A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

by James Comey

  I’ve also asked myself a hundred times whether I should have pressed for faster action after hearing something about Weiner’s laptop around the beginning of October. But I did not understand what it meant until October 27. I had moved on to other cases and problems, and assumed if it was important, the team would bring it to me. Had I been told about it earlier, I’m sure I would have had the same reaction I had on October 27—we need to go get those emails, immediately. Whether I should have, or could have, been told the details earlier than October 27 is a question I can’t answer.

  The 2016 presidential election was like no other for the FBI, and even knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t have done it differently, but I can imagine good and principled people in my shoes making different choices about some things. I think different choices would have resulted in greater damage to our country’s institutions of justice, but I’m not certain of that. I pray no future FBI director is forced to find out.

  * * *

  In late November, after the election, I was in the Oval Office for a national security meeting with the president and other senior leaders. I still had that Sixth Sense feeling, especially among people who likely had thought they were going to continue their time in the White House under a new Democratic president. But President Obama was not among them. He greeted me as he always had and was professional and welcoming.

  Extraordinary observer of body language that he was, maybe President Obama sensed I felt ill at ease, or maybe he just felt it was important to say something to me for a variety of reasons. As the meeting broke up, he asked me to stay behind. I sat on the couch, back to the grandfather clock. He sat in his normal chair, back to the fireplace. The White House photographer Pete Souza lingered to record the moment, but the president shooed him away. Within seconds, it was just the two of us.

  President Obama then leaned forward, forearms on his knees. He started with a long preamble, explaining that he wasn’t going to talk to me about any particular case or particular investigation.

  “I just want to tell you something,” he said.

  I knew how badly Obama had wanted Hillary Clinton to win the White House. He had campaigned tirelessly for her and, by some accounts, harder for her than any other president had for their hoped-for successor. I knew he took the loss hard, as did the entire White House staff. But I respected President Obama and was very open to whatever it was he had to say.

  “I picked you to be FBI director because of your integrity and your ability,” he said. Then he added something that struck me as remarkable. “I want you to know that nothing—nothing—has happened in the last year to change my view.”

  He wasn’t telling me he agreed with my decisions. He wasn’t talking about the decisions. He was saying he understood where they came from. Boy, were those words I needed to hear.

  I felt a wave of emotion, almost to the verge of tears. President Obama was not an outwardly emotional man in these kinds of meetings, but still I spoke in unusually emotional terms to him.

  “That means a lot to me, Mr. President. I have hated the last year. The last thing we want is to be involved in an election. I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

  “I know, I know,” he said.

  I paused and then decided to add something. Maybe it was what I believe a large proportion of the country was feeling.

  “Mr. President, my wife would kill me if I didn’t take the opportunity to thank you and to tell you how much I’m going to miss you.”

  Although I hadn’t supported President Obama when he ran for office, I had developed great respect for him as a leader and a person, and it was only at that moment that I felt the full weight of his imminent departure and what it would mean.

  Unable to help myself, I added, “I dread the next four years, but in some ways, I feel more pressure to stay now.”

  He said nothing to this. There was no hint of what he thought of the incoming president or the future of the country, though undoubtedly there was much he could have said in both respects. Instead he patted me on the arm, then we rose and shook hands, and I walked out of the Oval Office. Soon that same office would have a new and very different occupant.

  CHAPTER 12

  TRUMP TOWER

  And because seeking the truth is what we are all about … the possibility—even the perception—that that quest may be tainted deeply troubles us, as it long has and as it should.

  —ROBERT M. GATES, DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE

  A SMALL FLEET of fully armored SUVs—carrying the directors of national intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation—made its way toward the tall, shining gold tower in the middle of Manhattan. It was January 6, 2017, two weeks before Inauguration Day, and we had all flown up that morning. The NYPD led our cars through the barricade and onto the side street between Madison and Fifth Avenues in Manhattan. We walked in a group, surrounded by our security people, and entered the side-street entrance for the Trump Tower residences.

  The press, in their holding area on Fifth Avenue, couldn’t see us arrive, nor could the protesters, in their own holding area not far away. Still, it was quite the scene in the comparatively quiet Trump Tower residences lobby. We were a two-elevator crowd of leaders and protectors. One elevator discharged a lady going to walk her tiny dog. She and her dog, both wearing expensive coats against a cold Fifth Avenue day, passed through our tight pack of dark suits and armed men. Chief spies holding locked bags with our nation’s secrets politely mumbled, “’Scuse us.”

  After all the live TV images of job applicants and dignitaries coming and going through the gilded Fifth Avenue lobby as though on a reality TV show, the leaders of our country’s biggest intelligence agencies were sneaking in to see the president-elect. We were sneaking in to tell him what Russia had done to try to help elect him.

  This was to be the third and final briefing session by the leadership of the intelligence community—referred to inside the government as the IC—to describe the classified findings of an intelligence community assessment (ICA) of Russia’s actions during the presidential election. At President Obama’s direction, analysts from the CIA, NSA, and FBI, coordinated by senior analysts from ODNI—the Office of the Director of National Intelligence—had spent a month pulling together all sources of information to offer government officials, as well as the incoming Trump administration, a complete picture of the level of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. A watered-down, unclassified version of the ICA had been prepared for public release. But this was the meaty stuff. This was about sharing the most sensitive information, including sources and methods—precisely how we knew what we knew—spelling out in great detail why we had achieved the unusual state of a joint high-confidence opinion that Russia had intervened extensively in an American presidential election.

  The four agencies had joined in the assessment, which was both stunning and straightforward: Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered an extensive effort to influence the 2016 presidential election. That effort, which came through cyber activity, social media, and Russian state media, had a variety of goals: undermining public faith in the American democratic process, denigrating Hillary Clinton and harming her electability and potential presidency, and helping Donald Trump get elected.

  Our first briefing on the assessment had occurred the day before, January 5, 2017, with the incumbent of the Oval Office. In front of President Obama, Vice President Biden, and their senior aides, Jim Clapper, the director of national intelligence, laid out the work that had been done, the conclusions reached, and the basis for those conclusions. The president asked a variety of questions, as did the vice president.

  It was at moments like these when I occasionally caught a glimpse of the warm, brotherly, and sometimes exasperating relationship between Barack Obama and Joe Biden, two very different personalities. The pattern was usually the same: President Obama would have a series of exchanges heading a conv
ersation very clearly and crisply in Direction A. Then, at some point, Biden would jump in with, “Can I ask something, Mr. President?” Obama would politely agree, but something in his expression suggested he knew full well that for the next five or ten minutes we would all be heading in Direction Z. After listening and patiently waiting, President Obama would then bring the conversation back on course.

  In this instance, we stayed on track. After an extended discussion on the intelligence assessment, the president asked what the plan was for further briefings. Director Clapper explained that we were to meet the Gang of Eight the next morning—the top officials in Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, briefed on intelligence matters—and then we would go immediately to New York City to brief the president-elect and his senior team.

  Clapper explained to Obama that there was an unusual matter that needed to be brought to Mr. Trump’s attention: additional material—what would become commonly called “the Steele dossier”—that contained a variety of allegations about Trump. The material had been assembled by an individual considered reliable, a former allied intelligence officer, but it had not been fully validated. The material included some wild stuff. Among that stuff were unconfirmed allegations that the president-elect had been engaged in unusual sexual activities with prostitutes in Russia while on a trip to Moscow in 2013, activities that at one point involved prostitutes urinating on a hotel bed in the presidential suite of the Ritz-Carlton that the Obamas had used while on a visit there. Another allegation was that these activities were filmed by Russian intelligence for the possible purpose of blackmail against the president-elect. Director Clapper explained that we believed the media were about to report on this material and therefore we had concluded it was important for the intelligence community to alert the incoming president.

  Obama did not appear to have any reaction to any of this—at least none he would share with us. In a level voice, he asked, “What’s the plan for that briefing?”

  With just the briefest of sidelong glances at me, Clapper took a breath, then said, “We have decided that Director Comey will meet alone with the president-elect to brief him on this material following the completion of the full ICA briefing.”

  The president did not say a word. Instead he turned his head to his left and looked directly at me. He raised and lowered both of his eyebrows with emphasis, and then looked away. I suppose you can read whatever you want into a wordless expression, but to my mind his Groucho Marx eyebrow raise was both subtle humor and an expression of concern. It was almost as if he were saying, “Good luck with that.” I began to feel a lump in my stomach.

  As the meeting broke up, my eyes fixed on the bowl of apples on the Oval Office coffee table. Because the president and Mrs. Obama were very health conscious—the First Lady had run a campaign in schools about exchanging junk food for fruits and vegetables—the apples had been a fixture of the Oval Office for years. I wasn’t entirely certain they were edible, but I once saw Chief of Staff Denis McDonough grab two at a time. He surely wasn’t eating plastic fruit replicas. My youngest daughter long ago had asked me to get her a presidential apple, and this was surely the last time the Oval Office, an apple, and I would ever be together. Now or never. Swipe an apple at the close of a meeting about Russian interference? So tacky. But fatherhood beats tacky. I scooped an apple. Nobody stopped me. I photographed it in the car and texted the picture to my daughter, delivering the product that evening. She let me taste a slice. Not plastic.

  * * *

  Later that day, I received a call from Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security, who had been a friend since we were federal prosecutors together in Manhattan in the 1980s. He had been in the Oval Office that morning for the briefing. I have no idea whether he was calling me at President Obama’s suggestion, or if the two even spoke about the matter, but he gave voice to how I viewed the Oval Office eyebrow raise.

  “Jim, I’m worried about this plan for you to privately brief the president-elect,” he said.

  “Me, too,” I replied.

  “Have you ever met Donald Trump?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Jim, please be careful. Be very careful. This may not go well.”

  I thanked Jeh for the concern and the call. This was not making me feel better.

  Still, I could see no way out of it. The FBI was aware of the material. Two United States senators separately contacted me to alert me to its existence and the fact that many in Washington either had it or knew of it. CNN had informed the FBI press office that they were going to run with it as soon as the next day. Whether it was true or not, an important feature of disarming any effort to coerce a public official is to tell the official what the enemy might be doing or saying. The FBI calls that a “defensive briefing.”

  How on earth could we brief the man about Russian efforts and not tell him about this piece? But it was so salacious and embarrassing that it didn’t make sense to tell him in a group, especially not a group led by Obama appointees who were leaving office the moment Trump became president. I was staying on as FBI director, we knew the information, and the man had to be told. It made complete sense for me to do it. The plan was sensible, if the word applies in the context of talking with a new president about prostitutes in Moscow. Still, the plan left me deeply uncomfortable.

  There was more to the discomfort: I long ago learned that people tend to assume that you act and think the way they would in a similar situation. They project their worldview onto you, even if you see the world very differently. There was a real chance that Donald Trump, politician and hardball deal-maker, would assume I was dangling the prostitute thing over him to jam him, to gain leverage. He might well assume I was pulling a J. Edgar Hoover, because that’s what Hoover would do in my shoes. An eyebrow raise didn’t quite do this situation justice; it was really going to suck.

  The bit about “pulling a J. Edgar Hoover” made me keen to have some tool in my bag to reassure the new president. I needed to be prepared to say something, if at all possible, that would take the temperature down. After extensive discussion with my team, I decided I could assure the president-elect that the FBI was not currently investigating him. This was literally true. We did not have a counterintelligence case file open on him. We really didn’t care if he had cavorted with hookers in Moscow, so long as the Russians weren’t trying to coerce him in some way.

  The FBI’s general counsel, Jim Baker, argued powerfully that such an assurance, although true, could be misleadingly narrow: the president-elect’s other conduct was, or surely would be, within the scope of an investigation looking at whether his campaign had coordinated with Russia. There was also the concern that the FBI might then be obligated to tell President Trump if we did open an investigation of him. I saw the logic of this position, but I also saw the bigger danger of the new president, who was known to be impulsive, going to war against the FBI. And I was determined to do all I could, appropriately, to work successfully with the new president. So I rejected Jim Baker’s thoughtful advice and headed to Trump Tower with “we are not investigating you” in my back pocket. Once again, we were in an unprecedented spot.

  By the beginning of 2017, after all the controversies over the Clinton case, I had become a relatively identifiable public figure. Even if I wanted to hide from view, my height made that even harder. It was clear that any number of Republicans shared Hillary Clinton’s view that I’d affected the election result in Trump’s favor. As much as Clinton partisans felt anger—and in some cases even hatred—toward me, in Trump World, I was something of a celebrity. Which made my entrance into Trump Tower really uncomfortable. I didn’t want to be seen as anything different from the other intelligence leaders doing their jobs.

  We gathered in a small conference room belonging to the Trump Organization. It was blandly decorated and had been outfitted with a temporary heavy gold ceiling-to-floor curtain to block the glass wall that would otherwise show our meeting to the hallway. The president-elect ente
red the room on time, followed by the vice president–elect and the rest of the designated senior White House team.

  This was the first time I’d ever seen Donald Trump face-to-face. He appeared shorter than he seemed on a debate stage with Hillary Clinton. Otherwise, as I looked at the president-elect, I was struck that he looked exactly the same in person as on television, which surprised me because people most often look different in person. His suit jacket was open and his tie too long, as usual. His face appeared slightly orange, with bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assumed he placed small tanning goggles, and impressively coiffed, bright blond hair, which upon close inspection looked to be all his. I remember wondering how long it must take him in the morning to get that done. As he extended his hand, I made a mental note to check its size. It was smaller than mine, but did not seem unusually so.

  Trump brought his entire senior team into the small conference room. Vice President–Elect Mike Pence, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, and Press Secretary Sean Spicer sat at the oval conference table, with Trump and Pence seated at opposite ends. They were quiet and serious. As we shook hands, the vice president–elect held the handshake an extra few seconds and said my first name, drawing it out—“Jiiiimm.” It struck me as an odd combination of someone greeting an old friend and consoling that friend. I don’t think we had ever met, although I recall our speaking on the phone once fourteen years earlier, in 2003, when I was United States Attorney in Manhattan and we were investigating a guy who registered common misspellings of popular children’s websites so that when a child mistyped “Disneyland.com” or “Bobthebuilder.com” they were directed to a pornography website. My reaction was “That should be a crime.” When I found it had become a federal crime only months earlier, I asked for the contact information of the member of Congress responsible for the Truth in Domain Names Act so I could thank that person. It turned out to be Indiana congressman Mike Pence, who told me on the phone that he had pushed for the law after one of his own children was redirected in that sick way.