James Comey sat down for an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos ahead of the release of his new book titled, “A Higher Loyalty,” on Sunday night, and as one would expect, the former FBI Director was caught in a series of lies and misstatements.
Comey, who admits that “probably all five of my kids” and “my amazing spouse” all “wanted Hillary Clinton to be the first woman president,” threw the proverbial book at President Trump.
But for a man who seeks to take the higher moral ground, Comey has an incredibly difficult time telling the truth, much like his family’s muse in Mrs. Clinton.
Here are just a few that raised eyebrows during the Stephanopoulos interview …
Trump’s Ethics
Comey claims that President Trump is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values.
“I don’t think he’s medically unfit to be president,” he asserted. “I think he’s morally unfit to be president.”
In his first media interview since being fired in May 2017, former FBI director James Comey said he believes President Trump is “morally unfit” to be president. https://t.co/5a0GPeOlUU pic.twitter.com/uCRloBfb0g
— CBS News (@CBSNews) April 16, 2018
The reality here is that of the two, the one person morally unfit to serve in any public service capacity is James Comey himself.
The former FBI Director swore under that oath he never leaked information to the press and then admitted doing so.
“My judgment was I needed to get them out into the public square,” Comey said referring to memos he took of his meetings with the President.
“I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter,” he continued. “I didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons, but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.”
The Justice Department has confirmed that some of the “memos” Comey took when he was fired contained classified information. DOJ/FBI also asserts his leak to @NYTIMES was unauthorized and compares it to Wikileaks. https://t.co/QR4MEBzWBf https://t.co/gm2nZua5jm
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) April 15, 2018
It would serve Comey well to recall that he also abandoned his morals upon lying when he testified that he had no knowledge of the parameters of Attorney General Sessions’ recusal in the Russia investigation. He also lied in May 2017 about the scope of the email investigation into Clinton, Abedin, and Weiner.
Flynn Investigation
Comey would also like the American people to believe President Trump gave him direction to drop the Michael Flynn investigation, a patently false assertion.
“His words were, though, ‘I hope you can let it go,'” he told Stephanopolous. “I took the expression of hope as, ‘This is what I want you to do.'”
“The president says he did not say that,” Stephanopolous says of Trump’s “let it go” on Flynn investigation. “What am I going to do?” Comey says. “He did.”
— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) April 16, 2018
What really comes back to bite Comey in the ass on this one are his own words.
In May 2017, Comey testified that he had never been asked to halt an investigation for political reasons.
And in June 2017, Comey admitted when pressed that neither President Trump nor his staff asked him to stop the Russia investigation.
Clinton Investigation
Comey believes he handled the Clinton investigation correctly.
“I think given what I knew at the time, these were the decisions that were best calculated to preserve the values of the institutions,” he said. “It was terrible for me, terrible. But I still think it was the right thing to do.”
In October 2016, he publicly announced an investigation into new Clinton emails immediately before an election, despite having these “new emails” for at least three weeks. That doesn’t seem like ‘the right thing to do.’
Attorney General Loretta Lynch stated she was “stunned and confused” when informed of Comey’s plan to reopen the investigation, and many Democrats called for his resignation. That doesn’t seem like it was ‘the right thing to do.’
Worse, Comey now admits that he made decisions about the Clinton email investigation based on polling and the belief that she was going to win the 2016 election. That really doesn’t seem like ‘the right thing to do.’
“I don’t remember consciously thinking about that, but it must have been because I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump, and so I’m sure that it was a factor,” Comey said when pressed by Stephanopolous about making decisions based on the election.
“I don’t remember spelling it out, but it had to have been, that she’s going to be elected president and if I hide this from the American people, she’ll be illegitimate the moment she’s elected, the moment this comes out,” he admitted.
A top FBI official is determining criminality based on whether or not the subject of the investigation is going to win an election may be the lowest level of morality, a lower level of integrity, and a lower level of loyalty to the country he swore to serve, that we’ve ever seen.
“James Comey’s publicity tour reaffirms that his true higher loyalty is to himself,” RNC Director Ronna McDaniel said in a statement. “The only thing worse than Comey’s history of misconduct is his willingness to say anything to sell books. He has no credibility and President Trump was right to follow through on the bipartisan calls for him to be fired.”
Did James Comey’s interview make you think more or less of him as an FBI Director? Should Trump have fired him? Tell us your thoughts below!
