James Comey: We Can't Trust the DOJ

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Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller. A quick scheduling note tomorrow. We're going to do something a little different. We're going to be live with one of your favorites at 3 p.m. in the east on Substack and YouTube. And so as a result of that for the office, audio-only listeners, pod might come out a little late. But if you're desperate to have me on your usual 4 o'clock dog walk or whatever,

come hang out live on Substack or YouTube. And we're going to have a good time. And look forward to seeing some of you all there. Up next, I'm super excited for our guests today because I'm pissed at these guys. I'm fucking pissed at these guys. And they're coming at him over. the stupidest thing imaginable. And he is a better man than I, and he's in the middle of two indictments. So there's some limitations where he can talk about. But man, I do think that we're

going to have a lot of other interesting material to mine in addition to his case. And so I'm so happy to welcome back to the show, the former director of the FBI from 2013 to 2017. He's also a federal prosecutor in New York. He also has got a new legal thriller. The latest installment in the series is out today. It's called Red Verdict. And this time his protagonist, Nora Carlton, is looking into some Russian counterintelligence. That's interesting. We're going to talk about that in a second.

But there's some other news going on with you, I think. How you doing, Jim? I've heard that. I've read that. I've read that, yeah. Thanks for having me on to. I love to. I watched you with Nicole Wallace.

So I'm aware that you can't talk about an ongoing case. So we're aligned on that. And I do have to admit that Nicole really kind of mugged me by telling you at the start that she finished your book before the interview. I cannot say that. I cannot say the same. So, kudos to Nicole. Appreciate your candor.

Radical candor is important on a podcast. I want to ask this about the case, which is not any specifics about your defense, but just when you heard about it, when you heard that they were indicting a second time over the shells. I'm wondering, like, what your emotions were, what the reaction was. Is there a sense of fear, annoyance? Were you laughing at them because of the absurdity? resolve, you know, talk to me about the interior life of James Comey.

Sort of resignation, because I had heard noise from different media sources had made inquiries of my lawyers, so I knew something was cooking. And so I expected something, if not this, I thought it would be something else. So resignation, a little bit of surprise that is really going to happen. We're really going to do this. But those are the two, those are my two reactions. Your video in response to it focused on kind of in spite of that, in spite of like the surprise about the absurdity and the frustration, like the importance of fighting back against it. And I'm wondering like, you know, there's kind of the interior James Comey and like what you feel like you want people to know.

And I'm wondering kind of where your mind is on that now, you know, a few days, weeks afterwards. I think it's really important that people not become numb to this. not accept this as just another one of those Trumpian excesses we have to deal with. This is really, really bad. And the danger, even for me, is it happens enough times that it becomes a little bit of background noise. Oh, oh, James Comey was indicted again. Everybody assumes that there's nothing to it, whatever it is, but we sort of move past it, and it's really important that we don't.

And so I can't talk about a particular case, but I can, and hope everybody else does, talk about the danger inherent in accepting that that. That's how the Department of Justice should work. I hear you on the not being numb. And I feel that and it's important. And obviously we think about that a lot at the bulwark, how to kind of talk about it and stark terms and take it seriously. I also have the personal impulse, though, to want to point and laugh at them.

I mean, it is serious business, obviously. I mean, you have a team of lawyers. You're under indictment. Like, it's not a joke. But it also kind of is a joke. I don't know. I mean, is there a sense of value at mocking, do you think? Or is that the wrong impulse? Yeah, maybe. I mean, I'm a, I'm a bit of a mocker. And so I'm attracted to that approach to things. But in this case, because I have such respect for both the concept and the reality of an independent judiciary, I want to make sure that judges know that I take it seriously because I take their role so seriously.

So I worry that if I tried to be funny with it, John Stewart wanted me to come. on his program. One of the reasons I didn't was I don't want to joke about it because I don't want to send a message that we misunderstood as somehow disrespecting the process. So you're not going to go along with me and my idea that the Gen Alpha kind of replaced 6-7 with 8-6-4-7. Like you don't, you don't think that's a good idea. I'll let you handle that when I'm not on. It's just an idea. I'm just spitballing. I'm just throwing it out there. It's like 8-6-4-7. You know, like do it with a little, throw a little j-jouge on him. I get it, though. One last joking question.

It's been in a lot of investigation. So I guess it's maybe not a joke. You're a prosecutor. You're at the FBI. Everything came across your desk. Was there ever a seashell case before? Is that something that you ever encountered, a case where seashells played the key evidentiary role?

No, this is my first experience with a sheesh. It's not easy to say. A sea shell prosecution. How did that thing go? You said it's a kid? Seashels on the seashore. There's something like that. Right. Sally sells sea shells on the seashore.

The seashore. Yeah. She just, Sally never got indicted. I don't believe Sally was ever indicted. All right. Well, I think that maybe a good way to talk about this then with the context of my stated view on this podcast a million times. This is a ridiculous prosecution of you.

I guess one more thing about this is that even Jonathan Turley said it's ridiculous. I mean, he's been a huge defender of the Trump in like every absurd thing. Trump said legally, you said on the cold show that made you a little nervous that Turley came to your friends. And so I was just wondering why. Why does that make you nervous? Is it just kind of like when Megyn Kelly retweets me, that makes me a little nervous that my take is off? Is it just that sort of, that sort of nervousness? That's probably exactly what it is. You wonder, am I asleep? Am I having a Jonathan Turley dream or something? Or a Megyn Kelly dream. Yeah. Yeah, she retweeted my take on the Iran war this morning. And I was like, hmm.

That's concerning. So I guess maybe we contextualize it in a way by talking about what else they're doing in some of the other cases. You know, for example, there's one in particular that really grinds my gears. And that is there's a report that starting in April, 26, Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, is investigating former right-house aide Bill Cassidy Hutchison for a potential perjury regarding a 2022 testimony. It's kind of news to me. This administration is so, you know, minding their peas and cues. I'm not lying in testimony before Congress. I think that would be news to some of the administration officials. But, you know, in this case, not to minimize your ability, you know, how annoying it is for you

have to get lawyers and the impact of your family, which we discussed last time you're on. I know that's very serious. But Bill Cassidy Hutchison was like a young assistant. Like the idea of having to get attorneys and have this on your record and it's hard to get other jobs. you know, somebody's young, it's beginning of their career. I just think it's particularly pernicious. I'm just wondering if you had any thoughts about that or the other kind of revenge-style cases that they're pursuing.

Yeah, I do. I mean, there's a famous speech in the circles in which I worked by Robert Jackson, who was the Attorney General in 1940, and he called together all the federal prosecutors who were serving under Franklin Roosevelt to the Great Hall, to Department of Justice, to sort of tell them to get their act together. and act in a non-political way.

He was really worried about them responding to political imperatives. And one of the things he said is a prosecutor can do great good in society, but a prosecutor is at his most dangerous, where instead of investigating crimes, he picks a person and then seeks to find a crime to pin to that person. He said it more eloquently than I can. But that's what you see happening with people like Ms. Hutchinson, who you're right, is far less able, probably emotionally,

financially, and other ways to stand up for herself than I am. And it's intended to send a message that, it's the reason that the mob tried to whack witnesses and why the witness protection program was the most important thing we ever developed in this country in the battle against Cozanostra because they couldn't threaten people who were willing to tell the truth. That's what's going on, is sending a message trying to scare people who've spoken out. I mean, John Brennan is a great example, but even someone like Bill Cassidy Hutchinson is another example. Speaking about the way that they're using the government for intimidation, I wanted to ask you about one other case.

Louise Lucas, the state senator from Virginia, who was spearheading the Virginia redistricting effort that just got overturned. Her office in Portsmouth was raided by the DOJ. And one thing about that rate struck me is that a Fox News camera was on the scene. And the reporter there, I believe, was from their London Bureau. So it sure seems like they were tipped off. So I was wondering, given that, what you thought about that tactic, obviously given, you know, the caveat that, you know, people have sources, that you had to navigate that as director of the FBI, you know, when it comes to, you know, a free media covering your investigations, like even still pretty noteworthy that it was Fox News that was on the scene. I'm quite certain that they don't have an office there in Virginia Beach. Yeah, totally inappropriate.

The search warrants are issued under seal to safeguard law enforcement, but also to protect the subjects of investigations. So they're not smeared by a public shaming. So it's totally inappropriate. But your questions and my questions about that surge highlight the danger in the way the Trump administration is using the Department of Justice. We just can't trust it. The case involving the state senator may be legit. But given the track record, reasonable people should have questions about. about whether it is, and that's a terrible place for the Department of Justice to be.

I say this is often, there's a reason we want all of our statues of Lady Justice to have a blindfold, because we don't want Lady Justice peeking out to see what color are the hats of the people who are coming up to the courthouse, whose team are they on? And they have ripped the blindfold off, certainly the Department of Justice has. Yeah, to that point, we don't need to go through all these one by one, but I just made a little list here. I mean, Tiss James, obviously, they indicted six members of Congress. They're investigating over the video, you know, including Mark Kelly. John Bolton was indicted on 18 charges. He was a never Trump or a critic. They're investigating Jerome Powell. They were investigating Adam Schiff. They said they're

investigating Obama and Walls and Frye, Jacob Frey. I mean, it's just hard to look at that and see anything other than than a complete politicization of the department. Yeah, they're deploying process as a punishment, that their way of sending messages, both to the individual involved and to other would-be truth-tellers, right? The next Fed chair ought to know what happened to Jerome Powell. Senators who are thinking about speaking out on a particular issue better understand what happened to the others. So it's about a message, but it's the process. They don't expect to charge or convict the chair of the Federal Reserve. They don't care. When they come after a John Brennan, they don't care whether John Brennan.

gets convicted, or in my case, they don't care in the Eastern District of Virginia case, whether it's thrown out, because then they can blame liberal judges, right? It was an Obama judge. It was some nonsense. The process is their weapon. Isn't it a little dispiriting? And you write in the book, in the, in the dedication, and the acknowledgments, and you've spoken a lot about, you know, the good men and women in the DOJ and in the FBI who are trying their best, doing the right thing. On the other hand of that, it's like there are people that are involved in these investigations or people that are writing these indictments that has to be a little bit dispiriting to think about like the number of people

that are working for the government that are involved in, say, an absurd investigation into a senator over a video where they're expressing their free speech rights. I mean, that's disheartening, no? It is dispiriting, but then you dig into a lot of the cases and you find, well, as in my case, in Virginia, the career people refused. sacrifice their own jobs, their own livelihoods, because they refuse to be part of it. And so they have to bring in someone who's totally unqualified, who engages in misconduct before the grand jury. And to handle it, they bring in two guys from North Carolina

who both quit the government after the thing is dismissed. And so when you look at them closely, yeah, I wish there were nobody who would do these cases involving the six members of Congress who spoke a truism about not following illegal orders or these other cases. but if you look closely, you see something that actually is inspiring. Most, almost all, I would say it's more than most. People are standing up saying, no, I'm not going to do it. And maybe their motivations are noble. Maybe some of them know that there's going to be accountability.

They'll be bar reviews. They'll be bar. People's tickets will be at risk for the continued practice a law after the Trump administration, which is going to end in 2.005 years. Do you believe that? Like, you think that there'll be accountability for people in the Trump administration? I do. And I think you saw it after Nixon resigned.

There was a tremendous amount of movement in the bar to investigate and punish lawyers who had engaged in unlawful, unethical conduct. It's going to have to be part of the rebuilding. I'm not a big fan of let's prosecute everybody, but there should be some form of accountability. I know one of them was your son-in-law, but you kind of mentioned all those people that quit over your first investigation. And a bunch of other people have quit throughout the Department of Justice and the FBI. have you heard from any of those people? Do you just wonder what you think about and you think about the kind of careers

that were sacrificed over this? It's so painful. I've heard from a lot of them. I've tried to help some of them. I have more money than most of them, and so I've tried to help them financially until they're able to get a job. You saw there was an agent

whose wife was dying of cancer, and they fired him anyway. I mean, these are people who are living paycheck to paycheck. They get a decent paycheck of the FBI, but they are not in a position where if they're fired, then go without work for three months while they take care of a dying spouse. And so, yeah, I mean, I'm just one of many.

I mean, there's a big network of people that have reached out to help agents and prosecutors who've either been fired or have felt they were duty-bound to quit. Well, I know that some of them have good reason to not want to publicize themselves and good reason to not want to come on the chief podcast of the Never Trump movement. The Trump Darrangement Syndrome podcast, maybe is not that helpful.

But in those cases, if there are people that do want to talk or do, that we can help or even if there's like an anonymous effort to organize, I know that we have a lot of people that would like to help the folks who have been pushed out by this. To that point, I was pretty struck by something that Todd Blanche said at CPAC. Did you ever speak at any political functions when you're the director of the FBI? Just ever speaking of any conventions? Never. No.

Really important to stay away from them. So, like, I don't know, so you're never invited by, like, somebody that has, like, a partisan convention and multiple allegations of sexual assault against them to speak, and then you didn't go on stage and then just laugh while your FBI director. That wasn't something that happened with you. That didn't. That didn't come up.

That's interesting. Well, Todd Blanche was at CPAC, and I want to play a little audio of what he said about those people that have been purged that you were just talking about and that you dedicated your book to. The other things that are happening, there is not a single man or woman at the Department of Justice who had anything to do with those prosecutions. How many have been canned? Over 200. Director Kash Patel has cleaned house there too.

There isn't a single man or woman with a gun, federal agent, still in that organization that had anything to do with the prosecution of President Trump. That is pretty wild, isn't it? Yeah. I don't know why a deputy attorney general would ever say such a thing. And I hope, as I hope for my daughter, I hope all of them continue to pursue lawsuits because they're all going to be vindicated if they can get through the court process because you can't fire a career agent, a career Marine, a career prosecutor, except for cause. And it's really important.

It's why I'm so proud of my daughter for continuing to pursue her case here in New York to establish that that the, that the daughter. The Deputy Attorney General is bragging about getting rid of all these people, who's bragging about conduct that is unlawful. Is there anything else you want to say about your daughter's lawsuit? I know we have mentioned it on the podcast, but the craziest thing to me about your daughter's dismissal is that she was prosecuting sex crimes, child sex crimes, among other things.

And like the administration comes in ostensibly, you know, with the mandate to go after the network of sex criminals that are out there in the world. And that was the Q-Anon theory. that there was a big network of sex criminals being protected by the elites. And to the extent that there were sex criminals, that was your daughter that was going after them, and then they fired her for having the last name James Comey.

It's totally outrageous. I'm also happy that she's suing them. I just wonder if you had any other observations about that. No, I'm sure it's a burden for her, but that's exactly who she was. She indicted Epstein. She indicted Ghislaine Maxwell. She tried Pete Diddy.

This is her life in trying to help the victims of sex crimes and sex trafficking. And so it's just another of the obscenities that she was fired for no reason. But again, they've been unable to offer a reason except the president's authority under Article 2 of the Constitution, which does not exist.

And so it's really important. She's got another job because she had to to support her family, but she will continue the lawsuit I'm confident to try and establish. She just can't do that. And to your point, I just going back to the Todd Blanche conversation

with Matt Schlapp there, I don't know how else to explain. Like, he's at a partisan event, and he says the stated reason for the canning, to use matchlap's phrase, of all of these career officials of the OJ and FBI, was that they were involved in an investigation of the current president. Like, he said it. Like, that was the reason. He doesn't say that there was cause.

He says that they did it for that reason. So, I mean, it seems like a pretty open and shut case to me. Yep. So it strikes me as improper. and yeah so I don't know what else say about it it's one of those things that almost takes your breath away yeah you know I think you said of Nicole that struck me was just thinking about the people that are still working there and and you said that a lot of them have go bags I guess to be prepared for being fired yes because they know when you've seen it happen to their colleagues that they could be walked out at any moment

and so you want to make sure you have your personal items anything that you're entitled to keep pictures of your children, your children's artwork, that you have stuff organized that you want to take. And so I just know from talking to a lot of them, think about it that way. That feels like East German, you know, like the idea that you're working in the federal government, that you're trying to, you know, serve the country. That's what these people are doing. They're trying to serve the country. A lot of them could get more high-paying jobs, you'd assume, in the private sector.

And they're there doing it, and they're worried that they might be targeted. unfairly because of some revenge campaign. And so they've got to be prepared to grab their personal effects. It feels maybe overstayed to say this. But it doesn't feel like the type of behavior that you would have among public servants in a free country. Certainly not in an organization where the employees could be confident that the rule of law would be abided. And so they just can't have that confidence because you could be marched out, not shot, thank God, but marched out with no notice, with no cause. I guess that's a good caveat.

We're not quite to East Germany yet. One of your successors, I guess I did not realize this until I saw some of the current FBI director's branded merch. Did you have any branded merch when you were in there? I had a challenge coin that had my name on it. It said James Comey. James Comey and then director. So it was about this big. And that's what I would give out to visitors or police chiefs that I visited with. So not a whiskey bottle, but okay, something.

Well, and his brand of merchant had number nine. And I guess it just didn't occur to me. There have only been nine directors of the FBI. It made me kind of sad, actually, that Cash was one of the nine when I learned that. There's been a bunch of stories in the Atlantic about him recently and elsewhere, among them that he was missing from meetings because he was hung over, allegedly, that he was flying using the plane. Now, we should say that as FBI director, he'd have to use the plane, I guess, but he was using it to fly to see his girlfriends' concerts at a regional wrestling match. He's polygraphing the staff.

I'm wondering if you had any reaction to any of those stories. Yeah, unfamiliar to me. One of the strictest rules in the FBI would be you can't consume alcohol on FBI premises or vehicles or airplane. The day I was fired, I flew home. And it occurred to me that I was no longer employee so I could drink some Pinot Noir that someone had given me in California. So I opened a bottle of wine on the plane and drank, not all of it, but part of it in a paper coffee cup, because I was allowed to because I was no longer the director of the FBI. And so that's how tight it is.

And so the rest of it is just unfamiliar to me. And yeah, very, very foreign. And the thing about the polygraphs is it's really important you not send a chilling message through your staff because you need them to tell you the truth. What you might be missing, what you might not be seeing, what you should hesitate before you speak about. and if they're afraid of you, they're not going to give you the truth. And that, even if you have no other care for them, that gets in your way of being effective.

But no swag that I remember. No swag that I recall other than the challenge coins. I'm not a Pino-N-O-R, man. But, you know, whatever floated your boat in that moment, you deserved whatever. It's all I had. That's all you had. I mean, that's pretty striking.

And it's obvious. I mean, it makes sense, obviously. It's just like, as FBI director, you don't know when an emergency. might come up. I'm for drinking. I want everybody to have a good time. And, you know, if, like, your job allows for it and your responsibilities allow for it. But, like, as FBI director, and there's, I assume, the rules about not drinking on, on property, you know, are there for standards reasons of the FBI, but just as a broader part about responsibility, like, you need to be

out on your game if something comes up. Yes. 24 hours a day. It's the reason that the FBI director gets no vacation because the idea is you're on all the time. And so I could never be intoxicated. I remember I went to a wedding in Iowa of one of my wife's family members. And I went to the wedding reception and I'm sure I had a drink or two. But it was really important that I not be intoxicated. So I went back to my room early, left my wife to party with the relatives. She came home and she may have had more glasses than I had. And then she, so she accidentally placed something on top of an emergency button that the security team had placed in the room.

And so within 10 seconds, there was a pounding on the door. And she opened the door and there were stacks of agents in their underwear down each side of the hall with their weapons demanding to see me. And she said, he's fine. And they said, man, we need to see the director. And she said, okay. She let one of the agents step in and see me sleeping. I slept through the whole thing, believe it or not, and was not drunk, but slept through the whole thing.

So to my mind, when I heard stories about it, whether they're true or not, I don't know, of their agents being unable to reach the director remind me of that story. They found it on the door and what needed to see the director. And, of course, there I was, not intoxicated, but asleep. Regardless of whether those stories are true. And I trust these reporters a lot at the Atlantic. and they're very, you know, they're good at what they do. And they're not the types of people to make unfounded accusations. But, you know, we'll see.

I guess they're being sued by the administration. The thought that those stories are out there, the public, what we've seen from the public behavior of cash, and we've seen them drinking at the hockey championship, combined with what you know about the people have been purged. And apparently we've purged some people with expertise in Iran, among other things. How worried are you for our safety in the country right now when you think about that? It's a reasonable and serious worry because the organization has been demoralized, shrunken, deployed in ways that are hard to understand from the outside, moving people to immigration work or other work away from their core responsibility. What the FBI does that no one else can do is counterterrorism and counterintelligence.

So counterterrorism is obvious, but counterintelligence, which is actually what the newest book is about, is that to meet the threat from Iran, from Russia, from China, requires sustained effort by highly trained people who have the sources, who have the knowledge to meet that threat and defeat it. And the idea that they are afraid of being polygraphed, afraid of being walked out, moved over to do nighttime immigration, car stops around the country, makes no sense. sense to me at all. And maybe we'll be fine. And actually, that would be the best of all outcomes. If nothing terrible happens, we don't have to have another commission to look back on this moment. But I suspect if we, God forbid, we do and look back on this moment, we'll see probably things I haven't even mentioned, but lots and lots of problems with the way in which the mission is being addressed that trace to the leadership. I always say people bring this up on other side and people challenge me on this. I'm like, you know, maybe, yeah, maybe nothing will happen. I mean,

you can get hammered and drive your car home from a party and get home safe. And like, does that mean that that was okay then to go do another time and another time? You know what I mean? Like, just because you avoid a risk doesn't mean that you haven't created a necessary risk. And I guess, and maybe even in the context of the book, you can tell. But for those of us who aren't in law enforcement have never been, like talk about what some of those people would do. Like, what does an Iran, like, counterintelligence person at the FBI, you know, who has expertise and can speak Farsi or whatever? Like, what kind of work are they doing day to day?

Well, most of all, they're trying to understand. So what are the Iranians doing here in the United States? That is, what are they doing in the cyber vector? What institutions are they trying to break into? What infrastructure are they trying to damage? What are they doing in terms of human sources and human assets? Who's working with them? where are the Hezbollah connections?

Are there people lying in wait looking to do bad things to us? How do I find those people? And then how do we defeat that threat? That is, can we flip some of those people? Because we're Farsi speakers and develop relationships. Can we turn them? Or do we need to incapacitate them in some way

by using the criminal justice system? Or if we can't, do we kick them out of the country? And it's a constant battle against a worthy adversary, and I don't mean in a moral sense, but a very difficult adversary, as are the Russians, as are the Chinese.

And so a huge part of the FBI is this work to try and figure out, so what are these adversary nations doing? Where are they? What are they looking at? And how do we get a grip on it? And then how do we disrupt it? And so it requires an ability to use technical assets, to use human sources of all kinds,

to think well, but also to have deep expertise, because you can't pick up a bank robbery case file and go work the bank robbery. Because you don't need to know how Chase works to be able to do a bank robbery. But if you're going to defeat the threats from specific adversaries, you need very deep knowledge to be effective. And then just to think about the, like what the director's role is again in that case, just trying to wrap my head around what allegedly cash is supposed to be doing. So one of those people that came to you in a situation

like that, right, where they're like, okay, we've identified a potential threat in the country. We're trying to figure out what can be done. Can we flip the person? Can we incapacist? them, all the options we need to deport them, all those options you sent? Like, is that stuff that's coming across your task and you're, like, discussing it with the agents or that there's middle management? Like, what kind of stuff is getting to the director? Right. Well, thank goodness for the current leadership that it's not the director's job to run these investigations. The director's job is to choose a senior leadership of the organization, set the priorities for the organization, represent the organization, to Congress, to the American people, to all kinds of other outside constituencies.

and to make sure that the organization is running in a way that is consistent with the objectives and that is effective. And so the way one of the ways in which you do that is you're constantly trying to find out, so how are we doing? What are the key things that we're doing? Who's doing them? What are the problems I should know about? You once had a boss who said, if you're going to run a chain of restaurants, you have to

taste the soup occasionally to be effective. You're not in the kitchen, but you ought to every so often walk in a, a restaurant taste the soup. And so a big part of the director's job is tasting the soup. Thank goodness we don't depend upon the director to make the calls about how do we flip someone, how do we deter them? But that director picks the people. But there have to be some high-level calls that go to the director, no? Well, yeah. And the director is responsible for, for example, approving foreign intelligence surveillance that the director, personal involvement by the director.

Obviously, the director is also interacting on very significant matters with the president and the National Security Council. I'm not even sure there is a National Security Council in the Trump administration. But knowing what's going on in order to solve problems with those people or to tell them what's going on so they can do their jobs. It's pretty alarming to think about. I think the soup that Cash is testing is going around and seeing if anyone ever said anything mean about him. I think that's most of the soup that he's testing. So we'll see how that turns out. You mentioned that we don't like the National Security Advisor, National Security Council.

We don't even know what we had it. Another kind of weird thing that happened relatively recently was there was a raid in Georgia on a election center where there are ballots looking into the 2020 election nonsense. But Tulsi Gabbard was there, the director of national intelligence. That struck me as quite strange, but I don't know. Did you ever have the director of national intelligence on raids? Or like, is there any plausible reason why that would have been usual? No, I served under Jim Clapper and Dan Coates, and I can't imagine a reason they would ever be at a search warrant. Or closely involved in any criminal activity, any criminal investigative activity.

No. And so your encounter with the DNI would be what? Just like. Well, the DNI is an important boss of the FBI because the FBI is a major member of the U.S. intelligence community. And so a big part of the FBI's budget comes to the national intelligence budget and is owned, to use a budgetary term, by the Director of National Intelligence. And so a big part of what we would do is make sure the Director of National Intelligence knew how we were complying with the national intelligence requirements. Are we finding out the stuff that our government needs to know? And so I would meet with the DNI on a regular basis to talk about budget and how we're doing against the requirements he's put out.

Yeah, so from that context, it is pretty concerning that Tulsi Gabbard would be like there. She seems to have been totally cut out of the priorities. And you have the cash. I'm just like imagining if this worked as a normal administration, as you just laid out, you would have cash going to Tulsi Gabbard to talk about intelligence priorities. And that's kind of a scary thought, even if that was happening. I guess, yes, I guess not to talk about criminal investigations. Yeah.

Boy, I meant to ask you when we were talking about the Atlantic stories about Kash Patel. The FBI is now investigating the journalist at the Atlantic, that wrote that story as part of a broader leak investigation. There's also a Wall Street Journal story that is out on Monday night talking about how there's now an effort to look into leakers around Iran. obviously there have been some cases, I'm sure, when you were involved in where there were concerns about national intelligence leaks. But it does seem like this administration is broadening that out to investigating reporters that are writing things they don't like. To my mind, it underscores the doubt that this administration has so. We can't trust them. But there are lots of good reasons that you might conduct an investigation in a national security case that bumps up against or touches or even requires.

you to interview a reporter, but you can't have any confidence of this administration is doing it in a principled way, consistent with thoughtful policies. So, yeah, every one of them is worrisome, even though they may not be. As I said about the Senator Louise Lucas investigation, maybe it's righteous. But you can't have, who could assume it's righteous given this crowd? This is a tough transition for me. But I was reading a story in Fox News this morning. really serious stuff over there that they're doing. There's something that they're looking into that's very popular right now in the MAGA right, and it's called ball maxing.

Do you know anything about this? It's the injection of lube and saline into the scrotum to make balls as big as possible. It's increasingly popular among influencers that's described as electrifying, addictive, euphoric, and transcendental. And I don't know, just for me, it seems telling an administration that is like targeting all their foes like this. you know, that there might be some people who are looking into enlarging the size of their balls. And I was wondering if there's any connections you would like to draw there.

It's funny. Until you said it, I was not aware of that life-altering opportunity. I mean, it just takes me back to the beginning about like, I'm fucking pissed at them, but they are just, it is so small. You know, like they are so small and weak that they can. not take any criticism, that they cannot, like, abide a meme that criticizes them, that they cannot abide people working for them, having said something that they don't like about Trump or about their leadership.

And so, instead, they are polygraphing people. They're going after people like you. It's just alarmingly small and weak, and it's pretty concerning. And I just wonder, like, how when you look at all of that, like, is there an element of it that makes you just feel like, I just want to fucking swirly these guys? Like, it's just so embarrassing. Yeah, it's really dark. It's a dark time. And there's going to be a lot of suffering and pain by good people.

And it's going to, we're going to feel that for another 2.5 years. And then it's going to be better. I mean, I'm an optimist about America. but I see the darkness. And so, yeah, I don't, I don't want to, I'm not trying to, what was the term? I'm not trying to ball max you on this. It's, uh, there's, there's nothing good. You really do feel like we're going to come around?

I don't know. I mean, they reelected him. You know, they're going after people over seashells and over videos. And I mean, like there's a lot to make you think that maybe. this whole experiment is on the decline. I mean, you've been at the heart of it, and you've been going through this for a decade now. Are there not any times where you're kind of walking through the woods

or walking on the beach and thinking that this is not going to get better in two and a half years? No, really not, because I know how fucked up we've been in the past, and I've seen versions of this in my lifetimes after Watergate, the restoration of the Department of Justice by Ed Levy, the president of the University of Chicago, after a lot of lawyers were disciplined and went to jail. And so maybe I'm wrong, but I think given our history, given our values, look, we're a messed up country, but we are by and large, a group of people committed to a set of values that has sustained us. And I think we're going to look at the mother of all U-turns, a hungry-type U-turn

in two and a half years. And that's an exciting thing. I wish I was younger and could go back and work in the government. And I hope that my son-in-law and my daughter, and literally thousands of others flow back in, I think they're going to. And then we do our best to rebuild in the wake of this forest fire and do some cool things. So I'm optimistic, but again, I see the pain. We're going to have lots and lots of pain in the next two plus years. What would you, I mean, besides the accountability stuff we talked about, like going forward to safeguard against us, let's say your optimistic case is true.

Like, are there specific reforms or changes that you think would you would like to see in a reborn DOJ and FBI? Yeah, maybe. I mean, at the margins, but it's funny to come back to this Robert Jackson speech in 1940, he said, really the only thing that can save us is character. The nature and quality of the people in the jobs is it. You can build all the structures you want and the rules you want, but one of the things Trump has taught us is there as, you know, the ropes thrown over Leviathan if Leviathan is an amoral narcissist. And so I'm not sure. I mean, there are things I would do if I were building the Department of Justice again,

but not in the Trump-proofing sense. I think the only thing it comes down to is the character of the people, which means probably after I'll be gone, but we'll experience this again in the next 250 years. and that's all I have enjoyed the show. Yeah, I was ready to be optimistic with you until you talked about the need for character. I'm pretty, that's okay, well, fingers crossed on that. Do you have any Reinhold Niebuhr wisdom for us, famously, a big Reinhold Niebuhr man?

Is there anything in this time of trial? Yeah, Niebuhr famously said that democracy is necessary given the nature of man and that people are selfish and narrow and bigoted in all different kinds of ways. and we need to, it's what the founders said too. The way to guard against those things is to try and set as best we can, interest against interest, interest against interest. And that has fallen short in the congressional branch.

But I think that what has saved us and will save us for the next two and a half years is the genius of the founders in creating an independent judiciary with life tenure. Those people do not, in the out of this, there's 900 of them. So, of course, there's going to be exceptions. but in the overwhelming Maine, they are not on a team other than caring deeply about their reputation for integrity and for getting it right, because they can't lose their jobs. I mean, all these people in Congress sold themselves

because they want to keep their jobs. The only way you can actually lose your job as a federal judge is to engage in improper behavior, is to betray the oath you took. And so it's a genius design, and it's what has saved us. Nicole was saying, but it's one leg of a stool, so you have to balance on one leg. Yeah, okay. But it has balanced. It was tested in Trump One. It's been tested again. And it's what's going to save us.

All right. Let's do the book. What inspirations did you have this time for Nora? As mentioned, the book's called Red Verdict. We'll put the link obviously in the show notes for people who need some quasi-escapism. I was kind of hoping that your fourth book was going to be something totally different, like a romance or something. You know, getting me far away from this world. But it isn't. Yeah, that's one of my kids said I should have put sex and dragons in. Yeah, sex and dragons. But anyway, what would you have some inspirations? I was sure between books, you're reading other stuff, whether it be history or other novels. I don't know. What do you do to do to prepare?

What I do with these books is I want to show people with cool stories what it's really like in different parts of the worlds that I've seen and prove you don't need to make stuff up to be exciting. And it occurred to me. I've not shown people the shadow world of counterintelligence and the FBI's role there. And I thought I could tell a pretty cool story through that lens and set out to try and do it. But the inspiration comes, I mean, I read all different kinds of things. I'm reading a biography of Stalin, talking about darkness right now. But that didn't inspire me. What inspired me was I want to tell a cool story and I want to show readers, this is what the people of the Department of Justice are really like. right, they're flawed, and they're like all human beings are,

but they're fundamentally honest good people working their asses off in really hard circumstances. And so I tell stories about those kind of people in those environments, and that's what the book is about. Do you have a little teaser, a little nugget or anything? Any, you know, trying to pull the leg up for people about, you know, something that happens to Nora? You know, it opens in my, I'm not giving anything away

because it's a prologue. It opens in one of my favorite restaurants, in Manhattan that I ate in last night up by Columbia when I used to teach there, with an executive at a military contractor eating pen-a-pasta with two tubes on individual tines on his fork, which is the way I like to eat it, after drenching it with hot pepper flakes that he doesn't know are full of Novichuk, a Russian poison. And the guy dies in my favorite restaurant in Morningside Heights. and it begins. So what happened to that guy?

Why did the Russians kill him? And what's it about? And so my protagonists are trying to figure out, what the hell is happening? And then to try to defeat that threat, and they try to use the criminal justice system and have a really cool trial to try and prove that the dead guy wasn't the spy,

that the spy is another senior executive in a major defense contractor. I used to work at a big defense contractor for five years, so I tried to bring some of that zeitgeist. I'm intrigued. That's it. So my lesson, don't eat panay pasta.

Don't put a lot of pepper flakes on it. Don't eat at a restaurant in a minute. I'm eating the fucking pepper flakes, okay? That's my tease. I'm putting the red pepper flakes on there. And I'm, you know, whatever. I'm living on the edge. One last thing.

The Trump corruption stuff now, I mean, like we've spent so much time thinking, like, talking about, you know, what happens for accountability for people that are inside the administration. But there's like all the stuff happening outside the administration, you know? And I'm just wondering, like, what you think about, like, how that can be untangled. Because that also overlaps with counterintelligence world conceivably. I mean, you know, Trump's family is doing business with UAE, with China, with people from Chinese nationals, at least. Saudi, it goes on and on.

And it's when you look at all that, I mean, what a bear that will be, you know, for the next FBI director. Should there be a new one in 2029? And anyway, I was just wondering if you have any kind of parting thoughts about how to think about that, the public corruption, the scale of corruption we're seeing. Yeah, I think it's going to be important that it be investigated and accounted for. And as you said, it may be just an intelligence gathering exercise to understand who did what with what relationships if they're outside the United States. It may be appropriate to pursue criminal investigations in some circumstances. If Trump tries to pardon everybody, maybe that defeats that. but what he can't defeat is civil liability for lots of people under something like the Federal False Claims Act.

And so there will be opportunities for the government to recoup money, to hold people accountable, and to just put together a record of what happened, because sometimes just that knowledge is power. So he's going to be a tremendous amount of work. But as I said, thousands of good people are going to return to government, excited about doing that work. I love that in spite of all this, you've got a little bit of optimism, you know, a little bit of. skip in your step that this is going to happen. I wish you were younger so you could get back in there next time because it's going to be needed. But you know, you're booing me a little bit with that mindset. So I appreciate the time for coming on the show. People, go support James Comey. Go get his book, read verdict. Or if you haven't read the other three, go start with one of those.

And it's plenty of reading. It's plenty of our hope with beach reading for you guys as we get into summer season. And hope to talk to you again soon. As a free man out here among your fellow citizens. All right? Yeah, next book or next indictment, I'll be with you. Sounds good. 8647. Don't say anything.

All right, we'll see you. Thanks so much to James Comey. I really appreciate all his time, especially with everything's going on with him and his family. He's a good sport to deal with my nonsense. And we've got to stand with the folks that this administration is coming after. It is absolutely, absolutely imperative that we do. And so I'm happy that he's putting himself out there because there's a lot of other folks that are being targeted as well.

So appreciate Jim very much. As I said at the top, we'll be live tomorrow. Come hang out live 3 p.m. in the east, YouTube or Substack, or we'll see you in your ears a little bit after that. Appreciate you all very much. Saturday night on the downtown. Welcome for the FBI.

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