Former FBI Director James Comey told St. Louis Public Radio Wednesday he thinks Special Counsel Robert Mueller may be nearing the end of his investigation, based on recent events, but acknowledged Mueller's lack of leaks makes his opinion nothing more than an educated guess.
When [St. Louis on the Air host Don] Marsh asked him where he thinks the Mueller investigation is at currently, Comey said there’s “an argument to be made that the conviction – the plea and cooperation by Paul Manafort – may represent that we’re in the fourth quarter.”
“The way you normally do investigations is you work from the bottom up, and so they're getting pretty high,” he said. “But again, the reason I'm hesitant to even say that is [because] Bob Mueller's conducted his investigation like a pro – you know nothing about it except through his public filings, and that's the way it's supposed to be. And so I can't say with certainty where he is.”
Comey also said while he is not worried about what content may emerge from President Trump's recent call for the Justice Department to release unredacted copies of his text messages, he does fear what damage this order will do to our intelligence gathering capabilities going forward.
“Personally I don’t care – I wasn’t a big texter [as director], so I don’t know that there are any texts of mine,” Comey said. “But on email, I’m not worried about anything I said on email. I have a separate worry which is institutional, and I really hope the Department of Justice and the FBI look at this closely. You don’t want to do anything in disclosing information that’s connected to an intelligence investigation that would either screw up pending investigations or send a message to future sources that we can’t be trusted to protect you.”
On Tuesday, the president mounted his latest assault on the Mueller inquiry, calling it “truly a cancer” and praising his decision to make the files public as a “great service to the country.”
Republicans have claimed the FBI unfairly used a dossier of material on Trump compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele to obtain the surveillance warrant for Page, even though the bureau has said the dossier was not the basis of its investigation. Republicans also have focused on [Bruce] Ohr, who served as a link between the Justice Department and Steele.
Asked how releasing a new tranche of files might help Trump, Comey said: “I don’t know.”
“I’ve seen Republicans on the Hill and the president say the next revelation will show that the FBI acted in a bad way, and each revelation shows that the FBI conducted itself — as I know we did — in a professional routine, upholding the rule of law at every turn,” Comey added.
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Comey also said Trump’s actions and rhetoric have the potential of disrupting the work of the Department of Justice, especially with regard to the uncertainty surrounding embattled Attorney General Jeff Sessions, against whom the president also lashed out Tuesday.
“It’s become so blatant and so repeated and with so little follow-up,” Comey said of Trump’s repeated spats with Sessions. “In a way, I think it’s now just noise to the Department of Justice…There’s some circus going on above them.”
James Comey talks Kavanaugh, Mueller investigation – and says he's not worried about his emails (St. Louis Public Radio)
Comey says he's not worried about Trump releasing his texts (Politico)