Comey Book Excerpts Released

News  |  Apr 12, 2018

Fired FBI Director James Comey's new book, "A Higher Loyalty," comes out Tuesday, but details already are emerging in the run-up to that release and Comey's much-anticipated interview with ABC News on Sunday. 

Associated Press

... Comey blasts President Donald Trump as unethical and "untethered to truth" and calls his leadership of the country "ego driven and about personal loyalty" ... 

... He casts Trump as a mafia boss-like figure who sought to blur the line between law enforcement and politics and tried to pressure him regarding his investigation into Russian election interference.

The book adheres closely to Comey's public testimony and written statements about his contacts with the president during the early days of the administration and his growing concern about the president's integrity.

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Comey also writes extensively about his first meeting with Trump after his election. Others in the meeting included Vice President Mike Pence, Trump's first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, Michael Flynn, who would become national security adviser, and incoming press secretary, Sean Spicer. Comey was also joined by NSA Director Mike Rogers, CIA Director John Brennan and DNI Director James Clapper.

After Clapper briefed the team on the intelligence community's findings of Russian election interference, Comey said he was taken aback by what the Trump team didn't ask.

"They were about to lead a country that had been attacked by a foreign adversary, yet they had no questions about what the future Russian threat might be," Comey writes. Instead, he writes, they launched into a strategy session about how to "spin what we'd just told them" for the public.

WaPo:

With Clapper and then-CIA Director John O. Brennan — both Obama appointees — still in the room, Priebus and other Trump aides strategized for political advantage, Comey writes. The Trump team decided they would emphasize that Russian interference had no impact on the vote — which, Clapper reminded them, the intelligence community had not determined.

Comey repeats the story he told before Congress about the president asking for his loyalty over a private dinner in the White House. 

ABC News

Comey writes that to him, “The demand was like Sammy the Bull’s Cosa Nostra induction ceremony,” referring to Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, a former leader of the Gambino crime family, whose testimony ultimately helped convict mob boss John Gotti.

Comey responded with silence, he writes in the book, and Trump moved the conversation along. Later in the dinner, Trump returned to the subject: “I need loyalty.”

“You will always get honesty from me,” Comey writes that he responded.

“That’s what I want, honest loyalty,” Trump said.

“You will get that from me,” Comey responded.

Comey also writes about John Kelly's reaction to his firing.

WaPo:

On May 9, as Comey was talking with FBI employees in the Los Angeles field office, he peered at a television screen and saw a news alert: “COMEY FIRED.”

Comey describes soon receiving an “emotional call” from Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly.

“He said he was sick about my firing and that he intended to quit in protest,” Comey writes. “He said he didn’t want to work for dishonorable people who would treat someone like me in such a manner. I urged Kelly not to do that, arguing that the country needed principled people around this president. Especially this president.”

Kelly did not resign. Two and a half months later, he was named White House chief of staff.

Comey says the president returned again and again to the most salacious detail in the Steele dossier.  

WaPo:

Comey describes Trump as having been obsessed with the prostitutes portion of the infamous dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, raising it at least four times with the FBI head.

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Trump offered varying explanations to convince Comey it was not true.

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In his memoir, Comey paints a devastating portrait of a president who built “a cocoon of alternative reality that he was busily wrapping around all of us.” Comey describes Trump as a congenital liar and unethical leader, devoid of human emotion and driven by personal ego.

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Interacting with Trump, Comey writes, gave him “flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the Mob. The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and above the truth.”

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A lifelong Republican until recently, Comey delivers an indirect but unmistakable rebuke of the GOP’s congressional leaders as well: “It is also wrong to stand idly by, or worse, to stay silent when you know better, while a president brazenly seeks to undermine public confidence in law enforcement institutions that were established to keep our leaders in check.”

NYT Book Review

The central themes that Comey returns to throughout this impassioned book are the toxic consequences of lying; and the corrosive effects of choosing loyalty to an individual over truth and the rule of law. Dishonesty, he writes, was central “to the entire enterprise of organized crime on both sides of the Atlantic,” and so, too, were bullying, peer pressure and groupthink — repellent traits shared by Trump and company, he suggests, and now infecting our culture.

“We are experiencing a dangerous time in our country,” Comey writes, “with a political environment where basic facts are disputed, fundamental truth is questioned, lying is normalized and unethical behavior is ignored, excused or rewarded.”

In new book, Comey says Trump ‘untethered to truth’ (AP)

Comey book claims President Trump sought loyalty like mafia boss 'Sammy the Bull' (ABC News)

James Comey’s memoir: Trump fixates on proving lewd dossier allegations false (WaPo)

James Comey Has a Story to Tell. It’s Very Persuasive. (NYT Book Review)