by James Comey
On Tuesday, May 16, Patrice and I were planning to sneak past the press and get out of town for a few days. I woke up at about 2:00 A.M. that morning, jolted awake by a thought: the president’s tweet changes my perspective on how to address our February 14, 2017, meeting, when he expressed his “hope” that I would drop an investigation of his former national security adviser, Mike Flynn. Though I had written an unclassified memo about the conversation, the FBI leadership and I had gotten stuck there because it would be my word against the president’s. We hadn’t given up on pursuing it, but instead had decided to hold it—and keep it away from the investigative team so they wouldn’t be influenced by the president. We could think about it more once the Department of Justice decided how they would supervise the investigations related to the Trump administration and Russia after the attorney general was recused. But this tweet about tapes changed everything, I thought, lying there in the dark. If there are tapes of my conversations with President Trump, there will be corroboration of the fact that he said he wanted me to drop the Flynn investigation. It will no longer be my word against his. If there is a tape, the president of the United States will be heard in the Oval Office telling me, “I hope you can let it go.”
I lay in bed thinking through this delayed revelation. I could leave it alone, and hope the FBI leadership team saw what I saw in Trump’s tweet about tapes and that they would start pushing the Department of Justice to go get the tapes. Maybe the FBI would even urge Justice to appoint an independent prosecutor to pursue this. Maybe I could trust that the system would work. But I had trusted the system years earlier on the question of torture. Then, I had trusted the attorney general to carry our department’s concerns about torture policy to the White House, to a meeting I was excluded from, but nothing happened. No, I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. This time I could and would do something because, ironically, thanks to Donald Trump, I was a private citizen now.
I trusted the FBI, but I didn’t trust the Department of Justice leadership under the current attorney general and deputy attorney general to do the right thing. Something was needed that might force them to do the right thing. Now that I was a private citizen, I could do something. I decided I would prompt a media story by revealing the president’s February 14 direction that I drop the Flynn investigation. That might force the Department of Justice to appoint a special prosecutor, who could then go get the tapes that Trump had tweeted about. And, although I was banned from FBI property, I had a copy of my unclassified memo about his request stored securely at home.
Tuesday morning, after dawn, I contacted my good friend Dan Richman, a former prosecutor and now a professor at Columbia Law School. Dan had been giving me legal advice since my firing. I told him I was going to send him one unclassified memo and I wanted him to share the substance of the memo—but not the memo itself—with a reporter. If I do it myself, I thought, it will create a media frenzy—at my driveway, no less—and I will be hard-pressed to refuse follow-up comments. I would, of course, tell the truth if asked whether I played a part in it. I did. I had to. To be clear, this was not a “leak” of classified information no matter how many times politicians, political pundits, or the president call it that. A private citizen may legally share unclassified details of a conversation with the president with the press, or include that information in a book. I believe in the power of the press and know Thomas Jefferson was right when he wrote: “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
I don’t know whether the media storm that followed my disclosure of the February 14 “let it go” conversation prompted the Department of Justice leadership to appoint a special counsel. The FBI may already have been pushing for the appointment of a special counsel after seeing the Trump tweet about tapes. I just know that the Department of Justice did so shortly thereafter, giving Robert Mueller the authority to investigate any coordination between the Russian government and the Trump campaign and any related matters.
I also don’t know whether the special counsel will find criminal wrongdoing by the president or others who have not been charged as of this writing. One of the pivotal questions I presume that Bob Mueller’s team is investigating is whether or not in urging me to back the FBI off our investigation of his national security advisor and in firing me, President Trump was attempting to obstruct justice, which is a federal crime. It’s certainly possible. There is at least circumstantial evidence in that regard, and there may be more that the Mueller team will assemble. I’ve prosecuted and overseen many cases involving obstruction of justice, but in this case, I am not the prosecutor. I am a witness. I have one perspective on the behavior I saw, which while disturbing and violating basic norms of ethical leadership, may fall short of being illegal. Central to the question of obstruction, for example, is a showing of President Trump’s intent. Is there sufficient proof that he intended to take those actions and others to derail a criminal investigation, with corrupt intent? Because I don’t know all the evidence, I can’t answer that question with any certainty. I do know that, as of this writing, Special Counsel Mueller and his team are hard at work and the American people can have confidence that, unless their investigation is blocked in some fashion, they will get to the truth, whatever that is.
* * *
On June 8, 2017, I testified publicly before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which wanted to hear about my interactions with President Trump. For whatever reason, the president had only increased people’s interest in my perspectives. I decided to write an account of some of my dealings with him and submit it in advance to the committee, so that I wouldn’t need to speak for a long time at the start of my testimony, and to give the senators a chance to digest what I wrote and ask follow-up questions.
I wanted to use my brief opening statement to accomplish one thing—to say good-bye to the people of the FBI, something President Trump did not have the grace or charity of spirit to allow me to do. It also allowed me to deny, on their behalf and mine, the lies the administration had told about the FBI being in disarray. I knew they would be watching and I could speak directly to them.
I practiced what I wanted to say in front of Patrice and one of our daughters. They were shocked that I intended to speak without notes, but I told them it had to come from the heart and that, if I brought a text, I would end up staring at it. As nerve-racking as it was to speak without notes in front of millions of people, that was the way it would mean the most to the people of the FBI. Patrice was also concerned that in my nervousness, I would smile like a fool or frown as if somebody had died. I had to find a place between those two.
I questioned my decision to go without notes as I stood in a conference room waiting to walk into the Senate hearing room. What if I freeze? What if I get all tangled up in my words? I don’t normally get nervous in public, but this was nuts. But it was too late. I walked with the leaders of the committee down the long private hall behind the dais, turned left, and stepped into something surreal. I have seen lots of cameras in my day and heard my share of shutter clicks. Nothing compared to this scene.
As I sat at the witness table in the eye of the storm, I kept hearing Patrice’s voice in my head: “Think about the people of the FBI; that will bring light to your eyes.” And so I did. I stumbled a bit, and nearly lost control of my emotions at the end when speaking about the people of the FBI, but I spoke from the heart:
When I was appointed FBI Director in 2013, I understood that I served at the pleasure of the President. Even though I was appointed to a 10-year term, which Congress created in order to underscore the importance of the FBI being outside of politics and independent, I understood that I could be fired by a President for any reason or for no reason at all.
And on May the 9th, when I learned that I had been fired, for that reason I immediately came home as a private citizen. But then the explanations, the shifting explanations, confused me and increasingly concerned me. They confused me becau
se the President and I had had multiple conversations about my job, both before and after he took office, and he had repeatedly told me I was doing a great job and he hoped I would stay. And I had repeatedly assured him that I did intend to stay and serve out the remaining six years of my term.
He told me repeatedly that he had talked to lots of people about me, including our current attorney general, and had learned that I was doing a great job and that I was extremely well liked by the FBI workforce.
So it confused me when I saw on television the President saying that he actually fired me because of the Russia investigation and learned, again from the media, that he was telling privately other parties that my firing had relieved great pressure on the Russia investigation.
I was also confused by the initial explanation that was offered publicly, that I was fired because of the decisions I had made during the election year. That didn’t make sense to me for a whole bunch of reasons, including the time and all the water that had gone under the bridge since those hard decisions that had to be made. That didn’t make any sense to me.
And although the law required no reason at all to fire an FBI Director, the administration then chose to defame me and, more importantly, the FBI by saying that the organization was in disarray, that it was poorly led, that the workforce had lost confidence in its leader.
Those were lies, plain and simple, and I am so sorry that the FBI workforce had to hear them and I’m so sorry that the American people were told them. I worked every day at the FBI to help make that great organization better. And I say “help” because I did nothing alone at the FBI. There are no indispensable people at the FBI. The organization’s great strength is that its values and abilities run deep and wide. The FBI will be fine without me. The FBI’s mission will be relentlessly pursued by its people, and that mission is to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States.
I will deeply miss being part of that mission, but this organization and its mission will go on long beyond me and long beyond any particular administration.
I have a message before I close for my former colleagues at the FBI. But first I want the American people to know this truth: The FBI is honest. The FBI is strong. And the FBI is and always will be independent.
And now, to my former colleagues, if I may. I am so sorry that I didn’t get the chance to say good-bye to you properly. It was the honor of my life to serve beside you, to be part of the FBI family. And I will miss it for the rest of my life. Thank you for standing watch. Thank you for doing so much good for this country. Do that good as long as ever you can.
And, Senators, I look forward to your questions.
EPILOGUE
I AM WRITING IN A time of great anxiety in my country. I understand the anxiety, but also believe America is going to be fine. I choose to see opportunity as well as danger.
Donald Trump’s presidency threatens much of what is good in this nation. 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 to contain it.
I see many so-called conservative commentators, including some faith leaders, focusing on favorable policy initiatives or court appointments to justify their acceptance of this damage, while deemphasizing the impact of this president on basic norms and ethics. That strikes me as both hypocritical and morally wrong. The hypocrisy is evident if you simply switch the names and imagine that a President Hillary Clinton had conducted herself in a similar fashion in office. I’ve said this earlier but it’s worth repeating: close your eyes and imagine these same voices if President Hillary Clinton had told the FBI director, “I hope you will let it go,” about the investigation of a senior aide, or told casual, easily disprovable lies nearly every day and then demanded we believe them. The hypocrisy is so thick as to almost be darkly funny. I say this as someone who has worked in law enforcement for most of my life, and served presidents of both parties. What is happening now is not normal. It is not fake news. It is not okay.
Whatever your politics, it is wrong to dismiss the damage to the norms and traditions that have guided the presidency and our public life for decades or, in many cases, since the republic was founded. 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. Every organization has its flaws, but the career prosecutors and agents at the Justice Department and the FBI are there for a reason—to rise above partisanship and do what’s right for the country, regardless of their own political views. Without these checks on our leaders, without those institutions vigorously standing against abuses of power, our country cannot sustain itself as a functioning democracy. I know there are men and women of good conscience in the United States Congress on both sides of the aisle who understand this. But not enough of them are speaking out. They must ask themselves to what, or to whom, they hold a higher loyalty: to partisan interests or to the pillars of democracy? Their silence is complicity—it is a choice—and somewhere deep down they must know that.
Policies come and go. Supreme Court justices come and go. But the core of our nation is our commitment to a set of shared values that began with George Washington—to restraint and integrity and balance and transparency and truth. If that slides away from us, only a fool would be consoled by a tax cut or a different immigration policy.
But I choose to be optimistic. Yes, the current president will do significant damage in the short term. Important norms and traditions will be damaged by the flames. But forest fires, as painful as they can be, bring growth. They spur growth that was impossible before the fire, when old trees crowded out new plants on the forest floor. In the midst of this fire, I already see new life—young people engaged as never before, and the media, the courts, academics, nonprofits, and all other parts of civil society finding reason to bloom.
This fire also offers an opportunity to rebalance power among the three branches of our government, closer to the model the founders intended. There is reason to believe this fire will leave the presidency weaker and Congress and the courts stronger, just as the forest fire of Watergate did. There is a lot of good in that.
Thoughtful people are staring at the vicious partisanship that has grown all around us. Far from creating a new norm where lying is widely accepted, the Trump presidency has ignited a focus on truth and ethics. Parents are talking to their children about truth-telling, about respect for all people, about rejecting prejudice and hate. Schools and religious institutions are talking about values-driven leadership.
The next president, no matter the party, will surely emphasize values—truth, integrity, respect, and tolerance—in ways an American leader hasn’t needed to for more than forty years. The fire will make something good grow.
I wrote this book because I hope it will be useful to people living among the flames who are thinking about what comes next. I also hope it will be useful to readers long after the flames are doused, by inspiring them to choose a higher loyalty, to find truth among lies, and to pursue ethical leadership.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Because a group of people cared enough to tell me the truth, I think this book will be useful.
My beloved family made this book, and me, better.
Keith Urbahn and Matt Latimer at Javelin guided me through the process and taught me so much, including how to write a book.
Flatiron Books and my editor, Amy Einhorn, pushed me, in a great way, through multiple drafts.
And, finally, I’m grateful to those who taught me, worked beside me, and laughed with m
e all these years. You know who you are. Thank you for the joy and the journey, which isn’t over yet.
INDEX
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
Abedin, Huma
Abu Ghraib
Adams, John
Addington, David
Apple
apples, in Oval Office
Arden, Jann
Armitage, Richard
Ashcroft, Janet
Ashcroft, John
illness of
resignation of
Stellar Wind and
Assange, Julian
Assistant United States Attorney
Mafia and
ATF
attorney general. See also Ashcroft, John; Gonzales, Alberto; Lynch, Loretta; Sessions, Jeff
appointment as
Holder as
Ayres, David
Babar (Al Qaeda operative)
Baker, Jim
basketball
James, L., and
Obama and
Beekman, Mary Ellen
Biden, Joe
black men
incarceration of
murders of
police shootings of
black sites, of CIA
bleeding episode, in Situation Room
Boente, Dana
Bonanno, Joseph
Bradbury, Stephen
Brennan, John