James Comey Book

Former FBI Director James Comey released his book A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership on April 17, two weeks ahead of the original release date.

Comey was of course fired by President Donald Trump in May 2017. Originally the White House suggested the dismissal was due to Comey’s improper handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, but Trump then stated in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt that he fired Comey to relieve pressure from the FBI’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

In a period of hyper political polarization, it’s rare for someone to draw the sharp ire of both Democrats and Republicans, but Comey, a lifelong Republican until reclassifying as an Independent in 2016, has achieved just that.

Democrats believe Comey improperly announced the reopening of the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails based on findings of an unrelated matter regarding Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s husband Anthony Weiner. The announcement was just 11 days before the election, amidst early voting, and was reinforced by Comey’s operating assumption that Clinton was a shoe-in to win the election. Many Democrats assert that Comey’s last-minute revelation juxtaposed with the decision not to inform the American people of the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign, swung the election to Trump.

Republicans allege that Comey illegally leaked classified information to The New York Times via a friend, Columbia University law professor Daniel Richman, for the purposes of precipitating the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who Trump contends is Comey’s best friend. Thus they believe the ‘witch hunt’ Mueller investigation, which continues to plague the president, originates from an illegal and unethical act by Comey, and is marred by a conflict of interest.

Comey has described the book as an exposition on ethical leadership, but in reality it was Comey’s chance to defend himself against allegations of poor judgment in the investigations of 2016 presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, as well as against the criticisms by President Trump. Per the latter, Comey met Trump at his favorite medium, unmasking his Twitter account from the previous pseudonym ‘Reinhold Nierbuhr,’ a theologian who Comey wrote his undergraduate thesis on.

In the lead-up to the book release, Comey and Trump went after each other. Trump insisted that Comey “knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!” Comey responded, “Mr. President, the American people will hear my story very soon. And they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not.”

Some excerpts

“The president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values.”

“His leadership is transactional, ego driven and about personal loyalty.”

“I stared at the soft white pouches under his expressionless blue eyes. I remember thinking in that moment that the president doesn’t understand the FBI’s role in American life.”

“Asking — rhetorically, I assumed — whether he seemed like a guy who needed the service of prostitutes. He then began discussing cases where women had accused him of sexual assault, a subject I had not raised. He mentioned a number of women, and seemed to have memorized their allegations.”

“He brought up what he called the ‘golden showers thing’…adding that it bothered him if there was ‘even a 1 percent change’ his wife, Melania, thought it was true…In what kind of marriage, to what kind of man, does a spouse conclude there is only a 99 percent change her husband didn’t do that?”

“I had often wondered why, when given numerous opportunities to condemn the Russian government’s invasions of its neighbors and repression — even murder — of its own citizens, Trump refused to just state the plain facts…Maybe it was a contrarian streak or maybe it was something more complicated that explained his constant equivocation and apologies for Vladimir Putin.”

“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.”