NASHVILLE, Tennessee — Former FBI Director James Comey received an icy response from MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace for not agreeing with her rallying cry for President Trump’s immediate impeachment.
In a wide-ranging interview with Comey at Politicon over the weekend, Wallace framed several political points that led her to believe that Trump should be impeached and removed from office as soon as possible, before directly asking Comey whether he agreed.
“I’m trying to withhold judgment because I want to see the facts publicly,” Comey said, noting that most of what he knows about House Democrats’ impeachment proceedings has come from media coverage.
“Why?” Wallace retorted sharply. “What could be exculpatory when the president of the United States and his personal lawyer have basically copped to everything that’s been testified to? They have admitted that it [military funding to Ukraine] was withheld in exchange for digging up dirt on the Biden campaign.”
After Comey hesitated to answer right away, Wallace snapped back, “What do you mean, ‘No’?”
“Maybe it’s because of my training,” Comey said. “I think it’s very important as an investigator, and I would suggest as a citizen, that you resist until the last possible moment drawing a conclusion because drawing conclusions early closes your view to facts you can’t see.”
Wallace then levied another hypothetical question about whether Comey would pursue a criminal investigation into Trump if he were still the head of the FBI.
“I might,” Comey said hesitantly. “I don’t know the answer to that … I would want to talk to the Department of Justice about ‘How should we think about this?'” he added. “I’d start with career people in the Department of Justice, see if they insist on going up and talking up the chain. I’d have to say I might.”
Comey, who has been a consistent target of Trump’s ire and the subject of a federal investigation since his ousting as FBI director, also lamented his current unemployment and status as a “B-list celebrity.”
“It was never one of my career goals to be an unemployed B-list celebrity … I’m optimistic that this phase of my life will go away,” he said.
