The New York Times called the pardon "a shocking abuse of federal power". Amid allegations the pardon had been issued in exchange for promises of contributions by Marc Rich's ex-wife to President Clinton's presidential library, [Rudy Giuliani's office] opened an investigation focused on whether the was evidence of corrupt bargain. When I became US Attorney in 2002, I inherited the investigation, which had been the subject of media stories.
This small moment was deeply disconcerting to those of us in the business of trying to find the truth, [by which we mean there] are things that are objectively, verifiably either true or false.
It was simply not true that the biggest crowd in history attended the inauguration, as he asserted, or even that Trump's crowd was bigger than Obama's. To say otherwise was not to offer an opinion, a view, a perspective. It was a lie.
First, they sought to undermine confidence in the American democratic enterprise--to dirty us up so that our election process would no longer be an inspiration to the rest of the world.
Second, the Russians wanted to hurt Hillary Clinton. Putin hated her, blaming her personally for large street demonstrations against him in Moscow in December 2011. Putin took that as an unforgivable personal attack.
Third, Putin wanted to help Donald Trump win. Trump had been saying favorable things about the Russian government and Putin had shown a long-standing appreciation for business Leaders who cut deals rather than stand on principle.
The facts of the case were straightforward; Hillary Clinton had used her personal e-mail system to conduct her work as secretary of state. She set the server up several months after taking office. For the first few months of her tenure, she used a personal AT&T blackberry email address before switching to ClintonEMail.com domain. In the course of doing her work, she emailed with the other State Department employees; she and they talked about classified topics in dozens of their emails.
The criminal investigation was not centered on the fact that Clinton decided to use nongovernmental email to do her work. Our investigation required us to answer two questions: whether classified documents were moved outside the classified systems [which did not occur], or whether classified topics were discussed outside of classified systems [which did occur].
In Secretary Clinton's case, there were 36 email chains that discussed topics that were classified as secret at the time. Eight times in thousands of emails exchanged across 4 years, Clinton and her team talked about topics designated as "Top Secret," sometimes cryptically, sometimes obviously. They didn't send each other classified documents but that didn't matter. Even though the people involved in the emails all had appropriate clearance and a need to know, anyone who had ever been granted a security clearance should have known that talking about top secret information on an unclassified system was a breach of rules governing classified materials. Although just a small slice of Clinton's emails, those exchanges of top secret topics were, by all appearances improper.
My supervisor told me I was supposed to stand behind the podium while Giuliani, the NYPD commissioner, and the head of the FBI's New York office spoke to the press. I was not under any circumstances, to speak or move. He then repeated a line I had heard before: "The most dangerous place in New York was between Rudy and the microphone." I stood frozen in the back, looking like an extra from a basketball movie who had wondered on to the wrong set.
COMEY: I chose that words carefully, "dangerous." At first, I thought, "Is that an overstatement?" And I don't think it is.
Q: Why not?
COMEY: I worry that the norms at the center of this country--we can fight as Americans about guns or taxes, and we always have--but what we have in common is a set of norms. Most importantly, the truth. "We hold these truths to be self-evident," right? And if we lose tethering of our leaders to that truth, what are we? The foundation of this country is in jeopardy when we stop measuring our leaders against that central value of the truth.
Q: Are we losing it?
COMEY: I think we are in part. But I think we're going to outlast it. That there will be damage to that norm. But I liken President Trump in the book to a forest fire. Going to do tremendous damage. Going to damage those important norms. But a forest fire gives healthy things a chance to grow that had no chance before that fire.
COMEY: The title comes from a bizarre conversation I had with the president in January of last year, where he asked for my loyalty personally. My loyalty's supposed to be to the American people and to the institution. He said, "I expect loyalty, I need loyalty." And I did not reply.
Q: Why not say no?
COMEY: Because I was caught totally by surprise. Later, he said, again, "I need loyalty." And I said, "You will always get honesty from me." And he paused and said, "Honest loyalty," as if he was proposing some compromise. And I paused and said, "You'll get that from me."
Q: Was that a mistake?
COMEY: Maybe. I felt like he's kidding himself if he thinks I just promised that I'm "amica nostra." But in hindsight, I should've done it differently.
Q: You're comparing the president to a mob boss?
COMEY: I'm talking about that leadership culture [of mob bosses demanding loyalty] me when I think about my experience with the Trump administration.
COMEY: That it, at its core, was consistent with the other information we'd gathered during the intelligence investigation. That there was a massive Russian effort underway to interfere with our election with three goals: to dirty up the American democracy so it's not a shining light for others around the world; to hurt Hillary Clinton, who Vladimir Putin personally hated; and to help Donald Trump become elected president. Those allegations are at the core of the Steele dossier, and we already knew that was true from totally separate information. And it was coming from a credible source.
Q: Did you know it had been financed at the beginning by President Trump's political opponents?
COMEY: I was told at some point that the effort had originally been financed by a Republican source to develop opposition research on Trump, and then Democrats were paying for it.
COMEY: With thousands of emails found on Anthony Weiner's laptop, the question is, "So what do we do now?" I can't see a door that's labeled, "No action here." I can only see two doors: "Speak," and "Conceal."
Q: You knew that candidate Trump is going to say, "This proves everything I've been saying about Hillary Clinton is right." Five previous attorney generals all disagree with you. They say this crossed a line.
COMEY: Yeah, I've heard a lot of that. That was allegedly the reason for my firing.
Q: If you knew that letter would elect Donald Trump, you'd still send it?
COMEY: I would. Because down that path [if the letter was not sent] lies the death of the FBI as an independent force in American life. I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump, and if I hide this from the American people, she'll be illegitimate the moment she's elected, the moment this comes out.
COMEY: Yeah, the intelligence community raised a concern that there might've been mishandling of classified information on Hillary Clinton's personal email server. I didn't focus on it.
Q: It wasn't your order to open the investigation?
COMEY: Correct. What the inspector general raised was, in doing her work on that unclassified system, did she and those around her talk about classified topics?
Q: President Trump and his allies bring up that her staff smashed Blackberries, also whitewashed the server?
COMEY: Yeah. There was evidence that old Blackberries were destroyed, which I think a fair number of people do. And they used a software program to clean the server to make sure there was nothing on it. They did that. But as investigators, our question is, when they did that, are they trying to obstruct justice in some ways? We could never establish evidence that anybody who did that did it with a corrupt intent.
COMEY: We have a 50 year history of knowing what the Department of Justice will prosecute. They're very unlikely to prosecute a case unless you can show the person clearly knew they were doing something they shouldn't do--evidence of obstruction of justice or disloyalty to the US. Without those, even extreme sloppiness, is handled through administrative discipline. Somebody is not prosecuted. I've gone through 50 years of cases. I don't know of a case where anyone has ever been prosecuted for just being careless, even extremely careless. So the investigators knew that, unless they found something that was a smoking gun, where someone told Secretary Clinton, "You shouldn't be doing this," or where there's an indication of her obstructing justice, the case was unlikely to be prosecuted.
COMEY: The norm is, "If you can avoid it, you take no action that might have an impact on an election." I can't see a door that's labeled, "No action here." I can only see two doors: one says, "Speak," the other says, "Conceal."
Q: You could try to find out first whether or not there was evidence there of a crime.
COMEY: Well, maybe. And maybe another director might have done that. But the team is telling you, "We cannot evaluate this material before the election." [I concluded] speaking is really bad; concealing is catastrophic.
Q: Hillary Clinton's convinced that your letter defeated her.
COMEY: I hope not. I honestly don't know. But I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump, and if I hide this from the American people, she'll be illegitimate the moment she's elected, the moment this comes out.
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| 2016 Presidential contenders on Principles & Values: | |||
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Republicans:
Sen.Ted Cruz(TX) Carly Fiorina(CA) Gov.John Kasich(OH) Sen.Marco Rubio(FL) Donald Trump(NY) |
Democrats:
Secy.Hillary Clinton(NY) Sen.Bernie Sanders(VT) 2016 Third Party Candidates: Roseanne Barr(PF-HI) Robert Steele(L-NY) Dr.Jill Stein(G,MA) | ||
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