Comey says Trump turned on him over Putin
In fact, he was telling me it was a good answer and then said-- gave me an opening by saying, "You think it was a great answer. You think it was a good answer." And then he was starting to move on. And I jumped in and I said, "Mr. President, the first part of the answer was fine, not the second part. We're not the kind of killers that Putin is."
And when I said that, the weather changed in the room. And like a shadow crossed his face and his eyes got this strange, kinda hard look. And I thought in that moment, "I've just done something unusual maybe." And then (SNAP) it passed and the meeting was over. And, "Thanks for coming in," and-- and Priebus walked me out….Although in that moment I was thinking, "I just succeeded," although I hadn't intended to, in ending any personal relationship between me and the president by th-- by interrupting him and also criticizing him to his face.
Comey can’t rule out the pee-tape
Comey can't say whether or not Russia has leverage on Trump
Comey tried to explain why he reopened the Clinton email investigation 11 days before the election: "Speaking is really bad; concealing is catastrophic.”
While Comey’s interactions with Trump were drama-filled, his interference in the final days of the presidential election may ultimately be more consequential. His announcement that he was reopening the Hillary Clinton email investigation created a political firestorm.
Comey briefly defended this decision to Congress last year but it is the first time he has addressed it at length and he concedes that political considerations likely influenced his thinking.
"Speaking is really bad; concealing is catastrophic," Comey said. "If you conceal the fact that you have restarted the Hillary Clinton email investigation, not in some silly way but in a very, very important way that may lead to a different conclusion, what will happen to the institutions of justice when that comes out?"
Here's more from the interview:
Stephanopoulos: At some level, wasn’t the decision to reveal influenced by your assumption that Hillary Clinton was going to win? And your concern that she wins, this comes out several weeks later, and then that’s taken by her opponent as a sign that she’s an illegitimate president?
Comey: It must have been. 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 — that it was a factor. Like I said, I don’t remember spelling it out, but it had to have been. That — 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.
Comey went on to describe what the final days of the campaign were like from his point of view:
Stephanopoulos: What did it feel like to be James Comey in the last ten days of that campaign after ya sent the letter?
Comey: It sucked. Yeah, it was-- it was a very painful period. Again, my whole life has been dedicated to institutions that work not to have an involvement in an election. I walked around vaguely sick to my stomach, feeling beaten down. I felt, when I went to the White House-- I don't want to spoil it for people, but there's a movie called “The Sixth Sense” that I talk about in the book where Bruce Willis doesn't realize he's dead.
That's the way I felt. I felt like I was totally alone, that everybody hated me. And that there wasn't a way out because it really was the right thing to do. And that-- that, in a way, I'm ruined. But that's what I have to do. I had to do it the way.