Tens of millions of Americans believe that former FBI Director should have been held accountable for the “Trump-Russia” collusion hoax, but he’s still free to give his own talking points in friendly interviews with left-wing media.
Comey reacted to the release of the Durham report Tuesday morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” saying there is “nothing new” in the report and continued to deny the FBI had any political motive in its Trump investigations.
He then claimed that former President Donald Trump, not him and an out-of-control agency he used to lead, is an “existential threat to the rule of law.”
Here’s a transcript of the short interview segment (see video below):
JAMES COMEY: [GOP calls to defund the FBI are] just a continuing series of attacks on the rule of law. They’re taking a flame thrower to the FBI and DOJ, because it’s a threat.
MSNBC HOST: Do you see it as a real threat or just rhetoric?
COMEY: I think it is a rhetoric-based threat. But it also undermines the confidence of a lot of people in law enforcement, which matters.
MSNBC HOST: So as for the Durham report, 300 pages, four years investigating the investigators. One of the things that did come out of it was that procedures, regular FBI procedures were ignored, that steps were missed along the way in this investigation. Director Wray said, “Yeah, we acknowledged that a couple years ago, and we’ve changed all that. Those changes are already in place.”
Do you acknowledge, perhaps, some mistakes were made along the way?
COMEY: Oh, definitely. They were found four years ago by the inspector general. There is nothing new in this new document.
MSNBC HOST: What were some of the mistakes from your point of view?
COMEY: Oh, the FBI didn’t communicate clearly the status of certain sources. They didn’t double-check certain information before putting it in a court application for a foreign intelligence wiretap, and others.
MSNBC HOST: Do you believe now, as politicians are calling for the defunding of the FBI, that’s been corrected and now the procedures are in place to avoid those mistakes in the future?
COMEY: I think so. But in complex investigations, there’s always going to be mistakes. It doesn’t mean the FBI isn’t competent, honest, and independent.
MSNBC HOST TWO: With distance from your time there with that investigation and everything in the 2016 election, are there things you wish you had done differently?
COMEY: Plenty. I mean, plenty of small things. In the main, I think the FBI did it in the right way during a very difficult time in 2016.
MSNBC HOST TWO: The attacks have obviously been unrelenting from former President Trump, who is very much back on the political scene again. He is, at least for the moment, the favorite to be the Republican nominee. he ahs been echoed by others in his party, as well. What is your sense, as you talk to your former colleagues in the bureau, as to the impact on morale, recruitment, or their ability to get the job done?
COMEY: It’s a hard time because a lot of people have internalized the lies they’ve been told. After the search of Mar-a-Lago, there were days of lies about the FBI acting as some kind of “thug army.” And that hurts because the FBI needs to knock on doors and get people’s help. It needs to be able to stand up in a courtroom and say, “I saw this thing,” and not be seen as a political actor. They are not political actors, but the lies have an impact.
MSNBC HOST: The FBI, of course, was exercising a legal search warrant at Mar-a-lago. So if Donald Trump were re-elected, as someone who worked for and alongside the man, what is your sense of the potential danger of his being in the White House again, if you see it as a danger?
COMEY: I think he poses a near-existential threat to the rule of law. He will do everything he can in a new term to try to tear down the institutions that he sees as threats and to dismantle them and the people who occupy them, the a-political people who occupy by them. So there is a lot on the ballot in 2024 if he is a candidate, but the rule of law, in my view, is at the top of the list.
WATCH:
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