Former FBI Director James Comey wasn’t at all times atop President Donald Trump’s enemies listing.
“You’ve had one heck of a year,” Trump, then the president-elect, mentioned to Comey in January 2017, the first time they met face-to-face privately at Trump Tower in New York. Trump informed Comey he had a “great reputation” and dealt with the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal e mail server “honorably,” in keeping with Comey’s re-telling of their assembly in his 2018 memoir.
That might need been the excessive level of their relationship.
Moments later, the FBI director informed Trump for the first time about the notorious “Steele dossier,” which alleged that Trump and his campaign colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 election. It was a dialog that will finally ship Comey spiraling down the path to changing into one of Trump’s chief villains.
Now, Comey is caught in the center of Trump’s second-term retribution campaign, after he was charged last month with a two-count legal indictment for allegedly mendacity to Congress in 2020 about leaks, which NCS has reported seems to be associated to the FBI’s Clinton e mail investigation.
Comey, who has mentioned he’s “innocent” of the costs, is set to be arraigned at an Alexandria, Virginia, federal courthouse Wednesday morning.
Along the method, in contrast to his latest FBI predecessors, Comey cast an unprecedented decade-long path to changing into a serious political actor, whose each motion is weaponized by partisans from each side for their very own achieve. He went from a Democratic scapegoat for the celebration’s 2016 election loss, to a catalyst for the appointment of particular counsel Robert Mueller, to a distinguished anti-Trump resistance determine, and now, a legal defendant.
“Trump is the ultimate pugilist and Comey is his punching bag, because Comey pricks away at Trump’s ego and paranoia,” mentioned Douglas Brinkley, NCS Presidential Historian and a historical past professor at Rice University. “History will look at them both with jaded eyes, over the fact that these two grown-ups put their country through so many nauseating news cycles of schoolyard one-upmanship.”
Here are the key moments that outline the long and winding Trump-Comey grudge:
Many Americans had most likely by no means heard of Jim Comey earlier than July 5, 2016.
That’s when – in the warmth of a presidential campaign, with the celebration conventions simply weeks away – Comey held an unprecedented 15-minute press convention explaining the outcomes of the FBI’s yearlong investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e mail server.
Comey blasted Clinton for being “extremely careless” with labeled emails and mentioned she “should have known” to not use a personal server. But proof of legal intent was so missing, he concluded, that “no reasonable prosecutor” would indict the Democratic nominee.
FBI clears Clinton in e mail probe
This was unheard of. Investigators hardly ever announce when an investigation doesn’t result in costs. And it’s even much less widespread for the FBI chief to publicly criticize a serious political determine. Comey mentioned he was offering this “unusual transparency” as a result of “the American people deserve those details, in a case of intense public interest.”
Both sides had been immediately enraged. Trump lashed out, saying it proved “the system is rigged.” And Clinton was furious that Comey veered from FBI norms of saying nothing publicly when an investigation ends with none costs.
For the subsequent few months, Trump and Clinton duked it out on the campaign path. Then, in late October, Comey came roaring back, telling Congress in a letter that the FBI was re-opening the Clinton probe after discovering new emails that belonged to her.
NCS reported at the time that Comey’s transfer, which was widely described as a probably game-changing “October surprise,” reinvigorated Trump’s flailing campaign. (Some nonpartisan polling consultants like Nate Silver later concluded that it most likely value Clinton the election.)
After the letter, Trump’s previous assaults predictably turned into reward. (He mentioned Comey had “a lot of guts.”) But that, too, was short-lived: One week later – a mere 48 hours earlier than Election Day – Comey mentioned the FBI was completed reviewing the new Clinton emails and reaffirmed its view that costs weren’t warranted.
Brian Fallon, the Clinton campaign’s prime spokesman, lately informed NCS’s Anderson Cooper that he still blames Comey for Trump’s 2016 victory however that he believes the costs towards him are a “bone-chilling abuse of power.”
“There’s plenty of us that, to this day, feel that, but for the letter that Jim Comey sent to the Hill inappropriately about her email server, 11 days prior to the election, that the election outcome might have gone differently,” Fallon mentioned. “There are plenty of people on our side of the aisle that are not fans of Jim Comey. And yet, none of that … justifies what has happened.”
After the 2016 election, Comey was confronted with even thornier political issues: The FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s suspicious ties to Russia, and how you can deal with a associated file with salacious allegations involving the president-elect.
Two weeks earlier than his swearing in, Trump was briefed at Trump Tower by a wider group of US intelligence leaders about their findings that Russia meddled to assist him win the election. Comey requested to talk alone with the president-elect about an much more delicate matter.
“As I spoke, I felt a strange out-of-body experience, as if I were watching myself speak to the new president about prostitutes in Russia,” Comey recalled in his 2018 e book, referring to a salacious and now-discredited allegation in the file. “Before I finished, Trump interrupted sharply, with a dismissive tone. He was eager to protest that the allegations weren’t true.”
Friend: Comey tried to mix in with curtains
Just two days after Trump was sworn into workplace, Comey had a fateful and unsolicited embrace in the White House with the president throughout a gathering of regulation enforcement to thank them for his or her work on the inauguration. The footage could be replayed time and again every time Comey was again in the information.
Trump noticed Comey and referred to as out for him. “He’s become more famous than me,” Trump mentioned as Comey walked throughout the room and awkwardly shook palms with Trump, who leaned in to embrace his FBI director.
Trump’s one-on-one meetings with Comey continued, a lot to the chagrin of the FBI director, who started documenting them by writing memos of the conversations afterward.
At a January 2017 dinner, Trump informed Comey, “I need loyalty. I expect loyalty,” Comey would later recall. The FBI director finally responded he would offer “honesty” to the president.
The subsequent month, after Trump’s nationwide safety adviser Michael Flynn resigned as a result of of the quickly escalating Russia scandal, Trump requested to talk alone with Comey following a counterterrorism briefing.
Trump mentioned of the FBI’s probe into Flynn: “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,” in keeping with particular counsel Mueller’s 2019 report.
In March, with the Russia allegations swirling in the press over the starting of Trump’s presidency, Comey had yet one more investigative bombshell to disclose publicly for the first time, at a House listening to about Russia’s election meddling.
“The FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts,” Comey mentioned on March 20, 2017.
Later that month, the president requested Comey in a telephone name to “lift the cloud” of the Russia investigation by saying Trump was not personally beneath investigation, Comey would recall. Comey responded that he would “see what we could do,” which he later defined was a method of “kind of getting off the phone.”
Instead, the cloud would solely develop bigger.
Several weeks later, Comey was on the different aspect of the nation talking to brokers in the Los Angeles area workplace on May 9, 2017, when the headline blared throughout a tv display screen in his eyesight: “COMEY FIRED.”
Back in Washington, a White House aide had delivered to FBI headquarters a letter from Trump, which acknowledged he was firing Comey primarily based on suggestions from prime Justice Department officers over his mishandling of the Clinton e mail probe.
But in the future later, Trump revealed his underlying motivation for the firing. He told Russian officials in the Oval Office that he “faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
The subsequent day, Trump went a step additional in an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, saying he was going to fireside Comey regardless of the DOJ suggestion. “When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.”
Trump additionally made a veiled threat to Comey on Twitter, writing “James Comey better hope that there are no “tapes” of our conversations earlier than he begins leaking to the press!”
Comey determined to share the memo of his Trump dialog associated to the Flynn investigation along with his good friend and lawyer Dan Richman, who shared its contents with the New York Times.
“Now that I was a private citizen, I could do something,” Comey wrote. One day after tales about the memo had been revealed, then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein introduced Mueller’s appointment.
Comey was invited to testify earlier than the Senate Intelligence Committee, practically one month after his firing. The June 8, 2017, listening to was a spectacle on Capitol Hill with anticipation hardly ever seen for congressional proceedings. The line to get into the listening to stretched round the Hart Senate Office Building. Hordes of reporters and photographers crowded in to witness Comey’s first public feedback since his firing. Some bars in Washington, DC, even opened early for Comey watch-parties.
Comey: I would like Americans to know this reality …
“I walked with the leaders of the committee down the long private hall behind the dais, turned left, and stepped into something surreal. I have seen lots of cameras in my day and heard my share of shutter clicks. Nothing compared to this scene,” Comey wrote in his e book about getting into the listening to.
During the listening to, Comey recalled his conversations with Trump and the circumstances surrounding his firing. “Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” he said of Trump’s risk. (There had been not tapes.)
“We truly did not know what he was going to say or how this hearing was going to go. In the end, 20 million Americans watched it live,” mentioned Rachel Cohen, a spokeswoman for Sen. Mark Warner, the prime Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “As long as I do this, I will probably never live through a crazier day.”
The Mueller probe was in full swing by June 2018, when the Justice Department inspector normal launched a bombshell 568-page report that dragged the nation’s consideration again to the Clinton e mail investigation.
The report was a devastating blow to Comey, highlighting his missteps and blunders that the watchdog mentioned had been “extraordinary and insubordinate.”
The report mentioned Comey improperly shut out his bosses from key choices throughout the Clinton probe after which flouted longstanding Justice Department guidelines on his personal, triggering main fallout that broken the FBI’s apolitical repute. This included Comey’s press convention about the Clinton case.
To Comey’s credit score, the watchdog additionally confirmed what he mentioned all alongside and knocked down an often-repeated Trump speaking level: The report discovered Comey’s actions throughout the Clinton probe weren’t motivated by political bias.
Still, Trump took a victory lap, tweeting at the time that, “Comey will now officially go down as the worst leader, by far, in the history of the FBI.”
Comey had been a personal citizen for greater than three years when he was referred to as again by Republicans to testify earlier than Congress on September 30, 2020.
The Senate Judiciary Committee needed to talk with Comey as half of its investigation into the FBI’s missteps acquiring a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant for then-Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
The listening to was half of an effort by congressional Republicans to discredit the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Trump and Russia — efforts which have continued into the second Trump administration with doc releases from FBI Director Kash Patel and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
“We’re trying to find out as the committee of oversight at the Department of Justice and the FBI how this happened and to make sure it never happens again,” mentioned then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican.
Comey appeared at the listening to remotely from his dwelling in Virginia on account of the Covid-19 pandemic, a truth that will develop into related in his indictment practically 5 years later as a result of the case towards Comey was prosecuted by the US lawyer’s workplace in the Eastern District of Virginia.
The former FBI director gave no opening assertion and defended the FBI’s Russia investigation in response to Republican criticism.
“In the main, it was done by the book, it was appropriate, and it was essential that it be done,” Comey mentioned.
But it was a line of questioning from Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, that will — years later — develop into the most consequential half of the listening to, forming the foundation of the allegations from last month’s indictment that he lied throughout the testimony.
Cruz raised Comey’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in early May 2017, one week earlier than he was fired, when he mentioned he had not been an nameless supply nor licensed another person at the FBI to be an nameless supply.
Comey responded to Cruz: “I can only speak to my testimony. I stand by what the testimony you summarized, that I gave in May, of 2017.”
That quick alternate — wherein Comey reaffirmed testimony from three years prior — types the foundation of the present costs towards him. The Justice Department alleged in its indictment that Comey “knew” throughout the 2020 listening to that he “in fact had authorized” an unnamed contact of his “to serve as an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation.”
The indictment doesn’t embrace any specifics about the leaks, past saying he had “authorized PERSON 3 to serve as an anonymous source in news reports.” NCS reported last month that “Person 3” gave the impression to be Richman, who was at one level throughout Comey’s tenure a particular authorities worker at the FBI.
After that Congressional listening to, and after Trump’s departure from the White House in 2021, Comey fell out of the nationwide dialog.
He drifted additional into the anti-Trump “resistance” by endorsing Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in 2024. And he posted messages supporting FBI rank-and-file after Trump returned to energy this yr and began purging officers.
It was apparent — from Trump’s campaign promises — that Comey would face intense scrutiny from the second Trump administration. But he created new problems for himself with a social media publish in May.
The bizarre post confirmed seashells at the seashore that spelled out “86 47,” probably referring to “86,” which suggests to get rid of one thing, and presumably referencing Trump, who’s at present the forty seventh US president.
Trump and his allies, together with right-wing shops like Fox News, went into overdrive to accuse Comey of making loss of life threats. He was even interviewed, voluntarily, just a few days later by US Secret Service brokers about the publish.
In response, Comey mentioned he randomly found the shells, didn’t know what it meant, however mentioned, “I oppose violence of any kind, so I took the post down.”
The debacle added kerosene to Comey’s long-running feud with Trump, however Comey didn’t face any costs for what Trump claimed was an assassination risk. The legal costs got here 4 months later, in September, in a case that stretched again to the place all of it started: Clinton and 2016.
“Trump is going for the jugular now with the charges against Comey,” mentioned Brinkley, the presidential historian. “In a modern context, looking back to the turn of the 20th century, this is something vastly more authoritarian than we’ve ever seen. But you do see it all the time in unstable countries.”