Discouraged on the picture of leadership, not just in our government, but across all different sectors, that they withdraw. I have been really worried about that and trying to make a small contribution to encourage them to remember how much we have in common. You thateople who tell we are irreparably polarized are lying to you because we have in common a set of core values. Whether you are republican or democrat, you believe in them, and they have to be front and center in our leaders, the rule of law, the truth. To encourage them to realize that and to get involved. The good news is they are getting involved in ways i never could have predicted, stepping forward, and i am optimistic that this phase of my life will go away. And you will not be wanting to interview me a year from now, and that will be a wonderful thing. Nicolle could you imagine working in the United States government again . Mr. Comey no. No. But i think there are lots of ways to be useful to your government and country without working in the government. I never thought i was coming back after 2005 and the struggle over surveillance and torture. I thought i was done. I did not apply to be fbi director. They called me and talked me to come in to be interviewed. They are not going to pick you anyway. [laughter] ie reason she said that was had given money to mccain and to romney. I give it in large part because i worried that unprincipled people might take over the republican party, which was a crazy worried to have, i know. [laughter] but she thought, there is no way yo they are picking you because you were a republican. Here i am. I think there is not another life there i could imagine, but i will look for ways to be useful to people. I bet that will be either in the University Setting or a nonprofit. Nicolle are you surprised based on the reaction to your decisionmaking in literally the days leading up to the 2016 election that you are now wielded as a bit of a cudgel against donald trump . Your attacks are amplified largely by the same kinds of people who were distraught by your actions in the Hillary Clinton email investigation . Is it a weird changing of constituencies to you . Mr. Comey it is weird, but it is understandable. It has not surprised me because the things we did, the things i am accountable for, confused a lot of people because we did not have the chance to explain it. And they saw it, as i would expect, through partisan lenses. Which side is the fbi on . The truth is we were not on anybodys side. But to people seeing the world that way, that is very confusing, and i get that. I have urged people who come up to me and say they hate me from this angle or this angle. Have you taken the time to try to understand why we made the decisions we made . Whether you agree or disagree, i think you will walk away convinced we were not trying to hurt or help clinton. They were not trying to hurt trump or help trump. They were stuck. Trying to make the best decisions in impossible, unprecedented situations. I get the confusion. I get why people who used to i dont know, some of it is really confusing because i think it doesnt make sense to me anymore in that the United States anymore, so i try not to use right and left. In the trumpist conspiracy, i was part of a complex conspiracy to stop donald trump t from being president. That is surprising to people on the clinton side who did not understand why we were not investigating people attached to the trump campaign. The answer is because we were not trying to have an impact. We were trying to make a decision that we were stuck with. Nicolle i think part of what makes this story confusing and ises it land in a weird way that people feel that if you knew that trump was going to be elected and the clare war on the fbi, an institution you revere, yo might you have made a different decision . Mr. Comey no, i would have made the same decision. I knew the decision we were making to Tell Congress that we were reopening an investigation that we said was finished, i knew that that decision was going to bring tremendous criticism. First of all, it would be really devastating for me personally, but bring criticism to the institution i led. And you cannot consider that. You have to ask, given this institution and its values, what is the right thing to do . Even if i had known someone had told me this is what the future will look like, i would not have made decisions differently. That would have been a deeply unprincipled thing to do. The fbi is flawed because it is a human organization, but it is at its core a principled organization and it would have been able trail to do it differently. It would have been able trial to do it differently. It would have been a betrayal to do it differently. Take us from that point forward. Mr. Comey that is an awesome set up. [laughter] nicolle it is saturday, right . Mr. Comey i want to be clear, i was never in Donald Trumps hotel suite. I have been in a Conference Room in trump tower. Nicolle and nobody tinkled. In your underemployed state, you might need some of these. Mr. Comey i am looking for it. [laughter] what was the question again . [laughter] nicolle you do what you do. You and Hillary Clinton can hash this out on the stage maybe next year. He wins, and from the moment he is elected, he declares war on the deep state. He is at war with the institutions you revere. The first target was the intelligence agencies which he compares to i believe nazi germany. And you are in this briefing where he is read into some of the most sensitive intel about what the former cia director called the political 9 11, the russian hack on our democracy. You write about it in a higher loyalty about your first meeting with donald trump and his crowd was something that for you conjures up memories of being around or investigating the mob. Mr. Comey yeah. And there were two first meetings for me with the president elect at the end of the first week of january. The first was in a Group Setting with the director of national intelligence, who was going to brief mr. Trump and his incoming team on the unanimous conclusions of the Intelligence Community that the russians massively interfered in our election with three goals damage democracy, hurt Hillary Clinton, and helped donald trump, in that order. That was not the one i was nervous about. Odd one was odd, and it was what they didnt ask. I dont remember anybody asking, so how do we stop this Going Forward . You are about to become president of the United States. I remember the focus being entirely on, it did not affect the vote, right . To which the Intelligence Leaders had to say, we dont do that work, we cant tell you that. We see no evidence the russians penetrated at the mechanism level, but we have not done an analysis on whether they made a material difference. I was a little distracted in that meeting, but it cap popping into my mind what you said, an eerie reminder of the costa nostra, which i spent time with as a prosecutor, this circle of assent around the boss. I kept pushing it away because it seemed overdramatic to me, and it kept coming back. The second meeting was me alone wherehe president elect we, the leaders of the Intelligence Community, decided somebody had to tell him that we had information that we had not cooperated. Corroborated. Because we had it and it came from a credible source, we needed him to know about this. I drew the short straw to tell the president elect about this allegation. Again, unverified, that there had been unusual sexual activities in russia that the russians had captured on tape to be able to use to coerce mr. Trump. And i was very nervous about that meeting because i know how people are and you know how people are. You tend to project onto others how you see the world, and i strongly suspected he would think that i was pulling a j, edgar hoover on him that i was, dangling that i was dangling leverage over him. How to do this and to do this without embarrassing him, without embarrassing me, without creating a war between him and the fbi, was front and center in my mind. Was. A little bit distracted i did it in that the private session and the meeting started to go off the rails very quickly. Nicolle like what . Mr. Comey i explained to him without using any of the terms you used, to explain to him the nature of this information, why we were telling him, and that provoked from him a long monologue that had nothing to do with what i had asked about, reviewing and then denying other allegations of Sexual Misconduct by women who had said he had assaulted them. Nicolle 19 of them. Mr. Comey i dont know if he went through 19, but he started going through one after another. There was a woman on a plane, there was one here, there was one here. I think he said, is there a guy i do i look like a guy who needs to go there . Which i thought was a rhetorical question. Nicolle glad he didnt ask me. [laughter] mr. Comey it started to get so defensive i worried it was going off the rails. So i pulled out, in a rhetorical sense [laughter] reducing the temperature by saying, look, we are not investigating you. Which was true. And we are not investigating this. We simply think you needed to know this because as i told you, the press is about to run with this. We do not keep secrets from the president of the United States. We need you to know this, but we are not investigating you. Nicolle that story is so important in my attempt to understand his war against law enforcement, and what would appear to be a war that the attorney general has cojoined against the russia investigation. I think it is important to remind people that when you went into brief an incoming president of this country, he asked you not one question that a russian attack on americas democracy, which should have been his now foremost concern, and he wanted you to reassure him he was not under investigation. Have either of those dynamics changed, and do either of those orientations from donald trump suggest that any of the investigations into him were misguided . Mr. Comey i cannot say whether in his head whether his thinking about that has changed. I have seen no indication that he has been able to let go of this nation that he sees the Intelligence Communitys finding on some attack on his legitimacy as president. And because he sees it that way, he must attack it and all those who are behind it. Nicolle are you surprised he has now got an ally in the effort to attack the origins of the investigation in william barr, who seems very comfortable meddling in the investigation . Mr. Comey i cant tell what is going on with the attorney general and that investigation. I was deeply concerned by some things he said early on about using the word spying and saying there are things that just dont make sense. At the time i said, that is not operate. Ros if there is a reason to look at something, you shut up and try to gather the facts and then share the facts with us. I still feel that way. I dont know what they are looking at so i am not in a position to say you shouldnt investigate. John durham is someone who has a strong professional reputation, someone i have for years thought was an excellent prosecutor. I cant tell what is going on with the attorney general. I would hope that mr. Durham would do Everything Possible to protect his reputation from being damaged by those in leadership and the most important way he can do that is give us transparency. I am not worried about a single thing in connection with any of the matters under investigation. Gather the facts, write a report, and share it with the American People. Please do that because all the stuff in the media with the attorney general saying, stuff doesnt jive, is an attack on the integrity of the institution, which he is supposed to be leading. The way to protect that is show the folks the facts, lay it out. Dont drip it out, dont leak it out, give it out. I am confident that when the American People see the picture of why we did what we did, their confidence in the institution will be maintained, restored, and protected. [applause] nicolle one of the things that leaked out about that investigation, and i wonder if you think mr. Durham has an obligation to clarify this, is it is criminal in nature now. What crimes could have been committed . Mr. Comey i dont know what to make of that. Anonymoussee an source commenting on a criminal investigation, i have to wonder a couple things. First, is it true at all . There is all kinds of stuff pushed out of the Justice Department that has turned out not to be true, so i dont know that. Wass also possible that it Something Like this. When the attorney general does an investigation and the ig has been looking at the fbis use of the fisa authorities, when they come across someone they think made a false statement or did not produce a document, they will refer that to the department of justice for an investigation. That is a criminal investigation. It is possible that was referred. I dont know. Here is what i do think. Again, this kind of news reporting is damaging to the credibility of the institution, from both directions. It allows people from one side to say bill barr has engaged in inappropriate efforts to distract from President Trumps problems, or carry water for President Trump. That is bad. It also comes from the other side, people saying, the department of justice is discovering the cia and fbi are corrupt. Both of those things are bad. If you are running the department of justice, you ought to stare at the policy that allows you to offer transparency to the American People when there is a strong public interest. We dont talk about pending investigations much, except when it matters most. This strikes me as an opportunity for the attorney general to say, this is what we are investigating. It is unfortunate somebody decided to talk to the media. Now clear it up and offer transparency. Olle i want to ask you bob mueller. Theinvestigation captured attention and the imagination across the ideological spectrum for very different reasons. He couldo thought if not answer exactly what russias role was in 2016, it did not matter what else happened, and wanted to know the extent of the term campaigns coordination with or awareness of the russian hack, as well as people who watched in real time Donald Trumps efforts to obstruct the investigation into the russian attack and his involvement. Do you think mueller answered either of those questions to the publics satisfaction . Mr. Comey yes and no. Yes in the sense that using really talented people he ran the nature and extent of the attack. He laid it out in detail, in indictments and in the report. He removed any possible doubt i keep hearing russian hoax. Let thoughtful person thinks there is a hoax around the russian attack . Nicolle i would not call them thoughtful, but donald trump and his 63 million followers got enough of a muddied picture from mueller. Maybe this is my bias. You were a rare example of a Government Official and leader who understood the importance of clear communicating. What you just said is only known to people who read the mueller report, which does not include the general public. Did mueller succeed if nobody knows what he did . Mr. Comey that is the no part of my answer. He did not succeed in his mission because there was inadequate transparency to the American People. On whose behalf he was investigating. And when i say inadequate, i mean both in the way in which his report was spun, massaged, and in my view, misconstrued by the attorney general, and the way in which it was physically presented made it impossible for the American People to have access to it. Greateller presented a report that is oldschool. But nobodyages long, has access to it, so nobody sees the work he did. And the American People dont know that he removed any possible fuzz on the notion of the russian attack, that he laid out an extraordinary series of acts by the president that would have resulted in anyone in this room already being in jail for obstruction of justice, special considerations for a president , i get that, but he laid that out in detail and nobody knows that. Because nobody knows that, i have not talked to bob about this, but i would guess he sees it differently. I think part of his mandate is to make sure the people who he represents have a reasonable understanding about what he found. Nicolle do you think history i think a lot of people [applause] feel that way. I feel that way having covered it and never giving over the exasperation that the things bob mueller did to protect the integrity of the investigation were lost on the people he was trying to protect, the subjects and targets of the investigation, and were missed by everyone else. Is impeachment the remedy for that . A public political process . Mr. Comey im not sure impeachment is the remedy for americanre as an community to understand what bob mueller found. But i do think, in part, it is incumbent upon us as citizens, even though it is 446 pages, you all should have gotten it and read it. Really, people are not going to do that. If you are in bob muellers shoes, someone i really admire, you have to take that into account. Just sending it to the attorney general and allowing him to mislead about it, to my mind, is not finishing the work. And i would have had a different view on how to testify about it. Reasonable people have criticized the way i offer transparency. Some say it is too much, some saying it should have a different content. I am not sure i am right, but i think a special prosecutor should do more to tell the people they are working for, here is what i found in the significance of it. Nicolle do you think mueller and people on his team expected that report to trigger and impeachment inquiry . Mr. Comey i think they do. They laid out the obstruction pattern for two reasons. First, for future prosecutors. They essentially say that, which is really interesting language. That is, we cant charge this person now. We wa