Speaker 1: Hi Brian, Hi Katie, and hello everyone from Aspen. We
Speaker 1: put in some miles for the pot this year, haven't we, Brian.
Speaker 1: We have. We were hardly back from our tapings in
Speaker 1: London when the mountains and the greenery of Colorado beckoned us.
Speaker 1: That's right. More specifically, the Aspen Ideas Festival came a calling,
Speaker 1: and I love coming here. I've done it for several years.
Speaker 1: Not only is the setting magnificent, but the conversations are
Speaker 1: so stimulating. You feel much smarter when you leave here
Speaker 1: than when you came. People like Steve Case talking about
Speaker 1: his efforts to really expand the startup revolution in Middle America,
Speaker 1: to John Carey, the former Secretary of State to Toronto, Burke,
Speaker 1: who of course is the founder of the Me Too movement,
Speaker 1: and everyone in between. It's really such a fun event.
Speaker 1: And today we're bringing you one of those conversations because Katie,
Speaker 1: you have the opportunity to sit down with James Comey.
Speaker 1: And if you don't know who that is, you shouldn't
Speaker 1: be listening to this podcast. That's not true. He's a
Speaker 1: former director of the FBI who has been embroiled in
Speaker 1: controversy now for about the past two years. Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: believes that he cost her the election. Many of people
Speaker 1: agree with her on that, and President Trump, who fired
Speaker 1: Comy last spring, has said, well tweeted, of course, that
Speaker 1: Comy will go down as the worst all caps FBI
Speaker 1: director in history by far exclamation point. That may be
Speaker 1: the only thing that Trump and Hillary actually agree on
Speaker 1: every same time. Other people like Senator John McCain have
Speaker 1: praised Komy for his integrity, and we know that during
Speaker 1: his tenures FBI Director, Comy was very respected by the
Speaker 1: rank and file agents who served under him. Well. Since
Speaker 1: being fired by President Trump without warning last May, he's
Speaker 1: been teaching at Howard University and has come out with
Speaker 1: a best selling memoir called A Higher Loyalty. It tells
Speaker 1: the story of his life, how he became interested in
Speaker 1: law and law enforcement, and of course, what it was
Speaker 1: like working in the chaotic early days of the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: I was excited to talk to Mr Comey because just
Speaker 1: last month, the Justice Department issued a five page report
Speaker 1: highly critical of him and the FBI during the two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen presidential election. Of course, we should note that
Speaker 1: if we learned anything from his congressional testimony, Comey is
Speaker 1: a pretty disciplined guy. He knows how to say what
Speaker 1: he wants to say and nothing more. But of course
Speaker 1: that didn't stop me from trying. So here's my conversation
Speaker 1: with James Coomy. I feel like Sarah Palin when I say,
Speaker 1: can I call you Jim Can? I? You've known me
Speaker 1: since I was like six to all right, seriously, thank
Speaker 1: you very much for being here. We've got a lot
Speaker 1: to cover, so let's get right to it. An interesting
Speaker 1: thing happened towards the end of your media blitz. The
Speaker 1: Justice Department's Inspector General of former colleague of yours name
Speaker 1: Michael Horowitz, issued a five page report about your actions
Speaker 1: as head of the FBI during the two thousand sixteen campaign.
Speaker 1: It was highly critical, as you know, let me read
Speaker 1: you some excerpts. Your press conference in July of two
Speaker 1: thousand sixteen was quote on an extraordinary and insubordinate thing
Speaker 1: to do. Quote. We found none of Mr Comey's reasons
Speaker 1: to be a persuasive basis for deviating from well established
Speaker 1: department policies. You engage in your own quote subjective ad
Speaker 1: hoc decision making. The report also said you're October letter
Speaker 1: to Congress announcing a reopen Clinton investigation was a quote
Speaker 1: serious error in judgment. Take us back to the day
Speaker 1: you were reading this report. What was that like? It
Speaker 1: was painful. I had encouraged the report when I was director,
Speaker 1: and even after I got fired. I wanted them to
Speaker 1: do it because I think accountability is incredibly important to
Speaker 1: the institution, especially and reading it was painful for a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons. First, it was a bit of a
Speaker 1: it's a trauma to go back through one of the
Speaker 1: most painful things I've ever been through as a leader.
Speaker 1: And then it's painful to read yourself being criticized, even
Speaker 1: though I expected to be criticized. It was painful. And
Speaker 1: let's talk about these three big decisions you made. I
Speaker 1: know you've addressed them all during your numerous interviews, but
Speaker 1: the IG report really did breathe new life into the controversy.
Speaker 1: So July five, two thousand and sixteen, you held a
Speaker 1: press conference announcing you were not recommending charges be brought
Speaker 1: against Secretary Clinton, that quote, no reasonable prosecutor would bring
Speaker 1: such a case. But you also said that Clinton was
Speaker 1: quote extremely careless in her handling of emails. My question
Speaker 1: is this, what were you doing making this announcement the
Speaker 1: first place. You were not the attorney general, you weren't
Speaker 1: even a prosecutor. Why was it appropriate for you, as
Speaker 1: the investigator to make that announcement. That's a great question.
Speaker 1: I was doing something I never could have imagined, because
Speaker 1: normally the responsibility for announcing the closing of an investigation
Speaker 1: and offering transparency, which is done in cases of extraordinary
Speaker 1: public interest. For example in Ferguson, we did a public
Speaker 1: report there, but it's always the attorney general that announces,
Speaker 1: and the FBI director is typically standing next to the
Speaker 1: attorney general. The reason I did it here was I
Speaker 1: thought it was between two options, offering transparency separately or
Speaker 1: offering it standing next to the attorney general, the one
Speaker 1: least likely to do lasting damage to the institutions? Was
Speaker 1: this bad option? Not this bad option? And I'm not
Speaker 1: picking on Loretta Lynch by saying that, but there were
Speaker 1: a number of things that had happened that led me
Speaker 1: to believe, and reasonable people I knew at the time
Speaker 1: could see it differently, but led me to believe that
Speaker 1: it will be very difficult for her to credibly announce
Speaker 1: the completion of an investigation of one of the two
Speaker 1: candidates for president of the United States, the candidate from
Speaker 1: the party, the same party that she was in, and
Speaker 1: President Obama. But there were other prosecutors who could have
Speaker 1: done that. Well, no, not the way it was set
Speaker 1: up Loretta had it was. I don't I assume folks
Speaker 1: know some of this background. There was a lot of
Speaker 1: controversy during the final week of the investigation where she
Speaker 1: had had a meeting with Bill Clinton on an airplane,
Speaker 1: and it was all kinds of storm about whether that
Speaker 1: was fatally compromised her. All this kind of business. And
Speaker 1: I had no doubt that Loretta was a person of principle,
Speaker 1: but I worried a whole lot about the public perception
Speaker 1: that the investigation was not done credibly. And so she announced,
Speaker 1: without talking to me or Sally Yates, that she was
Speaker 1: not going to step out of the investigation, but she
Speaker 1: would accept my recommendation and that of the career prosecutors.
Speaker 1: So I don't know what option I had then, besides
Speaker 1: choosing either to give her the traditional thing, the norm,
Speaker 1: or do something I'd never imagined before, which has announced
Speaker 1: the recommendation. She said she would accept the career prosecutors
Speaker 1: right right, So why not let them, and you know
Speaker 1: they would not being able to announce anything. Well, you
Speaker 1: told the Justice Department about the press conference after the
Speaker 1: meet had been notified, and you didn't tell them what
Speaker 1: you were going to say. A friend of mine who's
Speaker 1: a very respected former federal prosecutor, says, the only reason
Speaker 1: not to fully inform the Internity General was that you
Speaker 1: knew you were doing something wrong and you didn't want
Speaker 1: to be stopped. I'm curious to hear your reaction to that.
Speaker 1: Only the second part of that's accurate. When I first
Speaker 1: read the words in subordination and the Inspector Generals report,
Speaker 1: actually had an emotional reaction like are you kidding me?
Speaker 1: She announced she would accept my recommendation. But I actually
Speaker 1: think it's fair criticism because I was intentionally not telling
Speaker 1: her what I was going to say, and a superior
Speaker 1: in a normal circumstance would expect that, So I think
Speaker 1: that was fair. I wasn't wasn't not telling her because
Speaker 1: I thought I was doing something wrong. I thought, and
Speaker 1: honestly I still think, between the two bad options, it
Speaker 1: was the one that was best suited to protect the institutions.
Speaker 1: But I was doing it because I didn't want to
Speaker 1: give her the opportunity to stop me, because if she
Speaker 1: had issued an order don't do it, I would have
Speaker 1: followed that order. And so the second part of what
Speaker 1: your friend said is fair. The first part is not.
Speaker 1: You said you wanted to be transparent to make sure
Speaker 1: the FBI kept its credibility. But almost any time someone
Speaker 1: is investigated, you come up with damaging information about or
Speaker 1: you can come up with damaging information about that person.
Speaker 1: It's highly unusual for prosecutors, much less investigators, to share
Speaker 1: that information if they're declining to prosecute. I'm not a lawyer,
Speaker 1: but I understand that's why they call it prosecutorial discretion,
Speaker 1: not law enforcement discretion. So why did you do it?
Speaker 1: I think that's right. As I said, the norm is
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice, with the FBI standing next to them,
Speaker 1: announces the closure of an investigation. It's not true that
Speaker 1: it never happens that transparency is offered when the investigation
Speaker 1: of prosecutions decline. It's done when the public interest requires it.
Speaker 1: And and I don't think there's a serious argument that
Speaker 1: the public interests didn't require some transparency here. I did
Speaker 1: it because I stared at the two options. If I
Speaker 1: do the normal thing stand next to the Attorney General,
Speaker 1: A corrosive doubt will creep in about whether this was
Speaker 1: a political hit job to can an investigation of one
Speaker 1: of the two candidates for president of the United States,
Speaker 1: and that will be fed by the fact the President
Speaker 1: Obama has already twice said there's no they're there. The
Speaker 1: Attorney General has met with Bill Clinton again. I don't
Speaker 1: think she's anything and proper, but reasonable people forget partisan
Speaker 1: wing nuts. Reasonable people could have a doubt about what's
Speaker 1: going on with the Attorney General right before she announces
Speaker 1: the closure of this investigation, meeting privately with Secretary Clinton's husband.
Speaker 1: And so my thinking was, Okay, there's two options. This
Speaker 1: one is much worse for the institutions of justice. I
Speaker 1: can spend some of my personal credibility because I wasn't
Speaker 1: viewed as a partisan and the FBI s and by
Speaker 1: doing that protect the institution. I knew this is gonna
Speaker 1: be terrible for me personally, because I knew reasonable people
Speaker 1: could see it differently and say the things that they've said.
Speaker 1: But I thought, as between the two, the FBI offering
Speaker 1: transparency separately, is the is the result best calculated to
Speaker 1: maintain the faith and comp and to the American people
Speaker 1: and end the investigation in a credible way, which we did.
Speaker 1: I thought, But why if your intentions were so noble
Speaker 1: as you believe your actions were, have you been so
Speaker 1: roundly criticized by just about everyone. Yeah? Yeah, And it's
Speaker 1: funny you say that. I don't. Actually, Sometimes people say
Speaker 1: when everybody's mad at you, it means you're right. No,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. It could be you're completely wrong. I don't
Speaker 1: know for sure. I think people that have taken the
Speaker 1: time to put themselves in my shoes, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about October, which is a much more
Speaker 1: difficult decision, and stare at the options I stared at.
Speaker 1: I would say, as the Inspector General did. I disagree
Speaker 1: with the results, but I understand why he did what
Speaker 1: he did and if people take the time to do that.
Speaker 1: The most important thing about the Inspector General's report, I
Speaker 1: believe for the Institution is we made the decisions in
Speaker 1: a political way. We were trying to and honestly, I've
Speaker 1: stared at this a thousand times. I would still do
Speaker 1: the same thing because doing the normal thing norms produced
Speaker 1: predictable results in the normal situation. This is a five
Speaker 1: year flood. The Obama Justice Department, of which I'm a part,
Speaker 1: is investigating the Democratic Canadate for President of the United
Speaker 1: States is about to decline a criminal case on the
Speaker 1: eve of the conventions. How do you do that and
Speaker 1: maintain the faith and confidence of the American people? So
Speaker 1: is that really your job? Is that your job to
Speaker 1: decide how to maintain the faith and confidence of the
Speaker 1: American people? Is that within your purview? Absolutely? When you
Speaker 1: are the leader of one of the institutions of justice,
Speaker 1: you must care about that deeply, because the entire institution
Speaker 1: rests upon the faith and confidence of the American people.
Speaker 1: When the FBI rises in a courtroom or in Congress,
Speaker 1: in a cookout, they must be seen as independent in
Speaker 1: American life and must be trusted as people who care
Speaker 1: only about the facts. And so, despite the way you
Speaker 1: were raised, I'm sure you're raised the same way my
Speaker 1: mother said, you can't care what other people think. When
Speaker 1: you're director of the FBI. You have to because you
Speaker 1: run a public institution. So transparency is incredibly important. I
Speaker 1: believe the American people were due transparency here, fair and
Speaker 1: open description of why there was no criminal case. Here,
Speaker 1: you called Hillary Clinton's behavior extremely careless, placing a value
Speaker 1: judgment on her. Can you give me another example of
Speaker 1: an FBI agent or prosecutor coming forward to publicly maligned
Speaker 1: someone they decided not to prosecute. Lowest learner I r
Speaker 1: S executive the f the Department of Justice described her
Speaker 1: as a poor manager, but not engaged in criminal wrongdoing.
Speaker 1: When they closed the investigation of the so called targeting
Speaker 1: of the Tea Party Jose Padilla, who was a so
Speaker 1: called dirty bomber in two thousand and four, I was
Speaker 1: at the Justice Department. We did a public announcement of
Speaker 1: why he had been detained and not prosecuted, and described
Speaker 1: in great detail his conduct. It is part of the
Speaker 1: norm to do that when the public interests requires it.
Speaker 1: Now I've struggled with this. I wasn't trying to attack
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton. I was trying to be transparent with the
Speaker 1: American people and describe the conduct. I don't think I
Speaker 1: could have credibly describe the closure of an investigation in
Speaker 1: which the former Secretary of State discussed top secret information
Speaker 1: eight times in emails and secret information fifty sometimes in
Speaker 1: emails without offering some evaluation. Now I screwed it up
Speaker 1: because extremely careless was a stupid term to use. I
Speaker 1: should have said really sloppy, not being facetious, because I
Speaker 1: was trying to explain to the American people. Look, there's
Speaker 1: ordinary sloppiness you leave a documented the Starbucks. There's criminal
Speaker 1: misconduct where you know you're doing something you shouldn't do.
Speaker 1: David Petras is an example of that, and that's prosecuted.
Speaker 1: You don't get prosecuted for this, you know, you get
Speaker 1: prosecutor for this. Hillary Clinton was not this. It was
Speaker 1: something much more seriousness. It was really sloppy, but it
Speaker 1: didn't rise to the level of something that would be prosecuted,
Speaker 1: and so I needed to describe that why we thought
Speaker 1: the conduct fell short of this threshold for prosecution. But frankly,
Speaker 1: if I described it as Starbucks documents stuff, the result
Speaker 1: would have no credibility. Let's talk about the second big
Speaker 1: decision you made, one that has made many Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: supporters angry to this day. On October two thousand, sixteen,
Speaker 1: eleven days before the election, you sent a letter to
Speaker 1: Congress that leaked to the public I believe nine minutes
Speaker 1: later that said the FBI found new emails that could
Speaker 1: be pertinent to the Clinton investigation, and you were reviewing them.
Speaker 1: According to the IG report, these eight emails were actually
Speaker 1: found more than a month earlier, and the FBI failed
Speaker 1: to act. You were told about these emails either in
Speaker 1: late September or early October, and you didn't act. Why
Speaker 1: the delay? I don't know why the delay. The investor,
Speaker 1: the investigators in New York, we are investigating Anthony Weener.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna assume you all know who all that is
Speaker 1: and everything. Um. They had seized his laptop in a
Speaker 1: criminal investigation and of him for improper sexual contact with
Speaker 1: a young woman. And it was apparent to the investigators
Speaker 1: there that there looked to be hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton's emails on there. And that's late September. Sometime
Speaker 1: in early October. Somebody mentioned it to me in passing,
Speaker 1: and I don't remember it because I wouldn't index on it.
Speaker 1: Why would there be a connection between Anthony Weiner's computer
Speaker 1: and Hillary Clinton's email case. I don't know what the
Speaker 1: FBI did. Until I read the Inspector General's report in
Speaker 1: that month, I know what happened with me. I walked
Speaker 1: in on October to the investigative team sitting there telling
Speaker 1: me exactly what they had found and asking me for
Speaker 1: a decision. Had they told me the same thing a
Speaker 1: month earlier, I'm confident I would have done the same
Speaker 1: thing a month earlier. And I wish that's one piece
Speaker 1: of time I wish I could go back and fix.
Speaker 1: You said that, once you were aware of these emails
Speaker 1: and the fact that they needed to be reviewed, you
Speaker 1: had two choices, in your words, speak which was bad,
Speaker 1: or conceal which was catastrophic. So you chose bad. But
Speaker 1: the IG report says this miss mischaracterizes your two choices,
Speaker 1: which were actually follow policy and practice or depart from
Speaker 1: policy and practice, and that you chose to make your
Speaker 1: own rules. Yeah, this is where I disagree with them.
Speaker 1: And I really like these people and know them. I
Speaker 1: think just framing it as follow the norms or depart
Speaker 1: from the norms, it's just another way of saying you
Speaker 1: have a decision to make right. Norms, as I said,
Speaker 1: produced reliably good results in normal circumstances. But isn't it
Speaker 1: important to adhere to norms and abnormal circumstances, particularly in
Speaker 1: fact the I G went on to write Jim to
Speaker 1: protect the institutions from allegations of abuse, political interference, and
Speaker 1: biased enforcement of the law. The Department and the FBI
Speaker 1: have developed policies and practices to guide their decisions, and
Speaker 1: the vast majority of cases they are followed as a
Speaker 1: matter of routine, but they are most important to follow
Speaker 1: when the states are the highest and when the pressures
Speaker 1: to divert from them, often based on well founded concerns
Speaker 1: and highly fraught scenarios, are the greatest. And I think
Speaker 1: as a as a statement of the importance of norms,
Speaker 1: that's reasonable. They can't mean it, though, right. They can't
Speaker 1: mean that in every circumstance you do what you would
Speaker 1: always normally do. And this is where I disagree with
Speaker 1: with their framing of it. That's you can't think about
Speaker 1: it that way. As a lawyer and a leader, you
Speaker 1: should always say, so, what's the norm? I love the norms?
Speaker 1: I should try to adhere to the norms, which is
Speaker 1: why to me, they're framing of follow the norm or
Speaker 1: depart from the norm just tells yourself you have to
Speaker 1: ask a question. And so the next question is, okay,
Speaker 1: if I follow the norm, what happens to the institution?
Speaker 1: I love? What's the damage that flows if I depart
Speaker 1: from the norm, what happens to the institution. So let
Speaker 1: me just finish, Katie, And so you have to still
Speaker 1: ask the question. I believe, and I don't mean this
Speaker 1: to be facetious. If I had concealed from the American
Speaker 1: people that what I and Laretta Lynch had said under oath,
Speaker 1: repeated in the summer that we're done with Hillary Clinton,
Speaker 1: American people, you can take that to the bank. You
Speaker 1: can vote knowing this is over. And Hillary Clinton were
Speaker 1: elected president, and it came out that the FBI had
Speaker 1: hidden the restarting of that investigation. And I don't mean
Speaker 1: this to be facetious. There would be an inspector General
Speaker 1: report about me and how I had destroyed the institution
Speaker 1: by departing from another norm, which is candor with a tribunal.
Speaker 1: When you make a statement under oath to a tribunal
Speaker 1: and you know it's not true, another norm in the
Speaker 1: FBI and the Department Justice, you corrected. So I honestly
Speaker 1: think this was a nightmare. But if I had chosen
Speaker 1: to conceal that, I actually think there be an Inspector
Speaker 1: General report ripping me for being a slavish adherent to
Speaker 1: following what we always do in all circumstances. But a
Speaker 1: lot of this was timing. Eleven days before the election.
Speaker 1: You said you put out the letter because you had
Speaker 1: a duty to correct the record, because you told Congress
Speaker 1: and the public the investigation was closed, and you now
Speaker 1: knew evidence had emerged. But wouldn't any prosecutor or investor,
Speaker 1: stigator or his or her sault wait to see if
Speaker 1: the new evidence was significant enough before charging out and
Speaker 1: announcing it, knowing that it was such a political grenade
Speaker 1: you were throwing. That's a reasonable question. But here's the problem.
Speaker 1: You're sitting there as the director of the FBI and
Speaker 1: the Attorney General. By the way, I offered her the
Speaker 1: opportunity to weigh on in this decision, and she passed.
Speaker 1: I said, here's what we and that's the truth. Here's
Speaker 1: what we face. The investigative team is telling me, not
Speaker 1: only are the hundreds of thousands of Hillary Clinton's emails
Speaker 1: on Anthony Weiner's laptop for reasons we can't possibly explain,
Speaker 1: but we may have found the missing emails. Remember this
Speaker 1: what I described. The reason there was no prosecution here
Speaker 1: is there was no evidence that she knew she was
Speaker 1: doing something wrong. If there was going to be that evidence,
Speaker 1: it would come at the beginning of her tenures secretary
Speaker 1: of State. We never found any emails from her first
Speaker 1: three months of secretary because those are on a BlackBerry device.
Speaker 1: That morning, October, the investigative team says to me, not
Speaker 1: only are there hundreds of thousands of her Clinton Domain emails,
Speaker 1: there are tens of thousands of her BlackBerry emails on
Speaker 1: Anthony Leener's laptop. So they said to me, so the
Speaker 1: result may change, so you may decide to wait, maybe
Speaker 1: wait and see. They're also telling me, we can't possibly
Speaker 1: finish before the election. So what do I do? Do
Speaker 1: I wait and see if we can get a peek?
Speaker 1: Do I wait till after the election. That's what they're saying.
Speaker 1: They couldn't finish before the election because they did well.
Speaker 1: That the reason they were saying it made complete sense
Speaker 1: to me. You couldn't bring in recruits from Quantico like
Speaker 1: you would if you're looking for a bullet in a
Speaker 1: hay field, because people who knew the context had to
Speaker 1: actually read these emails to see if they contain classified
Speaker 1: information or if they contain clues to her intent. They said,
Speaker 1: we can't possibly do that in the eleven days left,
Speaker 1: and we can't use de duplicating software that's commonly available
Speaker 1: law firms use because the emails are all and have
Speaker 1: to be on our classified networks. We have no capability
Speaker 1: on the classified networks. And then what they did over
Speaker 1: that frantic week was our software engineers built de duplicating
Speaker 1: software for the classified networks and cut it down to
Speaker 1: six thousand or so they had to read individually, and
Speaker 1: so a team of about half a dozen read them
Speaker 1: night after night after night, and finished on the Sunday
Speaker 1: before the election, and they found lots of new stuff.
Speaker 1: But they said to me on Sunday morning before the election,
Speaker 1: our view of her culpability has not changed. And I
Speaker 1: think you have done that though before making that writing
Speaker 1: that letter. But how would I do that though? I mean,
Speaker 1: the team is telling me credibly we can't possibly finish
Speaker 1: before the election, and so what would be my reason
Speaker 1: to wait? Now? There's been a lot of speculation out there, like, well,
Speaker 1: was he counting on a leak? No? In fact, I
Speaker 1: thought there was some prospect that it would leak once
Speaker 1: we enlarged the circle, and we had a big team
Speaker 1: in New York knowing about the search warrant. But I
Speaker 1: thought that in a way would be the worst of
Speaker 1: all worlds for the FBI, because that would be speaking
Speaker 1: and concealing. So you were afraid of a leak, of course.
Speaker 1: And and Loretta Lynch when she was consoling me on
Speaker 1: October thirty one after I wrote the letter, said would
Speaker 1: they feel better for a leaked on November four? And
Speaker 1: what I understood her to be saying is this was
Speaker 1: gonna come out anyway. But my view was, I can't
Speaker 1: make a decision about something of this cup, this incredibly
Speaker 1: importance by assuming it's going to leak. I have to
Speaker 1: own the decision on behalf of the institution and offer
Speaker 1: the Attorney General the opportunity to help me make it.
Speaker 1: So she consoled you, Yeah, what did she say? She
Speaker 1: hugged me, And I'm an awkward hugger to begin with,
Speaker 1: but we've seen that in the Oval office sector. Now
Speaker 1: I have to correct that there was no hug and
Speaker 1: no kiss, and there was no kiss, but she she
Speaker 1: hugged me, and then she said, you asked me. I've
Speaker 1: known Laurette a long time and really like her, and
Speaker 1: I think she really likes me. She hugged me and said,
Speaker 1: how are you doing. I said, it's a complete nightmare.
Speaker 1: It's the worst thing I've ever been involved in. And
Speaker 1: she said and I said, explain, I said, what choice
Speaker 1: do I have? And she said would they feel better
Speaker 1: if at leaked on November the fourth? And what I
Speaker 1: understood it to be saying was basically, don't be so
Speaker 1: hard on yourself this. Your decision was actually not as
Speaker 1: important as you think it was because it was going
Speaker 1: to come out anyway. Maybe, but you can't make decisions
Speaker 1: that way when you're leading an institution. The IG report says,
Speaker 1: the other reason you wrote the letter to Congress was
Speaker 1: your belief that Clinton would win and this would taint
Speaker 1: her presidency. Looking back on this, do you ever think
Speaker 1: what was I thinking? Political prognostication should have absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: to do with my decision making. I should not even
Speaker 1: be contemplating the political future. I didn't. I didn't. I
Speaker 1: intentionally pushed that to the side. One of my best
Speaker 1: advisors we talked about I made this decision, actually made
Speaker 1: it with a group of about ten or twelve people.
Speaker 1: One of the best people in that group was a
Speaker 1: very talented lawyer who asked me a searing question. She said,
Speaker 1: should you consider that what you're about to do may
Speaker 1: help elect Donald Trump president? And I said, thank you
Speaker 1: for asking that question. It's a great question, not for
Speaker 1: a moment, because down that path lies to death of
Speaker 1: the FBI as an independent force in the United States
Speaker 1: of America. If I ever start considering whose political fortunes
Speaker 1: will be helped in what way by a decision, we're
Speaker 1: just another partisan player. I can you never worried this
Speaker 1: would taint her presidency if you did not come forward
Speaker 1: with this information, or if it came out later. We
Speaker 1: visualize that, talked about it, and then pushed it aside.
Speaker 1: Now what I've done in the book, which they tell
Speaker 1: me is a mistake for a Washington book, I've tried
Speaker 1: to be introspective and asked myself that could it have
Speaker 1: affected me that the whole world assumed she was going
Speaker 1: to be elected president? And the honest answer is, of course,
Speaker 1: I was making that decision in an environment where everyone
Speaker 1: thought she was gonna win. But I don't remember consciously
Speaker 1: thinking about it, and honestly, it wouldn't change the decision.
Speaker 1: I can't conceal that if Hillary Clinton's up twenty points
Speaker 1: in the polls, and I can't conceal it if Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's up twenty points in the polls, because either way
Speaker 1: it would be catastrophic for the institution. Now makes the
Speaker 1: decision easier because the damage, if you think about it,
Speaker 1: if the damage to Hillary Clinton would be far, far
Speaker 1: worse if she was a president elected, imagine the result changes.
Speaker 1: She's a president elected with an investigation underway, the FBI
Speaker 1: hid from the American people, and the FBI conclude she's
Speaker 1: criminally culpable after the election. Oh my lord, but that
Speaker 1: is not why I made the decision. Well, many people
Speaker 1: think thanks to your actions, we don't even have to
Speaker 1: contemplate that. No, I get that. I get that, and
Speaker 1: I hope and pray that's not true. And I don't this.
Speaker 1: I don't mean this to sound also dismissive. It doesn't
Speaker 1: change how I think about the result, as painful as
Speaker 1: it is, even in hindsight, I think I made the
Speaker 1: right choice, and I know the Inspector General just a Greece.
Speaker 1: But I say to people, please come with me to
Speaker 1: October and stare at those choices and tell me which
Speaker 1: is the one most consistent with the values of the institution.
Speaker 1: You leave, and I get that the I g season differently.
Speaker 1: I like them, I think they're wrong. Time to take
Speaker 1: a quick break. We'll return with more of my conversation
Speaker 1: with former FBI director James Comey live from the Aspen
Speaker 1: Ideas Festival right after this. Now back to my conversation
Speaker 1: with James Comey. Let's talk about the impact this letter
Speaker 1: to Congress eleven days before the election had on the results.
Speaker 1: Nate Silver, the highly respected polling guru, wrote Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had
Speaker 1: not sent a letter to Congress on October That must
Speaker 1: be a tremendously heavy burden for you. Do you feel
Speaker 1: responsible for the action of Donald Trump and the current
Speaker 1: state of the Union. I I hope these answers don't
Speaker 1: sound contradictory. I don't, but I also it is a
Speaker 1: heavy burden. And I've said this and I think our
Speaker 1: current president misunderstood what I meant. It leaves me feeling
Speaker 1: mildly nauseous to think, and I should have said nauseated.
Speaker 1: I know, but it leaves me feeling my dad used
Speaker 1: to always correct means you make people nausea, which I
Speaker 1: may may anyway, But one of my daughters corrected me.
Speaker 1: But here's why I say that that I've devoted my
Speaker 1: whole life to institutions of justice that want nothing to
Speaker 1: do with elections. The most powerful norm I've lived under
Speaker 1: is you take no action in the run up to
Speaker 1: an election that might have an impact on the election.
Speaker 1: I believe in that to my core. My problem was
Speaker 1: I couldn't find a door labeled no action on October.
Speaker 1: I could see two actions and they were both really bad.
Speaker 1: And so, look, I feel sick to my stomach about it,
Speaker 1: but I in an odd way, I don't feel responsible
Speaker 1: because I'm proud of the way we made the decisions.
Speaker 1: We thought about the right things. One of the things
Speaker 1: the I g confirmed from me is I didn't miss
Speaker 1: anything in terms of norms. There aren't any rules about this.
Speaker 1: We thought about it well, we argued about it, we
Speaker 1: debated it. I offered the leadership of the Department of
Speaker 1: Justice the chance to take the decision from me, and
Speaker 1: the response was, we think it's a bad idea, but
Speaker 1: it's his call. And so I think we made the
Speaker 1: decision in the right way, thinking about the right things,
Speaker 1: and honestly wouldn't change it. Going back and so there's
Speaker 1: peace in that, and I know it seems contradictory, there's
Speaker 1: peace in that. Just the same time, there's nausea about
Speaker 1: the fact that you had any involvement. If I could
Speaker 1: change time, you would never have heard of me. Right.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be famous. I don't. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to be involved at all. This was a living nightmare.
Speaker 1: But I'm very proud of the way the leadership team
Speaker 1: around me made this decision. You say you don't want
Speaker 1: want to be famous, but you wrote in your book,
Speaker 1: I've long worried about my ego, and you've admitted you
Speaker 1: can be driven by ego. So you don't think any
Speaker 1: of this was driven by ego even a little bit.
Speaker 1: I don't think so, although how how well do any
Speaker 1: of us really know ourselves? That's true about me? I've
Speaker 1: I thought I was such hot stuff, as my mother
Speaker 1: used to say, especially when I was younger. I married
Speaker 1: an amazing person who has beaten that out of me
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. But look, I I do
Speaker 1: worry any leaders should worry about that. It's the reason
Speaker 1: I put a team around me of people who will
Speaker 1: speak the truth to me. And so I don't think
Speaker 1: this decision was made for ego reasons. And one of
Speaker 1: the reasons I say that is I could see the future.
Speaker 1: I knew how bad this is gonna be for me personally.
Speaker 1: The best thing for me personally would have been to
Speaker 1: do the normal thing in July and let Lauretta Lynch
Speaker 1: in now this baby, and do the normal thing in
Speaker 1: October and say, well, we never comment and let the
Speaker 1: institution take the hit. One of the things that it
Speaker 1: annoys my amazing wife is she says, why are you
Speaker 1: stepping in front of the institutions and getting shot repeatedly?
Speaker 1: Because that's my job. I knew how bad this was
Speaker 1: going to be for me, so I really I've asked
Speaker 1: myself that's a million times because I worry about myself.
Speaker 1: I really don't think these were driven by ego. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about the third decision. And I want to roll
Speaker 1: through this because there's so much I want to ask
Speaker 1: you about what's going on today. But this concerns the
Speaker 1: Russia investigation. We now know that by the time the
Speaker 1: election rolled around, that investigation had been going on for months.
Speaker 1: It was never made public. You refuse to confirm or
Speaker 1: deny it, and you followed a FBI protocol. Can you
Speaker 1: explain what appears to be a blatant double standard. It's
Speaker 1: a reasonable question. Actually was an easy decision for us
Speaker 1: because think about the difference between the Clinton investigation and
Speaker 1: the Russia counter intelligence investigation. Clinton investigation began with a
Speaker 1: public referral in two thousand fifteen to the FBI. The
Speaker 1: subject of the investigation was Hillary Clinton herself. I refused
Speaker 1: to confirm that even existed for three months after it
Speaker 1: came to us publicly, and then spoke not another word
Speaker 1: until we closed it with transparency. The Russia counter intelligence
Speaker 1: investigation is different. There's two things going on in the
Speaker 1: summer of two thousand sixteen about Russia. One is are
Speaker 1: trying to understand the massive Russian effort to mess with
Speaker 1: our election. There. I thought we ought to offer the
Speaker 1: American people transparency, and I wrote an op ed that
Speaker 1: I offered to the Obama administration to tell the American people,
Speaker 1: here's what's going on. That's one thing with Russia. The
Speaker 1: separate and very different was we got information in late
Speaker 1: July that Americans may be connected to that effort, and
Speaker 1: so we opened a counterintelligence investigation, not focused on Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: but focused on people in the Trump orbit on whom
Speaker 1: we had kind of wisps of information, and so we
Speaker 1: actually never talked about disclosing that it because what would
Speaker 1: we say, We just opened this investigation on Americans. We
Speaker 1: don't know there's anything to it at all, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't involve the candidate himself, And so it honestly never
Speaker 1: came up. We wrestled a whole lot about what to
Speaker 1: say about this, but I can't imagine anyone in our
Speaker 1: shoes disclosing the beginning of a counterintelligence investigation. But on
Speaker 1: October thirty one, two thousand sixteen, that was nine days
Speaker 1: before the election, the New York Times published a story
Speaker 1: saying that the FBI had found quote no conclusive or
Speaker 1: direct link between Mr Trump and the Russian government. FBI
Speaker 1: sources also said that Russian hacking was aimed simply at
Speaker 1: disrupting the presidential election and not helping Donald Trump. You
Speaker 1: said in an interview with The New Yorker with David
Speaker 1: Remnick that was false. Did you know the story was
Speaker 1: wrong at the time, and if so, why not correct
Speaker 1: the record? Well, when the stories that are wrong about
Speaker 1: classified investigations, classified subjects, we never correct them unless we're
Speaker 1: in a position where the matter, you know, the matter
Speaker 1: is public in some way. So that story was wrong
Speaker 1: in the second respect. In that what we concluded about
Speaker 1: Russia was they were trying to damage our democracy most
Speaker 1: of all, that was their overwhelming desire. Second heard Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 1: Third help elect Donald Trump. So in that respect it
Speaker 1: was wrong. The first part was not wrong, but yeah,
Speaker 1: there was no serious discussion about correcting that. There was agony.
Speaker 1: President Obama had a hard decision to make. Do I
Speaker 1: tell the American people the Russians are coming for our election?
Speaker 1: That was a very hard decision that was his to make,
Speaker 1: but couldn't a reasonable voter. In October of two thousand
Speaker 1: and sixteen conclude, based on information coming from Jim Comey's
Speaker 1: FBI that Hillary Clinton was a candidate overwhelmed by scandal
Speaker 1: who had acted extremely carelessly and Donald Trump did nothing wrong,
Speaker 1: did nothing wrong in what sense, did nothing wrong in
Speaker 1: terms of there was no collusion. There was suspicion that
Speaker 1: he was involved with the Russians, and you know that
Speaker 1: that was kind of a case closed. Is at least
Speaker 1: that article that led people to that I think conclusion
Speaker 1: right now. The thing about the Times is a detail,
Speaker 1: but it matters. They weren't reporting official disclosures by the
Speaker 1: FBI of the Department Justice, which is an important thing.
Speaker 1: They were reporting whatever they were getting from their sources,
Speaker 1: whatever they were doing. They were giving voters an impression. Right.
Speaker 1: But it's not the government's responsible to correct erroneous reports
Speaker 1: based on sources. It just isn't. But to come to
Speaker 1: the most important question, Donald Trump was not the subject
Speaker 1: of a counter intelligence investigation. In October of two thousand
Speaker 1: and sixteen. We were still trying to figure out was
Speaker 1: anybody in that orbit working with the Russians And still
Speaker 1: didn't know the answer at that point, and I don't
Speaker 1: I actually don't know what the answer is. Today we
Speaker 1: had enough to open an investigation, but by that point
Speaker 1: I had no basis to believe there was evidence of
Speaker 1: a connection between people, and a solid connection people in
Speaker 1: the Russian effort. What do you think now? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know what Bob Mueller will find, and I
Speaker 1: worry that people from all points of the political spectrum
Speaker 1: project onto him hopes for a result. My only hope
Speaker 1: is for the truth. If he's left to do his job,
Speaker 1: he may find there's not significant evidence of a connection
Speaker 1: he may find. I don't know what he'll find. An
Speaker 1: obstruction of justice, I honestly don't know. It's just he'll
Speaker 1: find the facts if he's allowed to finish. Let's let's
Speaker 1: talk about President Trump's temperament um. You have said, I
Speaker 1: think he has an emptiness inside of him and a
Speaker 1: hunger for affirmation in him I've never seen in an adult,
Speaker 1: which sounds like a textbook definition of a narcissist. After
Speaker 1: his comments following the White Supremacy rally in Charlottesville, you
Speaker 1: said you believed he is morally unfit to be president.
Speaker 1: Has your opinion of President Trump changed for better or
Speaker 1: for worse in the last say year. It's gotten worse
Speaker 1: because I see more of the behavior that I think,
Speaker 1: whether you're Republican or Democrat or independent, you should care
Speaker 1: deeply about the erosion of the central norm of the
Speaker 1: United States of America, the truth, and an attack on
Speaker 1: the rule of law that I've never imagined before. And
Speaker 1: so it's those, those attacks on our norms and our
Speaker 1: values have only gotten more serious, and and everybody should
Speaker 1: care about them, no matter where you are in the
Speaker 1: policy spectrum, because all we are in this country is
Speaker 1: a collection of values and we lose those. Really, you're
Speaker 1: going to trade that for some position on taxes or
Speaker 1: immigration or anything else. You should never trade what is
Speaker 1: essentially America. Is there anything specifically you're particularly concerned about
Speaker 1: out when you look at his actions and his rhetoric, Well,
Speaker 1: those two. I think the central touchstone of American public
Speaker 1: life is the truth. We always measure our leaders by
Speaker 1: their tether to the truth. George W. Bush spoke falsely
Speaker 1: when he said their weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Speaker 1: Barack Obama spoke falsely when he said, if you like
Speaker 1: your doctor, you can keep your doctor. And then both
Speaker 1: of those people spent the rest of their tenure and
Speaker 1: probably the rest of their lives explaining the tether to
Speaker 1: the touchstone. I didn't know that I meant this. I
Speaker 1: understood this because the touchstone is something they see. There's
Speaker 1: so much line going on right now, there's a risk
Speaker 1: this is gonna melt like a sand castle at the
Speaker 1: beach and we will become numb to the fact that
Speaker 1: it is the center of the United States of America
Speaker 1: and stop judging our leader by the touchstone to this
Speaker 1: that is deeply concerning and closely connected the rule of law.
Speaker 1: I wake up probably once a week, and the President
Speaker 1: of the United States has tweeted that I should be
Speaker 1: in jail. And I honestly laugh because I know there's
Speaker 1: no there's nothing to that. It's just him saying stuff.
Speaker 1: And then I stop and actually criticize myself and say,
Speaker 1: what are you doing. You're becoming numb to something that
Speaker 1: is profoundly threatening to the central norm of rule of
Speaker 1: law in this country. And I say to my I
Speaker 1: used to be a Republican. I say to my former
Speaker 1: Republican colleagues, Imagine Barack Obama wakes up in the morning
Speaker 1: and announces that so and so should be in jail.
Speaker 1: Your head would explode. And why would it explode? Because
Speaker 1: that norm, the rule of law in this country, Lady,
Speaker 1: justice with a blindfold is all we are as a country.
Speaker 1: So I'm deeply concerned about all of us becoming numb
Speaker 1: to what's happening to us. And why are are your
Speaker 1: Republican colleagues with whom you have these conversations, are they outraged? Well,
Speaker 1: most Republicans don't talk to me anymore. Um, so I've
Speaker 1: succeeded in pissing off everyone except Patrice, who still loves
Speaker 1: me um the the I think what they're doing is
Speaker 1: making a trade. They've convinced themselves that the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: or a tax cut or something is worth it. And
Speaker 1: I keep saying to them, And because they don't talk
Speaker 1: to me personally, I say it in the media. I
Speaker 1: asked them to take the grandchildren test. What are you
Speaker 1: going to tell your grandchildren? You were here and you
Speaker 1: traded what for this? You traded that. So my small contribution,
Speaker 1: and what I hope is a very brief period where
Speaker 1: I'm a celebrity, is to raise all of our eyes
Speaker 1: above the things we normally fight about and stare at
Speaker 1: the values in this country, because without them, I mean,
Speaker 1: we're a country that shouldn't exist. Right. We're not united
Speaker 1: by religion, by ethnicity, by anything except our commitment to
Speaker 1: a set of ideas. We hold these truths to be
Speaker 1: self evident. Truth is our fourth word in our foundational documents.
Speaker 1: We've always been imperfect, but we are organized around a
Speaker 1: set of values. They're not worth trading for anything. And
Speaker 1: in the long run, your grandchildren are going to look
Speaker 1: up at you and say, what did you do? And
Speaker 1: I hope to God all of us realize that In
Speaker 1: the end, that's the most important question for us to answer,
Speaker 1: and I get the power of the moment. Right. People
Speaker 1: are passionate about this, passionate about that. Holy cow, please
Speaker 1: take the long view. I called my book a Higher
Speaker 1: Loyalty because I hope all of us are loyal first
Speaker 1: and foremost to those things, and then we can get
Speaker 1: back to these other things. I hope in the next
Speaker 1: presidential election, people will vote their values, and I don't
Speaker 1: care who they vote for, so long as they vote
Speaker 1: those values. First of all, we have to restore the
Speaker 1: presidency as the representative. The embodiment imperfect because it's always people,
Speaker 1: but are representative of those values. Then we get back
Speaker 1: to all the important disagreements. Does Donald Trump have a
Speaker 1: single does he have a single attribute other than his
Speaker 1: energy that you admire or is there anything he's done
Speaker 1: at all in the last year and a half that
Speaker 1: you appreciate or support. Energy is one, so I'll that'll
Speaker 1: be the given. I think he is extraordinarily perceptive and
Speaker 1: very good of public mood, certain and communication. I think
Speaker 1: what he's done with his ability to step through filters
Speaker 1: and communicate directly is genius. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: it is really bad the way it's done, but it's
Speaker 1: it's really extraordinary and will change the way public figures
Speaker 1: think and talk about communication in the future. So I
Speaker 1: think that's extraordinary. I don't because I focus so much
Speaker 1: on his erosion, his attack on our central norms and values.
Speaker 1: I really can't think of much positive to say beyond that.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Justice Kennedy, who announced he's retiring. What
Speaker 1: do you believe will be the biggest consequences of a
Speaker 1: new more conservative Supreme Court. I don't know for sure,
Speaker 1: because it will depend upon their adherence to the principle
Speaker 1: of starry decisives, which is a really important norm in
Speaker 1: the court system. That is, you respect that which has
Speaker 1: been decided unless there's a significant change in facts or
Speaker 1: an intervening change in the law. I would imagine on
Speaker 1: close calls there will be more of a so called
Speaker 1: conservative much easier, much easier to assemble a conservative majority
Speaker 1: to win a five four case on important issues. Well, well,
Speaker 1: I know that legal analysts and writer Jeff tub And
Speaker 1: predicted Roe v. Wade would be overturned and within eighteen
Speaker 1: months abortion would be illegal in twenty states. I don't that.
Speaker 1: I don't know that because of the Again, it's a
Speaker 1: really important part of the entire judicial system, especially the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, this notion that precedent must be respected absence
Speaker 1: something fundamental, especially fundamental change in facts. So I actually
Speaker 1: don't know that it's possible, but my view is I
Speaker 1: would probably you'd have to take a deeply unprincipled stand
Speaker 1: with respect to tradition and precedent, and I can't imagine
Speaker 1: a new justice supporting that, at least that early in
Speaker 1: their tenure. Let's talk about your future. I know in
Speaker 1: the acknowledgements, you thanked a lot of people and you
Speaker 1: said thank you for the joy and the journey, which
Speaker 1: isn't over yet. So let's talk about what's ahead for you.
Speaker 1: On June six, you tweet it's so good to see
Speaker 1: new growth in Iowa and across the country, with a
Speaker 1: picture of yourself in an Iowa field. Yeah, that just
Speaker 1: means people don't realize I'm married to an Iowa girl
Speaker 1: and I visit there all the time. And that was
Speaker 1: actually my subtle way of maybe temporarily, maybe forever, ending
Speaker 1: my presence on Twitter because it began with Patrice took
Speaker 1: a picture of me. I'm so tall standing in a
Speaker 1: corn field and then people like he's running No never,
Speaker 1: but but she took a picture of me as we
Speaker 1: went for a walk through a new field, and then
Speaker 1: we tweeted it out kind of as a book end
Speaker 1: on my Twitter Twitter alias thing is very confounding to
Speaker 1: people talk about that my Twitter areless is Reinhold Neiber,
Speaker 1: who's a theologian and philosopher who had a tremendous influence
Speaker 1: on me as a young person, still does because it's
Speaker 1: really the message I hope to share with young people.
Speaker 1: Neiber said, the world sucks, so what right? So what
Speaker 1: don't you dare withdraw just because it sucks? Get in there,
Speaker 1: step into the public square, and achieve justice. My great
Speaker 1: worry today is the young people gonna look at and say, God,
Speaker 1: it's so ikey. I don't want to be involved in that,
Speaker 1: and they can't. We need them to step forward. And
Speaker 1: I see it already. At the end of my book,
Speaker 1: I described Donald Trump as a forest fire, and I
Speaker 1: chose that metaphor on purpose because he's doing tremendous damage
Speaker 1: to this country. But forest fires allow things to grow
Speaker 1: that could not grow before. And I see the growth
Speaker 1: already as I travel around I've had to travel a
Speaker 1: lot as part of the book tour, and I see
Speaker 1: young people engaged like I never imagined. I see record
Speaker 1: numbers of women running for off as, so many that
Speaker 1: they're competing with each other. Could you ever imagine that
Speaker 1: five years ago? And so I'm essentially I'm optimistic. And
Speaker 1: I also just finished John Meecham's book, which told me
Speaker 1: it has sucked before and it will suck again, it
Speaker 1: will suck again. But but I walked out of Meecham's
Speaker 1: book with this, this graphical metaphor. America's line is always
Speaker 1: an upward slope, but if you stare at it's not
Speaker 1: a solid line. It's a jagged line. Periods of progress, retrenchment, progress, retrenchment. Right,
Speaker 1: we think we forget the nine twenty four there were
Speaker 1: twenty se million Kupucks Klan members in this country. A
Speaker 1: third of the Congress was KKK members as a reaction
Speaker 1: to women getting the vote, huge numbers of immigrants, blacks
Speaker 1: getting marginal improvements. And then we saw it again in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties ninety fifty four. Joe McCarthy dominated our politics.
Speaker 1: His fellow party members were afraid to speak out against him,
Speaker 1: and then he faded, this too shall pass. What's really
Speaker 1: important for all of us is know that it will pass.
Speaker 1: But cabin the danger can find the fire. So the recovery,
Speaker 1: the healing of those scars is faster. But we are
Speaker 1: going to heal. We're going to recover patrices. I will
Speaker 1: roots the side. Would you ever consider running for president? So?
Speaker 1: What are your immediate plans? To teach? Work for a
Speaker 1: law firm, to have your own talk show? I've done
Speaker 1: Netflix and Chill. What are you going to be doing?
Speaker 1: I've already so I've already lined it up. I just
Speaker 1: spent this year teaching at Howard University, which was really
Speaker 1: really cool for me, and that the student of the
Speaker 1: university that once booed you. Remember when we went and spoken,
Speaker 1: he interrupted my first lecture chanting, comey is not our homie,
Speaker 1: which I thought was pretty awesome. And I'll tell you something.
Speaker 1: By the end of the year, the kids who chanted that,
Speaker 1: we're coming to my lectures and talking. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: still still disagreeing with me. But it's hard to hate
Speaker 1: up close. And when you get up close with people
Speaker 1: and see them as human beings, it's much easier to
Speaker 1: have a conversation so I found the year at Howard
Speaker 1: really rewarding, was all about law enforcement and race at
Speaker 1: their request. And now starting in August, I'm teaching it
Speaker 1: my beloved alma mater, not U v A. William and Mary.
Speaker 1: It's a great it's a great school, and so what
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna be teaching in the public policy program
Speaker 1: about leadership and ethical decisions and hard decisions. And that's
Speaker 1: really fun. And my book will be one of the
Speaker 1: books which I have given to the students who registered.
Speaker 1: I never want to be that professor. How many books
Speaker 1: have you sold, by the way, a ridiculous amount, more
Speaker 1: than a million, I don't know exactly, a lot more
Speaker 1: than a million, I think so so closing, because I
Speaker 1: was told I could not go over. When all is
Speaker 1: said and done, what do you hope your legacy will be?
Speaker 1: This is an odd thing. I hope to be forgotten
Speaker 1: that in this sense. I hope that in Patricio also
Speaker 1: slieve that. Well, here's what I hope. I hope that
Speaker 1: someone will establish that what I did had absolutely no impact,
Speaker 1: that that there's a way to prove that. And then
Speaker 1: failing that, for my most important thing is I want
Speaker 1: to be a great husband, a great father and a
Speaker 1: great grandfather, and a great neighbor and community member. That's
Speaker 1: the only thing that has value in my life. The
Speaker 1: rest of it. I hope that I'm known as a
Speaker 1: person we try to do the right thing, who thought
Speaker 1: well about things and made judgments with an eye on
Speaker 1: the right things, and and that's something that I'll be
Speaker 1: very proud of. Realistically, what do you think your legacy
Speaker 1: will be? I don't know. I guess it will depend
Speaker 1: on where you sit, and people have a passion. You
Speaker 1: all know this. But the people think I was on
Speaker 1: Hilly Clinton's side, the Clinton people think I was on
Speaker 1: Trump side. I really hope that in the in the
Speaker 1: long sweep of things, it'll be clear we weren't on
Speaker 1: anybody's side. We were people in the middle of a
Speaker 1: five your flood trying to make good decisions. And whether
Speaker 1: you agree with the decisions or not, they were good
Speaker 1: decisions in the way they were made and the values
Speaker 1: that guided them. And I actually think in the long
Speaker 1: run people will see that that's I know, this sounds crazy,
Speaker 1: that's actually not all that important to me. The other
Speaker 1: things I talked about are more important to me. But
Speaker 1: that's I think that's most likely that once the storm
Speaker 1: passes and we've resumed our inevitable progress in this country,
Speaker 1: there'll be a more dispassionate look at it. But I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe not. Jim Comey, thank you very much,
Speaker 1: Thank you, a big thank you to the Aspen Ideas
Speaker 1: Festival for inviting me to interview James Comey, with extra
Speaker 1: special thanks to my Frank Kitty Boone, the executive director
Speaker 1: of the Ideas Festival, and the enormously talented Zach st. Louis,
Speaker 1: who's been answering our every tech and production question. Thank you, Zach,
Speaker 1: and listeners will be bringing you another conversation from Aspen
Speaker 1: for our next episode. That will be an interview with
Speaker 1: Steve Huffman, the CEO of the website Reddit. The first
Speaker 1: we're taking a week off. That means no new episode
Speaker 1: on July twelve. In the meantime, get outside and enjoy
Speaker 1: the sunshine people, but please, we're sunscreen and our conversation
Speaker 1: with Steve Huffman from Aspen, Colorado will drop on July nine.
Speaker 1: Of course, we'd like to say our usual thanks to
Speaker 1: our team at Stitcher. That's Gianna Palmer, our inimitable producer
Speaker 1: Nora Richie, our assistant producer, and Jared O'Connell, our engineer extraordinaire.
Speaker 1: So many superlatives, Brian, thank you to the incredibly talented
Speaker 1: and efficient Beth Dems and the enormously creative Alison Bresnick
Speaker 1: over at Katie Current Media ATTY like that Mr Brian
Speaker 1: and I are the executive producers of the show. Mark
Speaker 1: Phillips wrote our theme music. And if you're a fan
Speaker 1: of this show, we'd love to have you leave us
Speaker 1: a rating on Apple Podcasts and or hit subscribe wherever
Speaker 1: you listen. It really helps more people find our podcast.
Speaker 1: So that's all, folks. Will talk to you the week
Speaker 1: after next