Fired FBI Director James Comey’s bookselling campaign is well under way. ABC is leaking sensational tidbits from a five-hour interview Comey did with George Stephanopoulos, set to air in a prime-time special Sunday. A commercial for the show features Stephanopoulos revealing that Comey compared President Trump to a “mob boss.”
A “source present at the taping” told Axios that the interview “left people in the room stunned — [Comey] told George things that he’s never said before.” Just to make sure everyone is sufficiently teased, Axios reported that, “If anyone wonders if Comey will go there, he goes there.”
Tune in!
Amid all the tantalizing promotional material, one line in the Axios report stood out. “Comey answered every question,” it said. Among the questions featured in the Stephanopoulos commercial: “Are there things that you know but haven’t said that could damage to President Trump?” and “Was President Trump obstructing justice?”
Comey’s promised openness is particularly tantalizing for some congressional investigators who have been trying unsuccessfully to get Comey to answer questions in the months since he was fired. The FBI has treated the Comey memos as if they are classified at the super-duper highest levels — they’re not, with some not being classified at all — and forbidden note-taking by the few lawmakers who have been allowed to see them. And as far as Comey sitting down with, say, the Senate Judiciary Committee as it investigates aspects of the Trump-Russia affair? Forget it.
On May 17, 2017, after Comey was fired, the Judiciary Committee asked him to testify about the circumstances of his firing and his dealings with the Trump and Obama administrations in the Trump-Russia and Clinton email investigations. Comey declined. (He agreed to just one session, with the Senate Intelligence Committee, which had different sorts of questions.)
On May 26, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top two Republicans and top two Democrats — Chairman Chuck Grassley, ranking minority Dianne Feinstein, plus Lindsey Graham and Sheldon Whitehouse — wrote Comey again. “Given our role in considering the nomination of the next FBI director, the still unanswered questions from your last oversight hearing, and our role in oversight of the Justice Department and the FBI, your testimony will be essential to our constitutional duties,” they wrote. Specifically, the lawmakers wanted to know as much as they could find out about Comey’s memos.
On June 1, Comey sent a brief response. “I have received the letter,” he wrote the committee. “As a private citizen now, I respectfully decline to answer the questions. Wishing you the best, Jim Comey.”
Comey has not exchanged a word, spoken or written, with the committee since then.
Comey has, of course, since written a book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership,” which he will be promoting in the Stephanopoulos interview and in talks with Stephen Colbert, “The View,” Rachel Maddow, the New Yorker’s David Remnick, and Axios’ Mike Allen.
“Mr. President, the American people will hear my story very soon,” Comey tweeted on March 17. “And they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not.”
[Related: Here’s everything we know so far about James Comey’s bombshell book]
As for lawmakers, particularly those on the congressional committee most responsible for overseeing the FBI when Comey was its chief, it would have been nice to hear Comey’s story before he had something to sell.
