James Comey says he thought it was a prank when Trump fired him and says his old boss could be charged with obstruction when he leaves the White House – but admits he ACCEPTS the outcome of the Mueller report
- Former FBI director James Comey shared his personal conclusions from the Mueller report at a CNN town hall hosted by Anderson Cooper on Thursday
- The appearance came two years to the day after Comey was fired by Trump
- Comey said he was blindsided by the firing, which he learned about on CNN
- He went on to say that he wasn’t surprised by the Mueller report findings
- He said he thinks the Justice Department should consider indicting Trump for obstruction when he leaves office based on the facts outlined in the report
Former FBI Director James Comey has said he believes Donald Trump could be charged with obstruction of justice when he leaves the White House based on the findings of the Mueller report.
Comey sat down with Anderson Cooper at a CNN town hall in Washington, DC, on Thursday night, exactly two years to the day after he was fired by the president.
The former FBI head made it clear that there is no love lost between him and President Trump, whom he described as a ‘chronic liar’ and who on more than one occasion displayed a ‘corrupt intent to interfere’ with the Russia investigation, which he helped launch.
He said he wasn’t surprised by any of the information laid out in Robert Mueller’s report as he praised the special counsel for his handling of the entire process.
Former FBI Director James Comey shared his personal conclusions from the Mueller report during a CNN town hall on Thursday
Cooper kicked the discussion off by asking Comey about what it was like to learn that he’d been removed from his post from a CNN report rather than from his former boss.
The FBI head said that when he first saw the words ‘Comey resigns’ flash across the TV screen while he was in a meeting, he thought it was ‘probably a prank’.
That banner was quickly amended to say: ‘Comey fired.’
‘I was numb because I didn’t expect to be fired,’ Comey said at the town hall. ‘It never entered my mind. I knew by that point the president didn’t like me, but I thought that’s okay because that will keep a separation.
‘It still feels a little bit numbing, frankly, like it happened yesterday and a lifetime ago.’
Comey said he finished up the meeting before calling his wife and then his assistant, who confirmed that a termination letter from Trump had been delivered to the FBI in Pennsylvania.
The town hall hosted by Anderson Cooper came two years to the day after Comey was fired as FBI director by President Donald Trump
Cooper then brought up remarks Trump made about Comey hours earlier when he said Mueller is ‘in love with James Comey. He likes James Comey. They were very good friends, supposedly best friends. Maybe not, but supposedly best friends. You look at the picture file and you see hundreds of pictures of him and Comey’.
The CNN host asked: ‘Is Mueller in love with you?’
‘I respect him,’ Comey said before laughing as he added: ‘I don’t think we have that kind of relationship. He’s certainly not obsessed with me in the way some others seem to be.’
The conversation then shifted to the findings of the Mueller report, which Comey said did not surprise him.
‘There were a lot of facts in the Mueller report that I didn’t know, but I knew it would be high quality work if we got a chance as a country to read it,’ Comey said.
Mueller said he believes President Trump could be indicted for obstruction of justice after he leaves the White House (file photo)
‘And what he describes about Russia’s intervention in our election didn’t surprise me at all. It confirmed what I knew from when I was at the bureau. And what he laid out about the president’s efforts to obstruct justice was broader in scope than I personally knew, but given what I had seen, it didn’t surprise me, honestly.’
He said that he felt the parts he was featured in were accurate before Cooper probed whether he felt that the report vindicated him ‘because some of the things that President Trump said you were lying about, Mueller backed you up and said that they weren’t lies’.
Comey replied: ‘I knew I was telling the truth the whole time. I basically told that same story under oath in front of the senate at a time when the president was hinting that there were tapes of our conversations together. So I knew I was telling the truth. I think the country knew I was telling the truth, and Mueller simply confirmed that.’
Cooper then asked if Comey accepted the president’s repeated claims that the Mueller report found no collusion, to which he responded: ‘Well, that’s actually not what the report says.
‘Mueller says first of all, as you know, Anderson, collusion is not a term that lawyers use or should use. He found there was not sufficient evidence to charge a conspiracy between Americans and the Russian effort. That strikes me as a reasonable conclusion, and I accept it.’