Harrer
In March 2017, Mr. Comey confirmed that
the F.B.I. was investigating Russian links to the Trump campaign.
He later said the president repeatedly asked him to say publicly what he had said privately: that
Mr. Trump was not personally under investigation.
Two months later, Mr. Comey
testified on Capitol Hill to defend reopening the Clinton investigation in 2016. A memorable quote:
“It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election.”
On May 9, 2017,
Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey.
The New York Times reporters Peter Baker, Maggie Haberman and Matthew Rosenberg analyze the firing of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey.
By A.J. CHAVAR on May 11, 2017. .
Watch in Times Video »
But let justice roll down like waters
For Mr. Comey, getting fired was in some ways like being freed.
He started tweeting under his own name in 2017. He shared quotes about leadership. He posted photos, often of nature and sometimes including himself,
towering and pensive in bucolic landscapes.
Mr. Trump grew bolder in criticizing Mr. Comey, calling him a “
showboat,” a “
nut job” and, more recently, an “
untruthful slime ball.” The president’s stated reasons for firing the F.B.I. director
have been inconsistent.
Five Contradictions in the White House’s Story About Comey’s Firing
The Trump administration has offered conflicting answers about how and why the F.B.I. director, James Comey, was fired.
In June, Mr. Comey discussed the president at length at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.
It was quite an event.
In testimony that was plain-spoken but forceful,
he accused Mr. Trump of lying, defaming the F.B.I. and trying to derail an investigation.
James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS on June 8, 2017. Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times.
Watch in Times Video »
Mr. Comey has now written a memoir, “A Higher Loyalty”
Here is our review. It describes Mr. Trump as
“unethical, and untethered to truth,”compares the president to a mafia boss and wonders about his reasons for refusing to acknowledge Russia’s attempts to meddle in the election.
The book is set to be released on Tuesday.