going to be asking a question that you shouldn t be asking and that you didn t want them to hear and i ll tell you one other thing that was striking to me in this and we ve heard this before in all of our reporting is that comey wasn t asked at the very beginning what can we do about this russia hacking into our election. instead, it became a p.r. decision so it didn t look like it was illegitimate. if i m the fbi director he wasn t asked by the president yeah, he wasn t asked by the president. what we already know is that the president has been more concerned with how the russian medaling impacted the outcome of the election and the legitimacy of his president. i agree with that. the other thing that s really striking and he did this a little bit in his testimony before congress, but much more so in this interview and clearly in the book is he sort of his
on the defense appropriations committee. we had a lot of classified briefings. mr. clapper did tell the senate but the public not everybody is infallible here. clearly been more focused on how it impacted his presidency more than anything. let me say this. he is the head of the fbi. for him to say they might have something on the president, the very, very serious statement. i would agree. everybody would agree on that. if people believed james comey tomorrow, the stock market will drop 500 points. it s not going to. the reason why it s not, it goes back to my point earlier. he is a political figure. he is mad, disgruntled employee who was fired and who by the way had a chance to bow out in january. but he hung on until he was fired. and the point he is doesn t have credibility. it s not but the first in this interview, though, the first thing he said, the president said i understand you ve been at it a while.
veracity and truthfulness. he s been truthful throughout this process when he was fbi director and investigating hillary clinton. as painful as it was for me to hear this press conference in july, it was truthful. let me just i don t mean to interrupt but this is only the first version of comey s own truth. you can tell from the interview and book you can tell he s wrestling and making decisions. and the polls and the decision and the fbi and himself and the thing where you admit and i think you re being a little generous with regard to
and he has to assess credibility of witness. witness one, comey. witness two, president, and you have these contemporaneous memos, then i think what we saw here from comey was a compelling state of mind what was going on which was to him concerning. and i think that s going to be important to mueller s evaluation of who is telling the truth about these situations that we ve been talking about. but couldn t you argue also that he was a fired spurned employee which is what motivated him right now excuse me, jack just one second. not at the time he wrote the memos. i would say mr. comey, you said in this interview tonight that you thought the president was a liar. the very first meeting. why didn t you quit right then? if you re such a high integrity, higher qualiing or whatever the name of your book is, which i probably won t read. oh you should read it. there is some stuff you might be able to read. we ll have a book club.
and in this interview and in this book compared to the president who has just made up a fantasy about the tapes in the oval office. there is just not i mean, his consistency in his story, which is most important in the way is impressive. his accounts were corroborated by the first intel briefing with the president james clapper who is also in the room said the same thing but jeffrey toobin, i know that, you know, we can talk about another washington poll who wants to make money off a book but keep in mind just he is saying that there is a possibility that russia, a foreign adversary has compromising information on him. is that not the bigger topic? well, you know, i think, you know, you re making a very valid point which is there is a public interest in saying what james comey is saying and saying it right now.