It was especially gloomy inside the halls of the famed J. Edgar Hoover Building. There was a dark cloud hanging over the FBI as the sun rose to reveal that the nation had a president-elect who'd beaten the odds. In the early hours of November 9, 2016, Donald J. Trump was declared the winner of one of the most divisive presidential campaigns in US history. Along the way of his victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton, the reputation of the third person in the race had been battered and bruised. FBI director James Comey's image had taken a hit during the election, and it was unclear whether he would ever be able to rehabilitate a public profile that had been decades in the making.
Even the bureau's employees were unsure of what was going to happen next. Reporters were already calling the FBI's National Press Office asking whether Comey would resign. The answer was a resounding no followed by an uncomfortable laugh as the public affairs officials tried to downplay what they knew would be a difficult period for the bureau. The reality was that they really didn't know how to respond since they, too, had doubts about whether their boss would make it.
Comey had taken a huge risk when eleven days before the election he sent a letter to Congress, noting he wanted to amend his testimony in which he stuck by his decision not to bring charges in the FBI's investigation into Clinton's private email server. But he thought Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless” with the way they handled classified or sensitive information.1 The letter said that the FBI investigation had found additional emails that might be significant and would investigate them. Finally, he stated he couldn't determine how long that investigation would take.2
He suspected the emails weren't significant, but felt it was his duty to put what he knew out there. Agents sorting through and categorizing another batch of hundreds of thousands of emails were hard-pressed to come to a conclusion by Election Day. The disclosure was sure to cost Clinton in public opinion polls during the election's waning days.
When Comey sent another letter to Congress the Sunday before the election to announce that there was no evidence of foul play in the emails, it only compounded the damage for him. The FBI director was taking fire from all sides. Democrats, Republicans, and just about anyone paying attention were blasting members of the FBI for being partisan hacks.
At the time, Comey had only been FBI director for about three years. He had reached the pinnacle of law enforcement after a career as a prosecutor that had spanned Republican and Democratic administrations. Prior to his “October surprise,” Comey was widely respected not only on Capitol Hill but also among FBI agents and local police. All of that began to change when he announced that Hillary Clinton wouldn't face charges and then chose to wait to disclose new details of the Clinton private email server investigation.
It was sloppy. Some former FBI agents believed that Comey had been talking too much and had now landed the bureau in an awkward position. Rank-and-file employees inside the Hoover Building were feeling the public scorn that Comey's decisions had brought down on the bureau, all while they were tracking the threat from Russia. Ultimately, Comey would take heat for not publicly revealing what Russia had been doing and the concerns about whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Russian operatives. At that time, US officials were beginning to get a clear picture of Russian interference in the election, and they were picking up electronic intercepts that indicated Americans were in contact with Russian operatives.3 But Comey stayed quiet. The FBI does not comment on active investigations. And the Russia probe was active.
Having studied and covered Comey in my role as Justice and Homeland Security correspondent, I came to view him as someone who had always done what he believed was right, even when his actions were controversial. In March 2004, when he was serving as acting US attorney general (and before President Obama nominated him to be FBI director) while Attorney General John Ashcroft was in the hospital undergoing surgery, he had refused to reauthorize a component of the secret surveillance program known as Stellar Wind. This was an NSA program that was created following the September 11, 2001, attacks and authorized by then president George W. Bush, and involved data mining of private citizens’ (a program later leaked by Snowden) telephone records and internet metadata. Comey refused to reauthorize the program on the grounds that he believed that it was illegal.4
But even though Ashcroft was hospitalized and Comey was the acting attorney general, the White House wanted to go around Comey to get Ashcroft to sign the documents reauthorizing the program. An outraged Comey let it be known that if it was reauthorized he was ready to quit. “I prepared a letter of resignation, intending to resign the next day, Friday, March the 12th,” Comey has said.5
That night Ashcroft's distraught wife called the Justice Department to warn that two of the president's top aides were rushing to the hospital to get Ashcroft to sign the documents. Comey later testified that when he found out what was about to happen, he said, “I was very upset. I was angry.” He wanted to get to the hospital first. The showdown in the hospital room with White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez and White House Chief of Staff Andy Card ended with a win for Comey. Ashcroft didn't sign the papers. “I thought I just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man,” Comey said.6
Comey had asked for then FBI director Robert Mueller to help him that day. Both men were prepared to resign. President Bush backed down and listened to Comey's concerns, and then gave permission to Comey to institute changes to the program based on Department of Justice recommendations.
Comey and Mueller believed that they were standing up for the Constitution then. How ironic that it might come down to them again. With Mueller now special counsel for the Russia probe and Comey looking on from the sidelines in private life, Comey will play a pivotal role in how the Russia investigation concludes. He was suddenly fired by President Trump on May 9, 2017. By then the Russia investigation was nearly a year old. Comey says during meetings at the White House the president asked him if he would drop the investigation into his former national security advisor Michael Flynn. Flynn had lied about his calls with the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016 soon after the Obama administration had announced sanctions against the Russians. Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the contacts with the ambassador.
Comey kept memos of his interactions with Trump—in part because he viewed the private meetings with the president as inappropriate, especially in the midst of an investigation into the president's own campaign. According to Comey, President Trump said, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”7
After later firing Comey, the president told NBC News anchor Lester Holt in an interview that he was thinking of “this Russia thing” when he fired Comey.8 I've wondered whether Comey already had enough “dirt” on the president to build a case against him. I've also wondered whether Comey took notes of his meetings with the president for that very reason. After all, the FBI was well into its Russia investigation by then.
Comey's firing led to the appointment of his friend Mueller as special counsel. Did Comey know that his firing would trigger the appointment of a special counsel and that the odds were that his friend would be appointed to the job? I think Comey was willing to take that chance. Can you imagine a showdown between President Trump and James Comey in a courtroom? I can. Ultimately, it may all come down to one question: who do you believe? I remember meeting with an FBI source in early 2017. FBI employees are among those who speak a cryptic language when they are talking with reporters. They are (perhaps rightfully so) afraid of revealing too much. At the time, the source told me that at the end of the day the public has to believe what the verdict is at the conclusion of the Russia investigation. What that FBI official told me stands out to this day, especially as the president batters the FBI's reputation and as some Republicans in Congress accuse top FBI officials of having a bias against President Trump.
Will the public believe what the investigators uncover? If so, what happens next? Will the truth be accepted?
These are just a few of the reasons why I believe the information has been coming out slowly, and is being fed to the public in small doses. For some people it's already too much to absorb. The slow drip of indictments and guilty pleas on their own are unprecedented. This is where we are in the era of Trump. So much has happened in such a short time that one can't help but feel that the country is spiraling toward some major clash between law enforcement and this administration.
We've already seen some “relatively minor” scuffles on the way to a conclusion in this Russia investigation. There is so much at stake. Who will be the heroes at the end? What will the institutions of this democracy look like at the end? That really depends in part on who stands up for the Constitution. During the 2016 election, some would argue that it took too long for the Obama administration to reveal what had taken place, the extent of investigators’ knowledge of Russian-led interference with the elections including the DNC emails, how many states had been impacted, and the potential collusion between Trump campaign representatives and Russian representatives whose interests ran contrary to ours. By the time the public was made aware of what was happening, it was almost too late.
Comey's old friend Robert Mueller has been methodically building his case. As of early 2018 there had been five guilty pleas in the Russia investigation.9 Mueller was rolling up witnesses against others up the chain. Former FBI assistant directors whom I spoke with said that this was “classic” Mueller, a hard-nosed investigator who keeps pressing forward no matter what.
A lot of people who've worked with him or covered him over the years might describe Comey that way, and even though he had been villainized for the manner in which he made his public announcement about the Clinton email servers or for his lack of candor about Russian cyber espionage during the election, he was far from the only culpable individual. Over the years that I have worked this beat I have noticed the tricky dance that government and intelligence officials have to do when safeguarding and releasing classified information. I have learned how much we don't know, and probably never will. It is the nature of these organizations to protect information.
When the declassified version of a classified report about Russian interference in the US elections came out, it was a major disclosure, but it still made me wonder what classified information they weren't revealing.