If he had the chance to go back in time, James Comey would change little about the way he handled the re-opening of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails in the final days of the 2016 election.
Yet the former FBI director is fearful of a second Donald Trump administration. “He means what he says,” Comey notes. “It is clear he intends to use his enforcement power to go after his enemies.”
And he misses a lot of things about this area, including Angelina’s pizzas, the Horseshoe Café in Southport, and sunsets at Compo Beach.
Those were some of the topics covered last night. A capacity Westport Library crowd listened raptly as TV personality Dave Briggs quizzed his former Westport neighbor about everything from the state of the world to his work with Bridgewater Associates (the hedge fund that brought him here in 2010), and then his work in Washington, where he commuted for 2 years while his daughters finished school, near their Greens Farms home.
Comey’s appearance was in part to promote his latest novel. “Westport,” a crime thriller about the world’s largest hedge fund, Saugatuck Associates (fictional, but sound familiar?).
But under Briggs’ skillfully engaging, yet probing, questioning, it was a chance to learn more about the man who, while he will go down in history as playing an outsized role in the election of the 44th president (and thus all that followed), is also someone whose love of a Viva Zapata margarita we all can relate to.
Briggs surprised Comey with a Mason jar filled with the drink. The two sipped them on stage, then got down to business.
James Comey (right) and Dave Briggs share a Viva Zapata margarita, on the Westport Library stage.
Westport, Comey said, is “strikingly beautiful, with great food and all kinds of cool stuff.”
Comey described some of the locales in “Westport,” including the opening scene on Seymour Rock, offshore. (He gave a shoutout to “06880” founder Dan Woog by name, for helping Comey’s friend Jack Menz do research about that site.)
Comey called his former Bridgewater colleagues “earnest people trying to make money, while being honest about their work.” But his job there as chief counsel was not fulfilling. He missed teaching and public service.
He left the hedge fund in 2013, to teach at Columbia University Law School. When Attorney General Eric Holder called to say President Obama was interested in him as a possible FBI director, Comey — a former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York and Deputy Attorney General in the George W. Bush administration, thought it would never happen.
He’d given money to the presidential campaigns of John McCain and Mitt Romney because, Comey said, he was “worried that unprincipled people would take over the Republican Party.”
His wife urged him to go the interview, even though Obama would not select him.
She was wrong. Obama wanted someone with integrity for the job, he told Comey. When the president offered him the post, he accepted.
One view of James Comey, at the Westport Library … (Photo/Dan Woog)
When Briggs addressed the elephant in the Library’s Trefz Forum — the controversy surrounding the Clinton e-mail investigation — the former FBI director addressed it directly.
He was fully aware of the potential effect, he said. But he also was committed to transparency — a core value he had learned to appreciate at Bridgewater.
In hindsight, he might have done a few smaller things differently, including the way he “articulated” certain ideas.
“I knew how bad this would be. I knew everyone would look back down at this fork in the road. But we had to make decision.”
Not revealing that the investigation had been reopened would have been an even worse course, Comey said.
“I couldn’t make my decision based solely on the (possible) election of a president.”
That decision, many political analysts believe, played a major role in swinging undecided voters away to Trump.
Nearly 8 years later, the former president is making a serious bid for re-election. The prospect alarms Comey. Trump does not share Comey’s respect for the rule of law.
Briggs — who said he is a life-long Republican — asked Comey, a Republican who is now unaffiliated, whether he could vote for “an 82-year-old who can barely get the ball to the plate.”
Comey disagreed with that characterization.
“We have 2 choices. I think Joe Biden is a person of integrity, especially compared with his opponent. He is a competent person, committed to the rule of law. He did not sack the US Capitol, or send the FBI against his enemies. He just won’t do that.
“You may not love our choices. But a vote for Cornel West or the guy with a brain worm is a vote for the guy who sent people to sack the Capitol.”
… and another. (Photo/Dan Woog)
Meanwhile, Comey said, Trump’s current trial is “a great civics lesson. This is how the rule of law works.” Like all other defendants, the former president “is made to sit at a table, as the jury decides his fate. I’m very proud of our judicial system.”
Comey downplayed as “highly unlikely” the chance that Trump will ever go to prison. Asked by Briggs about the chance for violence if he is sentenced to jail, Comey predicted “2” for group violence, “8 or 9” for isolated, individual acts.
His fervent supporters are “not jihadis looking to lay down their life for Donald Trump,” Comey said. “They are largely misguided people.”
Nonetheless, Comey is disturbed by statements Trump makes — like his recent assertion that the Biden administration wanted to kill him during an FBI search for unauthorized documents at Mar-a-Lago nearly 2 years ago.
The agency Comey formerly led quickly put out a statement strongly refuting the charge.
“Good for them,” Comey said.
Still, “in the past, news like what Trump said would have been on the front page. Now, when the potential next president says it, people just go, ‘meh.’ We can’t elect someone like that.
“But we may.”
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