{"id":116,"date":"2026-06-04T13:16:01","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T13:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businessmovingservicess.com\/?p=116"},"modified":"2026-06-04T13:16:01","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T13:16:01","slug":"james-comey-justice-cant-be-a-political-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businessmovingservicess.com\/?p=116","title":{"rendered":"James Comey: \u2018Justice Can\u2019t Be a Political Force\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n<\/span>hatever you think of James Comey, it\u2019s hard to argue with this: No unelected official this century has been at the center of so many high-stakes controversies in Washington, D.C., with so many serious consequences for the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read more House Votes to End Iran War in a Bipartisan Swipe Against Trump<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tAs deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, Comey squared off against Dick Cheney and senior White House aides over where to draw the line on warrantless wiretaps and secret torture.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2016, as FBI director, Comey infuriated Democrats when he decided to give a press conference, lone-wolf-style, to announce that Hillary Clinton, then the Democratic nominee for president, had very likely broken the law by discussing classified work in her private emails, even though she wouldn\u2019t be charged. Months later, on the eve of that election, he returned to the podium to announce that the FBI had found yet more emails and would reopen its investigation into Clinton \u2014 a move that may well have gotten Donald Trump elected.<\/p>\n

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\n\tWhen Comey refused to pledge loyalty to Trump and drop the investigation into Russian interference in the election, Trump fired him. That, of course, ignited a long public feud that\u2019s made Comey, during Trump\u2019s second term, the president\u2019s number-one target for retribution. Last September, Trump\u2019s Justice Department indicted Comey for lying to Congress about whether he authorized leaks related to the Russia probe \u2014 an indictment promptly tossed out by a federal court. Then, in April, the administration charged Comey with threatening to kill the president, because he posted a picture of menacing seashells he found on a beach arranged to look like \u201c8647,\u201d as in \u201cget rid of Trump.\u201d (This latest indictment has about as much chance of surviving a day in court as I do of becoming chief justice.)<\/p>\n

\n\tAll of this comes at a moment when Comey is trying to put political life behind him. Since 2023, he\u2019s been pursuing a new career as a prolific writer of legal thrillers, in the Scott Turow vein. His latest novel, Red Verdict,<\/em> is the fourth one he\u2019s written featuring the fictional prosecutor Nora Carleton, who just happens to work in the same U.S. attorney\u2019s office in Manhattan that Comey once led. (It\u2019s also where his daughter Maurene was a top prosecutor until Trump fired her, too; she\u2019s now suing the government.) Comey\u2019s novels are surprisingly engrossing, largely because the fictional characters feel like thin cover for his lived reality. Maybe the Justice Department will find a way to indict him for that.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n\tComey and I were supposed to meet on the first day of May, but he delayed our interview at the last minute after finding out he was being reindicted for photographing the killer seashells. I was somewhat surprised when he rescheduled just a few weeks later, with the stipulation that he wouldn\u2019t be able to discuss the details of his latest case. We sat outdoors at the Old Angler\u2019s Inn, a historic roadside pub just across the Potomac River from his Virginia home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThis was the first time I\u2019d actually met Comey. Over the years, I\u2019ve heard him described as both a closet Clinton-hater and an avid never-Trumper, and I\u2019ve talked to plenty of lawyers and journalists who regard Comey as an operator and attention hound. Over the course of our 90-minute conversation, though, Comey didn\u2019t come across as any of these things. Arriving without handlers, relaxed in a polo and shades, he seemed comfortable with self-doubt and laughed easily. He gave no hint of evasion. I had the sense of him as a true believer in public service who saw his own duty as being above the realm of politics \u2014 but who had nonetheless worked his way into a series of jobs where factoring in the politics wasn\u2019t so much a character flaw as a requirement. It\u2019s not that Comey lacked the political radar to navigate at the highest level of government; it\u2019s more that his own self-image compelled him to ignore the signals. Comey and I talked about Trump, justice, fiction, and regrets.\n<\/p>\n

\nYou spend your life in law enforcement, and then you wake up one day last September and you\u2019ve been indicted. Just walk me through what that\u2019s like.<\/strong>
Yeah, it\u2019s a great question. I think it was disorienting. Probably less\u2009\u2026\u2009what\u2019s the right word? Probably less upsetting for me, and what I mean by that is I know the system. I know what courtrooms are like. I know what processing is like. I know the courts. But maybe in some ways that made it more disorienting to be at the wrong table. When I was sitting there with my lawyers, I really did have this sense of spatial disorientation. I\u2019m at the wrong table. My team should be over there. So that\u2019s what I mean by disorienting. I had a little time. It wasn\u2019t a complete surprise, because I\u2019d heard in the media that they were coming after me. But, yeah, that was my primary reaction. Disorientation, but not as freaked as someone who doesn\u2019t know how the system might be.<\/p>\n

\nDid you think there was a way in which they could actually put your career or your freedom in jeopardy?<\/strong>
No, I did not. Never a doubt. Ultimately, because I fundamentally knew that I was innocent, and the question for me and my team was: So what will be the basis on which this will get dismissed before a trial? And I was keen to have it dismissed as a vindictive prosecution for other people\u2019s benefit. It\u2019s just too bad that it got dismissed on other grounds, because I thought it was important to establish that a president cannot do this, that you cannot target someone for speaking out, for standing up. And we didn\u2019t get to that point. I had complete faith how it was going to end up.<\/p>\n

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\nNow, they have this new indictment. I\u2019ve taken to calling it \u201cJim sees seashells down by the seashore.\u201d<\/strong>
Yeah, say that five times fast.<\/p>\n

\nI\u2019m not the expert you are, but I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve ever seen an indictment like that. There\u2019s nothing in it.\u00a0<\/strong>
Yeah, I\u2019m going to be careful because I\u2019ve promised my friends who are my lawyers that I won\u2019t talk about it, and I think it\u2019s important that I abide the court rules by not talking about it, but I always assumed and I assume it will continue. If not this, there will be something else, because Donald Trump has made clear to his personal lawyers who now lead the Justice Department that this is what he wants, and so it didn\u2019t surprise me, and there will be something else.<\/p>\n

\nDo you have to pay legal fees for all of this, or are your lawyers doing you a favor?<\/strong>
People are volunteering to be part of it, but I do have to pay. It costs me money, and I think, for Trump, he intends that process to be part of the punishment. I\u2019m lucky, compared to a lot of people who\u2019ve just done public service, that I\u2019ve made and saved money. But in the main, they\u2019re contributing their time.<\/p>\n

\nDo you regret taking photos of the seashells?<\/strong>
I\u2019m not going to answer that.<\/p>\n

\nThe acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, came out in the wake of this indictment and said publicly, \u201cWell, there\u2019s more. There\u2019s more evidence.\u201d That seemed particularly nefarious. I would think that as a prosecutor you\u2019re not supposed to insinuate that you have more evidence about a person when you\u2019ve had the opportunity to lay that evidence out, and there\u2019s no national security reason, I presume, why you can\u2019t. Did that strike you as particularly untoward?<\/strong>
Yeah. I think the most I can say in response to that is that it\u2019s important that all participants respect the court process and abide the local rules not to talk about evidence or legal arguments outside of the courtroom. And so I\u2019m going to do that. I think it\u2019s important that the government do that as well.<\/p>\n

\nSo big picture, what do you think the goal of this all is really? It\u2019s not to put you in jail because no one could file that indictment and think that they were going to actually succeed. What\u2019s going on?<\/strong>
I don\u2019t know for sure because it requires me to try to imagine myself inside Donald Trump\u2019s head, but I think his approach to me and to many others \u2014 John Brennan, Jim Clapper, Adam Schiff, Letitia James \u2014 is, I need to get even with people who have, in his view of the world, come after him, either criticized him or investigated him, and I also need to send a message to others that if you try to come after me, there will be a significant cause.<\/p>\n

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\nWhat if you were a prosecutor tasked with bringing that kind of case on behalf of the president? What would you have done? You\u2019ve been in that position.<\/strong>
One of the most important speeches ever given in Department of Justice history was by Robert Jackson, who was then the attorney general and went on to be on the Supreme Court and the chief Nuremberg prosecutor. But in 1940, as they were getting close to war, he brought all of the federal prosecutors to the Justice Department, to the Great Hall, and he gave this amazing speech about the role of a federal prosecutor, because he was worried about these people. And he essentially said: \u201cProsecutors can be the most useful force in society, and they can be one of the most dangerous. And what marks the second from the first is picking a person instead of investigating a crime, and don\u2019t ever do that. Don\u2019t ever make decisions for partisan reasons.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat speech kind of laid dormant in Department of Justice lore. In 1988, Antonin Scalia cited it in a dissent from a case involving the independent-counsel statute, and then everyone talked about it after that. I can remember hearing about the speech when I was an [assistant U.S. attorney] in New York in the late Eighties. It had been given 48 years earlier, but since the late Eighties, the Jackson speech is the \u2014 I don\u2019t know what the right word is \u2014 life force of the Department of Justice for both Republicans and Democrats. And so I would hope that if I were in a situation where a president I worked for was trying to get me to pursue a person in that way, I would remember that speech and either say no and be fired, or say no and resign, or maybe say no and convince a president that you shouldn\u2019t be acting that way.<\/p>\n

\nIt\u2019s like you\u2019re Harrison Ford in that great scene from The Fugitive, <\/em>where he\u2019s standing on the edge of the cliff and shouts, \u201cI\u2019m innocent!\u201d And Tommy Lee Jones says, \u201cI don\u2019t care!\u201d<\/strong>
And then he jumps off of it.<\/p>\n

\nIt seems like they don\u2019t care.<\/strong>
Yeah. I don\u2019t know who the \u201cthey\u201d is. I\u2019m sure there\u2019s all kinds of different feelings, but, yeah, it doesn\u2019t seem to me like the leadership of the Department of Justice is living Robert Jackson\u2019s words. They\u2019ve lost the plot, and that\u2019s really bad for lots of reasons, and it\u2019s important that even I not become numb to it. There\u2019s a danger in that, right? \u201cOh, here comes another indictment.\u201d So we all have to resist becoming numb to it, and it\u2019s going to be really important for the next administration to fix it. That\u2019s something the attorney general did after Watergate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\nThat\u2019s going to be hard.<\/strong>
I don\u2019t think as hard as people think, though, because, I mean, there\u2019s a danger. I\u2019m too optimistic, but I don\u2019t think so. I think people are going to pour back in.<\/p>\n

\nProvided people want to fix it, right? Because there\u2019s always the danger, particularly in our era, that the low road becomes the new normal, that each party wants to avail itself of the same opportunity to twist and torment the other.<\/strong>
Yeah, there\u2019s a risk of that race to the bottom. I don\u2019t think so here, again, because we\u2019ve done it once before, and in a lot of ways, this era is similar to 50 years ago. I think there are enough people who see just how immoral and dumb it is to have the Justice Department operate as a partisan operation because the shoe will inevitably be on the other foot. Everybody understands why we always depict our statues of justice in blindfolds in this country, because it just can\u2019t work if you\u2019re looking at partisan allegiance, race, creed, wealth, those sorts of things. So those two things come together to give me confidence that it\u2019s not going to be another race to the bottom.<\/p>\n

\nTo be fair, your critics, and critics of the previous administrations, might say, \u201cWhy is this any more a politically motivated investigation than the Russia investigation?\u201d Plus, the stuff in the Steele dossier turned out to be not true. Didn\u2019t political investigations begin under other administrations too?<\/strong>
Mistakes were definitely made, people did things they shouldn\u2019t have done. But the whys were explored, and anyone who cares to understand could see that that\u2019s not the department or the FBI acting as a political force trying to accomplish a political goal. We managed to piss off both ends of the political spectrum by trying to do the right thing, in the right way. So I get why people say that, but it requires them to not have looked at inspector-general reports and that sort of thing.<\/p>\n

\nDo people come up to you in public and express support, or anger?\u00a0<\/strong>
Yeah, because I\u2019m a giraffe, I get recognized.<\/p>\n

\nYou\u2019re tall.<\/strong>
Yeah, it\u2019s ridiculous. Haters don\u2019t come up to me, and so I don\u2019t know how many there are out there. The people who speak to me are very supportive.<\/p>\n

Read more \u2018This Cruelty is Intentional\u2019: The New Jersey Lawmakers Fighting to Shut Down Delaney Hall<\/a><\/p>\n

\nYou clashed with people in the Bush administration over what you thought the law would tolerate and wouldn\u2019t tolerate. Could you have seen anything like this happening under that administration?<\/strong>
No, because what struck me about both George W. Bush and Obama, who are the two other presidents I saw up close, is that they were institutionalists. And maybe they were hiding something from me, but George W. Bush, once I got a chance to talk to him alone and Bob Mueller got a chance to talk to him alone, he wanted to know what the right answer was. And so I can\u2019t imagine the Department of Justice being used in the same way.<\/p>\n

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\nThis has also affected your family. Your daughter Maurene was fired, and you have a son-in-law who resigned as a federal prosecutor after the first indictment. I would imagine that\u2019s one of the harder pieces of this whole experience.\u00a0<\/strong>
Yeah, as a parent, you say to yourself, \u201cSay whatever you want about me, but my children? Are you kidding me?\u201d And so, yeah, that was painful to see Maurene fired because she had the poor judgment to choose me as her father, and my son-in-law having to give up his career that he loved, and so, yeah, that\u2019s painful.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nCan you sue the president for harassment?\u00a0<\/strong>
I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s a good question. I\u2019ve seen now in the newspaper that there will be commissions set up to reward money to people who were targeted by the Biden administration. So maybe there\u2019ll be another commission to hand out free money.<\/p>\n

\nI assume you talk to people that are still in the agency or have knowledge about what\u2019s going on inside. What are they feeling inside the FBI?\u00a0<\/strong>
My strong impression from talking to people is that the organization feels under siege, that they\u2019re shorthanded, they\u2019re under tremendous pressure, and they\u2019re trying to hang on, that they\u2019re counting the days hoping that they don\u2019t get fired or have to quit and can make it to the end of this administration.<\/p>\n

\nDo you know Kash Patel?<\/strong>
No.<\/p>\n

\nNever met him?<\/strong>
Never.<\/p>\n

\nHow would you assess his directorship?<\/strong>
Part of what I felt, and I know Bob Mueller felt this way as director, is first of all, you\u2019re always on. Literally, you don\u2019t get vacation \u2014 you\u2019re always on in the sense that you\u2019re representing something and people are watching you all the time. So the way that you carry yourself, the way you dress, where you go, who you speak to, all of those things are part of being the director of the FBI. And outside the United States, the identity of the bureau is extraordinary. So you feel a sense of obligation to protect that, and if these stories are true, wow.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nIt seems like a generation of Americans are sort of being reminded of something we learned in the 1970s, that we have these organizations, the FBI chief among them, that can be turned into nefarious forces and can actually terrorize Americans or violate rights if used the wrong way.<\/strong>
Yeah, and it\u2019s a shame that circumstances force us to stare at that every few generations, but it\u2019s essential. People used to tell me when I was director, \u201cYou seem like such a nice person. I trust you.\u201d And I would say, \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t trust me. You should ask, \u2018How are you overseen?\u2019\u2009\u201d After\u00a0 I was director for a couple of months, I called Bob Mueller and we were talking about how it\u2019s going, and I said, \u201cYou know what I\u2019m struck by is how much autonomy I have, that almost no one knows what I do.\u201d And he said, \u201cYeah, no shit. That\u2019s why it\u2019s so important to have good people in that role.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\nLet\u2019s talk about Red Verdict,<\/em> which is your fourth Nora Carleton novel. Was it always your ambition to write? Did you have in the back of your mind at some point, \u201cI\u2019ll sit down and write a bunch of novels\u201d?\u00a0<\/strong>
I never thought I would write fiction. After my first book, A Higher Loyalty,<\/em> which came out in \u201918, I wrote Saving Justice,<\/em> which came out in January 2021, and they were both story-driven books, and so my agents and editors started saying, \u201cHave you ever thought about writing fiction? Because you write narrative well, you write dialogue well, you have a good eye for detail.\u201d And I said no. And the truth is, this is a stupid thing, but my initial reaction was it\u2019s beneath me somehow \u2014 \u201cCome on, I\u2019m a serious person. I don\u2019t write fiction or crime fiction.\u201d Which is kind of a dick thing to think and say, and was wrong.<\/p>\n

\nIt\u2019s an audacious move for any male fiction writer, much less a first-time fiction writer,\u00a0 to write a female character.\u00a0<\/strong>
Yeah, I think it\u2019s fair to say I had a female-dominated household with more girls than boys, and I also knew that my first reader was my wife, who was telling me, \u201cNow you\u2019re missing this, you\u2019re missing that.\u201d And then my other readers were the five kids who all read everything I did before I went out to my circle of friends, and I knew they would tell me. The beauty of my family is if they tell me it\u2019s great, I know they\u2019re not lying.<\/p>\n

\nSome people could say that you\u2019re writing surprisingly woke books. You\u2019ve got a gay woman protagonist and a lot of minority characters.<\/strong>
I\u2019m much cooler than I look. I\u2019ve learned a lot about people\u2019s journeys of sexual identity from my own children.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nNow, this being Rolling Stone,<\/em> I couldn\u2019t help but notice that you quoted a line from Empire Burlesque,<\/em> the Bob Dylan album: \u201cWhat looks large from a distance, close up ain\u2019t never that big.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>
Yeah, one of my favorite lines.<\/p>\n

\nNo one knows Empire Burlesque<\/em> unless they\u2019re a true Dylan fan.\u00a0<\/strong>
I don\u2019t know much about Bob Dylan\u2019s work, but years ago I saw that line someplace and remembered it. That one stuck in my head.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nThere\u2019s another quote in the book that really jumped out at me. It said, \u201cAs a lawyer on either side, you need to recognize that you could be wrong, that you could be making mistakes or misjudgments, that you may be blind to injustice because of your own biases. But a lot of people can\u2019t handle the cognitive dissonance that produces. So they suppress it under a layer of utter moral certainty.\u201d That\u2019s what a lot of your critics would say about you, right? If there\u2019s a persistent knock over the years in profiles or among your critics, it\u2019s that you think your sense of right and wrong is keener and more essential than other people\u2019s.<\/strong>
Yeah. And I shrug. You can\u2019t see it on the tape. I\u2019ve heard that many times. Nothing I can do about that. I mean, what am I going to do? Anyone who\u2019s worked closely with me knows that\u2019s not true, that I work really hard to doubt, and I believe and I\u2019ve long taught people that doubt is not weakness. Doubt is wisdom. I\u2019ve heard that a million times, that I\u2019m self-righteous, and what am I going to do? Nothing.<\/p>\n

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\nLet me go back to the past for a moment. In your first memoir, you revisited the Clinton fiasco. You sort of decided that you did the right thing in difficult circumstances. You\u2019ve had a lot of time since then.\u00a0 Do you still believe that the news conference you gave and the way you handled the Clinton thing, in light of where the country\u2019s been especially, was the right move?<\/strong>
Yes. And people ask me all kinds of time-travel questions. I often say, \u201cSo when I get to go back, what do I know?\u201d I\u2019m saying that facetiously because it doesn\u2019t help me. Knowing what I knew then, by and large, they were still the right decisions. The only one I\u2019ve sometimes wondered about is on Oct. 28, should I have dumped it on the attorney general? Should I have just written a memo to the attorney general saying, \u201cWe can\u2019t conceal this. We just spent all summer, you included, Madam Attorney General, testifying that we\u2019re done with our investigation. Now, we know we\u2019re not done in a way that the investigators say may change the result. You can\u2019t conceal that, and so you have to speak and tell Congress.\u201d You\u2019ll remember, I tried to hand it to [Loretta Lynch] and by having my chief of staff call her chief of staff and saying, \u201cHere\u2019s what he thinks he has to do, but he would welcome a conversation with her,\u201d and the answer came back saying she disagrees, but she does not wish to speak with him. I knew then what that was. That was, \u201cYou\u2019ll take this hit.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nThis is when the information had been taken off Anthony Weiner\u2019s computer and it was now clear that there were more emails you had to go through.<\/strong>
All of a sudden there are 300,000 of Hillary Clinton\u2019s emails on Anthony Weiner\u2019s laptop. And most important to the team was we can see BlackBerry.net emails, which were from the beginning of her tenure as secretary of state, and we had never found any of those. And if there was going to be material evidence about her intent, which was at the core of this, where would it be? It would likely be at the beginning, when someone said, \u201cYou can\u2019t use your email for this kind of thing.\u201d So my team\u2019s telling me, \u201cWe have to reopen this investigation.\u201d Got hundreds of thousands of emails, got the BlackBerry emails. We don\u2019t know what they say because we haven\u2019t gotten a warrant yet. We can\u2019t review them before the election and the result may change, and if you just spent all summer testifying, \u201cWe\u2019re done, go away, we\u2019re done, there\u2019s nothing here, go away,\u201d what do you do with that? And even as painful as it\u2019s been, with the benefit of hindsight, you can\u2019t conceal that. I mean one of the norms that the FBI exists under is a duty of candor, especially when you testify. And so both doors led to hell, but you couldn\u2019t choose the concealed door. The only thing I\u2019ve asked myself is should I have just dumped it on her? Would have been better for me personally.<\/p>\n

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\nFor you personally.<\/strong>
Yeah. Write a memo that says, \u201cThis isn\u2019t a close call, Madam Attorney General. You got to inform Congress that our testimony is incorrect.\u201d I thought about that at the moment, and I thought, \u201cThat\u2019s a chicken-shit way to operate. If this is what you believe, then you should take the hit, especially if she\u2019s refusing to talk to you.\u201d But it\u2019s been painful enough over the last 10 years that sometimes I fantasize about going back and writing the memo, and I probably still wouldn\u2019t do it because it still feels chicken shit to me, but, yeah. There are plenty of people who are walking around, maybe even Secretary Clinton, thinking that I cost her the presidency. I was going into a CVS, like, six months ago, and a lady, a little older than I, walking out the other way, and she looks up at me and says, \u201cOh, you\u2019re the reason we have Donald Trump.\u201d And then walks past me. I\u2019m like, \u201cWell, good morning to you, lady.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nWell, let me ask you this: What if you did have a time machine, and you could go back knowing everything you know now? We\u2019ve had 10 years of Donald Trump, but maybe, just maybe, the election goes differently if you handle the inflection points of that year differently.<\/strong>
Obviously as you think about what\u2019s happened to America over these 10 years, it requires probably more reflection than you might imagine. But look, one of my very best people was a woman named Trisha Anderson, and she was the deputy general counsel for National Security, and she asked the best question, that I\u2019ve thought about many times since. When we were debating what to do in late October, she said, \u201cShould you consider that what you\u2019re about to do may help elect Donald Trump president of the United States?\u201d It kind of sucked the air out of the room. I said, \u201cFirst, Trisha, thank you. Thank you for that question. I\u2019m so glad that I have an environment where someone is going to ask that question. But the answer has to be no, because down that path lies the death of the FBI as an independent institution.\u201d You can\u2019t have the FBI director picking who is president.<\/p>\n

\nThat\u2019s fair. Have you seen Hillary Clinton?<\/strong>
No, I\u2019ve never met Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n

\nYou\u2019ve not even met her?<\/strong>
No, never, ever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nYou\u2019ve written about the childhood trauma you had, the neighborhood rapist who held you and your brother captive. It seems to have been a defining moment in your life, as it would be for anyone. Is it something you still work through? Have you had therapy to deal with something like that?<\/strong>
Yeah, that\u2019s a great question. My parents were, I think it\u2019s fair to say, classic sort of Irish Catholic, we joke and we move on kind of people. I can remember my father awakening me the day after this happened, shaking me awake to tell me that my brother was outside speaking to the media and I was going to miss all these interviews, so get up and get out there. He was being funny, but he was trying to find a way to deal with this. But mostly, it was \u201cDon\u2019t acknowledge it.\u201d It was such a big deal. That was a Friday night, and Monday in school, all seven periods, every class I was in was devoted entirely to me going to the front of the room and telling the story.<\/p>\n

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\nNo way.<\/strong>
All seven periods \u2026 math, science. And then I told the story over and over again throughout high school, and then I would tell it in college constantly, and my friends would have me tell it, truth be told, at a party we were hosting at a dorm, when the girls were going to leave. \u201cGet Comey to tell the story.\u201d But what I can now see happened to me is that that\u2019s very healthy, that constant recalling, recounting, restoring, right? It\u2019s cognitive behavioral therapy, and I think it landed me in a much healthier place accidentally than I ever would have been otherwise. And so it\u2019s an important part of my life, but I\u2019ve managed to reframe it as a gift to me in a lot of ways. I mean it did a couple of things, but most importantly, it made me realize how short life is and helped me. I don\u2019t know whether my brother\u2019s been able to process it in the same way. He seems healthy, but interestingly, we\u2019ve never talked about how we processed it.<\/p>\n

\nSo what\u2019s your plan for the next 10 to 15 years? Do you want to write a dozen more books? Do you want to teach? Do politics?<\/strong>
Zero possibility, ever. Yeah, that\u2019s not my thing. That I can say with high confidence. What I want to have at the center of my life is being a grandfather.<\/p>\n

\nHow many grandchildren do you have?<\/strong>
Five, and I watch some of them at least two days a week, all day with my wife, and we return them after dinner, to help my kids. And that is the most important thing I do, honestly. I think I\u2019ll write some more fiction, and I have in mind a nonfiction project. I heard another fiction author describe himself as a socially adept introvert, and that\u2019s what I am, and so what I love about writing is, yeah, I can do it alone. I don\u2019t have to talk to other people, and so if I can interact with just my family and close friends and write, that\u2019d be pretty cool. So that\u2019s what I\u2019d like really the rest of my life to be about. To be a father, grandfather, and then do some writing, because I enjoy doing it.<\/p>\n

\nAnd stay out of jail.<\/strong>
Oh, obviously stay out of jail.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\nI was struck reading your first memoir that you were still so optimistic about the future, and I felt the same at that time. This is what, 10 years ago, and your feeling was the system will hold, the institutions will hold, this country has weathered worse.\u00a0 And I wonder, are you still that optimistic?<\/strong>
Yeah, I am. It\u2019s been tested by the wisdom of the American people returning Donald Trump to the Oval Office, but I am. Because of probably a slightly darker influence than a more positive influence. The darker influence is I have a decent sense of American history and just how screwed up we\u2019ve been so many times, and I\u2019m always reminding people that I\u2019m now a boring old guy, that the country was coming apart when I was a kid. The president was murdered, Dr. King was murdered, Malcolm X was murdered, president\u2019s brother was murdered, cities burned to the ground. Oh, my God, America\u2019s over.<\/em> No, it\u2019s not, and so we\u2019ve been through that journey a lot of times, and I think the rhythm of history tells me that America is going to be OK. And then second, I see in young people a passion that keeps me afloat. And so I really do think we\u2019re staring at a U-turn ahead.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\nI hope that\u2019s true. Increasingly, I feel like things are getting broken that we\u2019ve never tried to rebuild in terms of our place in the world, our leadership in the world, our moral example, our ethical aspirations. Yes, we\u2019ve had violence. Yes, we\u2019ve had downturns and injustice, but it feels like we\u2019re unleashing forces that are hard to reverse.\u00a0<\/strong>
Yeah, maybe. Just trying to imagine the future that Donald Trump has just created with his blundering in the Persian Gulf,\u00a0 the knock-on effects of that, I don\u2019t know. But America will recover. I mean at least in my lifetime, we will recover, and I envy my daughter and son-in-law their opportunity to go back \u2014 because I won\u2019t go back \u2014 but to go back into government and be part of that rebuilding. It\u2019s going to be cool.<\/p>\n

Read more WTF Is Happening at CBS and \u201960 Minutes\u2019?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Comey, the former FBI director recently indicted by Donald Trump’s Justice Department, sits for an in-depth interview with Rolling Stone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-affairs"],"yoast_head":"\nJames Comey: \u2018Justice Can\u2019t Be a Political Force\u2019 - Business Moving Services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/businessmovingservicess.com\/?p=116\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"James Comey: \u2018Justice Can\u2019t Be a Political Force\u2019 - 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