Former FBI Director James Comey’s book “A Higher Loyalty” will be released Tuesday, but portions of the book have already stolen the headlines in the political world as excerpts leaked.
The Washington Examiner reviewed a copy of Comey’s book on Sunday. Here are the top 11 nuggets and passages from “A Higher Loyalty”:
- Other Examiner coverage of “A Higher Loyalty”: President Obama and Loretta Lynch ‘jeopardized’ the Hillary Clinton email investigation and Comey saw shades of the Mafia in Trump’s White House after he dared to question the president
On once wearing a bathing suit during a meeting during a Situation Room meeting to which he was telecommuting:
Nobody sat at the opposite end of the table from the president because that would block the video screen and camera that allowed senior leaders to join from the road. They would appear on the screen in a Hollywood Squares setup, visible only from the waist up. (Knowing this, I once “attended” from Hawaii wearing a suit jacket and tie, and my bathing suit).
On the differences between CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus infractions and Hillary Clinton’s email case:
He knew as well as anyone in government that what he did was wrong. He even allowed the woman to photograph key pages from classified documents. And then, as if to underscore that he knew he shouldn’t do what he did, he lied to FBI agents about what he had done. Despite all of this clear and powerful evidence, on facts far worse for him than for Secretary Clinton, and after he demonstrably lied to the FBI, the Department of Justice charged him only with a misdemeanor after he reached a plea-bargain agreement.
I believe, and still believe, the Petraeus was treated under a double standard based on class. A poor person, an unknown person — say a young black Baptist minister from Richmond — would be charged with a felony and sent to jail.
Hillary Clinton’s case, at least as far as we knew at the start, did not appear to come anywhere near General Petraeus’s in the volume and classification level of the material mishandled. … Everyone she emailed appeared to both have the appropriate clearance and a legitimate need to know the information. So, although we were not going to prejudge the result, we started the Clinton investigation aware that it was unlikely to be a case that the career prosecutors at the Department of justice would prosecute.
We knew that the Department of Justice would never bring — and had never brought — criminal charges in such a situation without strong evidence that the subject of our investigation knew she was doing something she shouldn’t be doing. Accidents, sloppiness, and even extreme carelessness with regard to classified information were not things that were prosecuted. Ever. For a current government employee, of course, there would be severe consequences for such carelessness, including the real possibility of losing access to classified information or getting fired, but there would be no criminal prosecution.
On where he found the FBI in the Clinton email investigation:
This was a no-win scenario for the FBI. No matter what the honest outcome, the institution’s credibility — and mine — would be damaged; the only question was how much.
On the direction he got from the Obama Justice Department on the end of the Clinton email case:
In early spring, as I began to see the end of the investigation coming with insufficient evidence to support a prosecution, I urged the deputy attorney general — my immediate boss — to give thought to what the endgame might look like if the case were to be closed without charges. Sally Yates was a career prosecutor whom I had known casually for years. She and one of my close friends had been federal prosecutors together in Atlanta, where she earned a reputation as tough, thoughtful, and independent. Everything I saw as FBI director was consistent with that reputation. Because this was not a normal case, and 2016 was not a normal year, I suggested to Yates that unusual transparency might be necessary to reassure the American people and to protect the institutions of justice. I said I hoped she would put people to work researching what was possible under the law. I never heard back.
On how he wanted to tell the American people about Russian interference in the 2016 election:
A harder question was whether, during the heat of a presidential campaign, to tell the American people more about the overall Russian effort to influence the election. President Obama and his national security team wrestled with that question throughout August and September. At one meeting with the president, we discussed whether some kind of public “inoculation” made sense. That is, arming the American people with the knowledge of the hostile effort to influence their voting decisions might help blunt its impact. I said I was tired of being the guy at the podium with controversial news — especially after the beating I had taken since the July 5 announcement — but I was willing to be the voice on this, absent any alternatives. I also acknowledged to the president that an inoculation effort might accidentally accomplish the Russians’ goal of undermining confidence in our election system. If you tell Americans that the Russians are tampering with the election, have you just sowed doubt about the outcome, or given one side an excuse for why they lost? This was very tricky.
It laid out what the Russians were doing with the dumping of stolen emails, highlighted hacking aimed at state voter databases, and placed those activities in the context of historical Russian disruption efforts. I intended that as a warning to the American people. But there was no decision. The Obama’s team deliberations were, as usual, extensive, thoughtful, and very slow. I suspected a major factor in their deliberations was the universal view of pollsters that Donald Trump had no chance.
On swiping an apple from the bowl on Obama’s table in the Oval Office during his last meeting with the outgoing president:
Swipe an apple at the close of a meeting about Russian interference? So tacky. But fatherhood beats tacky.
On trying to hide during a meeting in the Blue Room with Trump:
I was standing against a heavy blue curtain. I was wearing a blue suit that didn’t match the curtain exactly, but was pretty close. I was thinking, I’m so lucky they held the event in this room because I didn’t have suits that blend in the Green or Red rooms.
On his first impressions of Attorney General Jeff Sessions:
My first impressions of him were that he was eerily similar to Alberto Gonzales — both overwhelmed and overmatched by the job — but Sessions lacked the kindness Gonzales radiated.
On the political make-up of the FBI and Andrew McCabe:
In any event, the assertion was nonsense, for a bunch of reasons — including that the FBI was not exactly a secret cabal of Clinton lovers. Although special agents are trained to check their politics at the door, they tend to lean to the right side of the political spectrum — and McCabe had long considered himself a Republican.
On how Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente reacted when Comey told him Trump wanted to stop the Flynn investigation:
That was the last time I spoke with President Trump. We reported the call to the acting deputy attorney general. He had apparently done nothing since March 30, replying, “Oh, God, I was hoping that would just go away.”
On the effect Trump will have on the country:
We all bear responsibility for the deeply flawed choices put before voters during the 2016 election, and our country is paying a high price: this president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values. His leadership is transactional, ego driven, and about personal loyalty. We are fortunate some ethical leaders have chosen to serve and to stay at senior levels of government, but they cannot prevent all of the damage from the forest fire that is the Trump presidency. Their task is to try and contain it.
