When James Comey sat down with USA TODAY to talk about his new book 'A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership,' he made explosive comments about President Trump. He also delved into the Russia investigation, the Clinton investigation and more. USA TODAY
In an extraordinary interview, former FBI director James Comey called Donald Trump "morally unfit to be president" and said he believed it was possible the Russians were holding compromising personal information over the head of the commander in chief.
Comey's comments and his new book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, are fueling a combustible moment in Washington that could become a constitutional crisis. At the White House, Trump has unleashed a barrage of angry tweets against Comey — calling him an "untruthful slime ball," among other insults — amid reports he was poised to fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for his role in the Russia investigation that Comey once headed.
Never before in American history has a current or former director of the FBI, the nation's principal law-enforcement agency, publicly described a president in such a scathing manner.
Listen to the extended interview with James Comey in the player below.
Listen to the extended interview with James Comey in the player below.
"I actually believe he's morally unfit to be president," Comey told USA TODAY in an exclusive interview Friday at his home in the Virginia suburbs outside Washington. He called that characterization appropriate for "someone who is able to see moral equivalence in (white nationalist protests in) Charlottesville or to speak and treat women like they're pieces of meat and to lie constantly and who appears to lack an external moral framework" of religion or philosophy or history.
In an even more explosive comment, Comey said it would be less than honest to rule out the possibility that Trump had been compromised by one of the United States' primary foreign adversaries.
"It's hard to explain some things without at least leaving your mind open to that being a possibility," said Comey, who has served three presidents in senior posts. "There's a non-zero possibility that the Russians have some, some sway over him that is rooted in his personal experience, and I don't know whether that's the business about the activity in a Moscow hotel room or finances or something else."
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The "Moscow hotel room" refers to unsubstantiated allegations of a salacious 2013 tryst with prostitutes by Trump.
With the benefit of hindsight, the former FBI director said, he may have made a "mistake" in assuring the president-elect at their first meeting, two weeks before the inauguration, that he was not being investigated. "It caused all kinds of issues," he said.
Comey said he gave the assurance to take Trump's "temperature down" after briefing him on the alleged encounter with prostitutes, material that was contained in a so-called dossier prepared by a former British intelligence agent.
"It might have been a mistake," he said. "It led the president to want to get that fact out (publicly), which I was resisting." But he said the consequences of taking a different course were impossible to know. "The problem is that I can't live the other imagined life."
Trump has dismissed the dossier as a fabrication designed to damage him. Comey said that while he didn't know how much of the document remains unverified, its "central premise" that Russia sought to interfere with the 2016 election was "corroborated and consistent with utterly independent intelligence."
Comey didn't claim to have hard evidence that Trump had been compromised by Moscow, describing the prospect as possible but not likely. His suspicions had been raised by Trump's reluctance to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin, even for Moscow's aggressive efforts to meddle in the American election. Trump's attitude in private conversations was even more perplexing, he said.
"At least in my experience, he won't criticize Vladimir Putin even in private," he said. "I can understand why a president...might not want to criticize publicly another leader" in the interests of forging a good relationship. "But privately? Sitting with the person in charge of countering the Russian threat in the United States? Privately not being willing to do that? That always struck me."
The suggestion that a president had been compromised by a foreign power "are words I never thought would come out of my mouth," he added.
A SURPRISE FIRING
Comey's blockbuster book and his comments could create complications for special counsel Robert Mueller, who is pursuing the Russia investigation the FBI director once led.
When Trump unceremoniously fired Comey — to his surprise, he said — Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia inquiry and Rosenstein then appointed Mueller to take it over. Since then, Mueller's investigation has been the source of open frustration for the president, who repeatedly has denounced the idea of collusion with Russia by his campaign as outrageous and politically motivated "fake news."
Now Comey's book, topping best-seller lists even before the official publication date on Tuesday, has triggered fresh attacks from Trump and probably will bring new attention from Mueller as well. Comey already has been interviewed by Mueller and turned over personal memos and other documents to him.
Comey said that he did not seek Mueller's approval for the book and did not provide the special counsel with a draft of its contents before it was published by Flatiron. The FBI did review the book before it was published to exclude references to classified information, but the former director said "very little" was removed.
All the furor he has sparked since early copies of the book leaked Thursday was nowhere apparent in the living room of Comey's home, which sits on a quiet cul-de-sac in a leafy suburb. A squirrel scampered across the railing of the back deck, which has a view of a bluff of trees showing the first signs of spring. During an hour-long interview, only the second he had given, Comey, 57, was relaxed in shirt-sleeves — and braced for the onslaught he knew was ahead.
"I think it's 'lyin' with no 'g,'" he said with a small laugh, referring to a website, www.lyincomey.com, sponsored by the Republican National Committee and devoted to attacking his credibility. Many of the derogatory comments it features are from Democrats who have blasted Comey's disclosures about an FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. Clinton herself wrote that she felt "shivved" by him, saying his last-minute announcement that the inquiry had been reopened cost her momentum and perhaps the White House itself.
In his book, Comey, who has a reputation for self-righteousness, didn't apologize for the decisions he made in the Clinton case or, really, anything else. When he faced a quandary over whether to announce days before the election that the email investigation had been reopened, he described his options as "really bad" on one hand and "catastrophic" on the other. He said he picked the "really bad" choice, to reveal.
"I even hope that Hillary Clinton at least reads those parts of the book, because I think she will walk away saying, 'You know what? I still think that guy is an idiot, but, you know, he's kind of an honest idiot," he said. "He's trying to do the right thing here.'" (Interviews with Hillary Clinton when her post-campaign book was published, including one in USA TODAY, makes it seem unlikely she will come around to that view.)
In a cryptic passage, Comey wrote that his decisions had been affected by classified information, not yet made public, that could be used to cast "serious doubt" on the independence of then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch toward the Clinton investigation. He refused to answer questions about the nature of that material.
In the USA TODAY interview, the former director addressed allegations that two FBI officials assigned to the case may have compromised the investigation by exchanging disparaging text messages about Trump. "I had no idea," Comey said of the actions by Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. "It really bugs me. I think it's terrible judgment."
Since the disclosure of the text messages in December, House Republicans have seized on them as evidence that Clinton inquiry was politically tainted.