the nazis. why is that? that s the way president-elect trump characterized us after that 6th january briefing in his news conference on the 11th of january, which is what of course occasioned my call to him which i did more to defend the intelligence community. when was that? when did you all have this informal dinner? it was about three, four weeks ago. we clearly, and certainly jim understood, that there s going to be a firestorm in terms of reacting to the book. of course we re all having is a discussion about the book. at least for my part i vice president read it. all i m aware of is excerpts that have been reported in the media. we knew there would be high interest in it. you know, this is a period of
subsequent meeting. director clapper, there s so much in this book. it is such a commentary on president trump, on how james comey thinks president trump feels about the justice system. and there s all sorts of what some might call petty details in here. there s settling of scores. what do you think about james comey having written this book? well, i think above all is a truthful portrayal of how, you know, jim s observations, his feelings and what occurred. people can take issues with decisions jim made. but knowing jim as i do, whatever he did, he did it for what he felt were the best reasons and were in the best interest of the country. of course i m kind of comparing notes here because i have a book coming out next month which also
before, here s my partisan enemy, i m so glad it happen ed undercuts the notion that this was purely a bureaucratic examination over the candor of the inspector general and so forth. it s reminiscent of a year ago with the story that jim comby was fired when they found a memo on the hillary clinton investigation which was totally destroyed by trump himself a day or two later when he made it clear he had gotten the memo and was thinking about russia when he made the firing. all of that said, though, i want to add the voice to the substance behind what happened here. it is the case that the inspector general of the justice department michael horwitz is not at all a trump figure. he was appointed by president obama. he has a long history as an independent neutral career law
jurisdiction over witnesses who never worked there. when i counted up 24 witnesses that he would not be able to access were he to investigate it, only one conclusion. that s special counsel. who is on that list? everybody from jim comby to mccabe, sidney bloomenthal. anybody who no longer works for the department of justice or the fbi. state department employees were feeding information to fusion gps. anyone who is not an employee of doj horowitz doesn t have subpoena power for them. there was a report that mccabe was the leaker of the hillary clinton report s. that true? i don t know. you said about the fisa courts. specifically the process was abused. how? well, it was abused by a
you have to remember the sequence of events here. trump has been pressing jim comby, the head of the fbi, for expressions of loyalty that comey won t give him. trump asked him, let go of the investigation of mike flynn. comey won t commit to that. trump fires comey. and tells nbc that this was because of the russia investigation and comey s role in it. mccabe then becomes the acting director in comey s place. what does trump do early in this process? he asks mccabe who did you vote for? which is as close to asking him if he s going to be loyal as i can imagine. he says, now he doesn t remember it. but that s not much of a denial. the point is from the beginning there s been this effort to take an organization that prides itself above everything else, on being outside of politics. and make it as political as possible.