A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

by James B. Comey

As we continued our encounter—I don’t use the word “conversation,” because the term doesn’t apply when one person speaks nearly the entire time—I tried again to help President Trump understand the value that the separation between the FBI and the White House offers the president. But it was very hard to get a word in. For the rest of the meal, pausing only now and then to eat, he spoke in torrents, gushing words about the size of his inauguration crowd, how much free media coverage he had been able to generate during the election, the viciousness of the campaign. He offered his view of the Clinton email investigation, referring to it in three phases, each of which, in his telling, bore my name. In “Comey One,” he said, I “saved her” with my July 5 announcement that there was no prosecutable case against her. Although he added that I was wrong about that conclusion. In what he called “Comey Two,” I did what I had to do by informing Congress that we had restarted the investigation. In “Comey Three,” which was my final letter to Congress, closing the case for a second time, he said I saved Hillary again, but that she “totally misplayed” that. He sounded like he was reciting the plotline to his favorite TV show.