Posted on 07/01/2018 5:26:22 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Former FBI director James Comey — the man many Americans blame for Donald Trump’s election to the White House, and who the president later fired — doesn’t feel responsible for the outcome of the 2016 presidential election but is burdened by it, he said Saturday in Aspen.
Midway through Katie Couric’s 50-minute interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival, she focused on Comey’s letter to Congress on Oct. 28, 2016 — just 11 days before the fateful Nov. 8 election. The letter stated that the FBI had “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation” into the private email server Hillary Clinton had used as secretary of state. Clinton’s use of a private server had been a long-running national controversy — and a GOP hammer that sought to pound away at her credibility well before she announced her candidacy.
Couric, sitting with Comey at the Greenwald Pavilion at Aspen Meadows, quoted from a 2017 article by renowned pollster Nate Silver. He wrote, “Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28.” He went on to suggest that the letter “upended the news cycle and soon halved Clinton’s lead in the polls, imperiling her position in the Electoral College.” Couric noted that Silver wrote of other factors at play in the election; however, he also wrote, “because Clinton lost Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by less than 1 point, [Comey’s] letter was probably enough to change the outcome of the Electoral College.”
Becoming more direct, Couric then asked Comey, “That must be a tremendously heavy burden for you. Do you feel responsible for the election of Donald Trump and the current state of the union?” That sparked laughter and applause from the audience.
In responding, Comey said he hoped to avoid sounding contradictory.
“I don’t [feel responsible], but … it is a heavy burden,” he said. “It leaves me feeling mildly [nauseated]. … I’ve devoted my whole life to institutions of justice that want nothing to do with elections. The most powerful norm I’ve lived under is you take no action in the run-up to elections that might have an impact on the election.
“I believe in that, to my core,” Comey continued. “My problem was, I couldn’t find a door labeled ‘no action’ on Oct. 28. I could see two actions, and they were both really bad. I feel sick to my stomach about it, but in an odd way, I don’t feel responsible because I’m proud of the way we made the decisions. We thought about the right things.”
Toward the end of their conversation, Comey spoke of his legacy and how he hopes history will relate to the events of the 2016-17 political period.
“I hope to be forgotten,” he said. “I hope that someone will establish that what I did had absolutely no impact.”
Comey said he ultimately wants to be known as a great husband, father, grandfather, neighbor and community member. “That’s the only thing that has value to my life,” he said.
As for his career and the political events that thrust him into the spotlight, “I hope that I’ll be known as a person who tried to do the right thing, who thought well about things and made judgments with his eye on the right things.”
The Couric-Comey interview on the concluding day of the weeklong festival was full of political fodder, much of which has been hashed out by commentators on TV news outlets and the opinion pages of leading newspapers and magazines over the course of Trump’s first 18 months in office. As Couric said to Comey in opening the session, “I’m really honored to be your 83rd interview.”
Couric, given less than an hour in her one-on-one with him, went over a lot of ground, tackling events that are a continued source of debate.
She questioned him about: his initial statements to the media regarding the investigation of Clinton’s emails; a report by Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz, released two weeks ago, that was highly critical of Comey and other officials in their handling of the email controversy; the decision not to have then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch make the public announcements about the Clinton investigation; the mindset that led to his “political hand grenade” (as Couric put it) of Oct. 28; his dismissal just 15 weeks into Trump’s first year in office, which followed Trump’s alleged attempts to obtain loyalty from Comey and suggest that he end the investigation of Russia’s influence on the election; special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s subsequent investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the superpower; Comey’s opinions of the president; the personal toll of being in the national and world spotlight for so long; and his future plans.
Some of these topics are covered in Comey’s best-selling autobiography, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership.” Released in mid-April, sales topped 600,000 in its first week. The book reflects on the scope of the former G-man’s career; throughout the book, he stresses a theme of ethical decision-making and American values. Roundly criticized by GOP officials and loyalists, it has nevertheless garnered positive reviews.
Comey mentioned that over 1 million copies of “A Higher Loyalty” have been sold. Barnes and Noble ranks it as No. 2 so far among the best-selling books of 2018.
“‘A Higher Loyalty’ is the first big memoir by a key player in the alarming melodrama that is the Trump administration,” a New York Times review says. “Comey … has worked in three administrations, and his book underscores just how outside presidential norms Trump’s behavior has been — how ignorant he is about his basic duties as president, and how willfully he has flouted the checks and balances that safeguard our democracy.”
Interview excerpts
Here are a few highlights from the Couric-Comey interview:
• Couric brought up the recent release of a 500-page report from Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, concerning Comey’s actions as head of the FBI during the 2016 campaign. The report said he deviated from departmental policies and engaged in “subjective, ad-hoc decision-making” and that the Oct. 28 letter was “a serious error in judgment.” Comey told Couric that he encouraged the Horowitz report when he was still the FBI director and even after he was fired. “It was painful for a couple of reasons,” he recalled of the day he read it. “It’s a trauma to go back though one of the most painful things I’ve ever been through, as a leader, and it was painful to read yourself being criticized, even though I expected to be criticized.”
• Comey held a news conference on July 15, 2016, announcing that he would not recommend charges against Clinton regarding her use of the private email server, saying “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” However, on that same day, he was critical of Clinton, saying she was “extremely careless” in her handling of the emails. Couric asked Comey whether it was appropriate for him to make the announcement since he wasn’t the attorney general, who usually carries out such duties when investigations are closed. Comey replied that there were two options, “offering transparency separately” or offering it while standing next to the attorney general.
“The one least likely to do lasting damage to the institutions was this bad option [standing alone], not this bad option,” he said. “I’m not picking on Loretta Lynch by saying that there were a number of things that happened that led me to believe … it would be very difficult for [Lynch] to credibly announce the completion of an investigation of one of two candidates for president of the United States, the candidate for the party that” Lynch belonged to as well as President Obama. Comey provided additional background, noting that prior to the announcement, there had been a mini-controversy over Lynch’s private meeting with former President Clinton on an airplane and media conjecture over whether that meeting was related to the email investigation.
• Of his public statement that Clinton had been “extremely careless” with the emails, Couric suggested that Comey placed “a value judgment on her” even though she was not being charged with a crime. Comey said it is part of the norm to say such things about a person’s conduct “when the public interest requires it.” He said he struggled with the wording of the statement. “I wasn’t trying to attack Hillary Clinton, I was trying to be transparent with the American people and describe the conduct.” Clinton, as secretary of state, discussed top-secret information eight times and secret information 50-plus times in emails, Comey said.
“I screwed it up,” he said. “‘Extremely careless’ was a stupid term to use; I should have said ‘really sloppy.’”
• After the July announcement, the FBI learned about thousands of other Clinton emails on her private server as it was investigating whether former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., had engaged in sexting with a minor. Investigators found the emails after seizing Weiner’s laptop, and the Oct. 28 letter to Congress was a consequence. Couric pressed Comey about his belief that he had two choices — “to speak, which was bad, or to conceal, which was catastrophic.” The inspector general report, as described by Couric, states that Comey’s two choices were actually to follow departmental policy, or depart from it, and that Comey chose to make his own rules.
“This is where I disagree with them,” Comey told Couric, “and I really like these people and know them. I think just framing it as, ‘Follow the norms or depart from the norms’ is just another way of saying you have a decision to make. Norms … produce reliably good results in normal circumstances.” Had Clinton been elected president, with news breaking later that the FBI had hidden the fact that the email investigation had been restarted, there would have been another inspector general report “ripping me for being a slavish adherent to follow what we always do in all circumstances,” Comey added.
• Comey said Lynch consoled him after he was roundly criticized for the Oct. 28 letter. “She hugged me, and I’m an awkward hugger to begin with,” he said, adding that he told her he was living a nightmare. “And she said, ‘Would they feel better if it had leaked on Nov. 4?’ What I understood her to be saying was basically, don’t be so hard on yourself; your decision was actually not as important as you think it was because it was going to come out anyway.”
• Couric pointed out that Comey stated that Trump was “morally unfit to be president” following Trump’s comments in the wake of the Charlottesville, Va., violence that occurred during a white-supremacy rally. Couric asked Comey if his opinions about Trump had changed for better or worse in the last year.
“It’s gotten worse, because I see more of the behavior — that I think whether you are Democrat or Republican or independent — you should care deeply about. The erosion of the central norm of the United States of America, the truth; and an attack on the rule of law that I never would have imagined before. Those attacks on our norms and our values have only gotten more serious, and everybody should care about them, no matter where you are on the [political] spectrum.”
• On Mueller’s investigation of Trump and the administration’s possible collusion with the Russians: “I don’t know what Bob Mueller will find. And I worry that people from all points of the political spectrum project onto him hopes for a result. My only hope is for the truth. If he’s left to do his job, he may find there’s not significant evidence of a connection. … He’ll find the facts, if he’s allowed to finish.” Comey later said that Trump traits he admires include the president’s boundless energy and the ability to read the moods of certain segments of the public.
Comey additionally stated that he has no plans to run for elected office. He said that in August, he will start teaching at his alma mater, the College of William and Mary.
I bet he does.(Hopes to be forgotten, that is).
He’ll only be forgotten once we throw away the key.
Yep, you're going to be thrown in prison and the key thrown away. Then you'll get your wish.
Saint James Comey, the patron saint of perpetual self analysis.....
Tried and convicted traitors should forever be pointed out to school children, who pass by their hanging carcasses.
Aspen is very nice this time of year...
Especially if on an expense account.
Forgotten? - twenty years behind bars should do the trick.....
Going on a foreign bash-Trump book tour and leaking to the NY Slimes is not the way to be forgotten, to be sure.
He’s really hoping he won’t be prosecuted.
Comey, just a foot note on the ash heap of history.
I hope to see you swing, Jimmy-boy.
...Comey on election: ‘I hope to be forgotten’...
And not to be prosecuted.
You’re going to jail.
“Yep, you’re going to be thrown in prison and the key thrown away.”
Not until we get a real AG...
Not a chance, Weasel! Your name will live in infamy as the destroyer of the FBI.
The most important person in your future will not find you innocent of influencing the election Comey. Hillery will never forget.
You are a dead man walking...
The “run up to the election” was several years, yes. Hillary should have been locked up before she even started the primaries.
more by the writer, Andre Salvail:
28 Jun: Aspen Daily News: Media matters: Washington Post editor discusses Trump coverage, newspaper’s mission by Andre Salvail
photo: Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron, right, speaks with CNN personality Brian Stelter during an Aspen Ideas Festival session on Wednesday
Asked whether he felt there is a “national emergency” because of President Donald Trump’s extreme disdain for the mainstream media, Washington Post editor Martin Baron said it’s not his place to say whether such a crisis exists.
“I know what our place is, and that is to cover very aggressively this administration, as we would any other administration,” said Baron, taking questions Wednesday from CNN personality Brian Stelter at the Aspen Ideas Festival...
Baron said he is inspired by the Post’s journalistic principles every day when he walks into the newsroom: The first one being, “Tell the truth,” insomuch as the truth may be ascertained, he said...
“I think the truth is being undermined,” he said. “There seems to be a deliberate effort to subvert the role of … the media as an independent arbiter of fact.” Not only is the role of the media being subverted, he added, but also the courts and scientists...
https://www.aspendailynews.com/news/media-matters-washington-post-editor-discusses-trump-coverage-newspaper-s/article_8e449a78-7a83-11e8-9aff-7f65e514ca07.html
LinkedIn: Andre Salvail
Summary:
Highly skilled in the communications arena: journalism, public relations and marketing...
Jesuit High School, Shreveport, LA
1981 – 1984
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andre-salvail-826a5013
Exactly my thoughts.
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