i think so i think the united states
congress
had to serve notice that this behavior
even though it's coming at the end of
his term
needed a permanent historic mark and i
think they made the right decision
one congressman told of fears of his
republican colleagues
that voting for impeachment could
endanger
his life does that sound like a kind of
terrorism to you
it does but i don't believe it i think
that's a coward's way out of a hard vote
there are always crazy people in a
position to threaten government
officials i've lived with it for a long
time
that's no excuse for doing your job do
you believe that donald trump
has to be removed from office before
inauguration
i think it would be good for our country
if he were because it would send a
signal
that this is absolutely beyond the pale
unacceptable behavior by any american
leader
what would be your message to donald
trump right now if you could speak
directly to him i i don't think i would
actually waste my breath since we're
talking about a
lawless nihilist but if i had to deliver
a message i would say
it there's no way out of this for you
except to accept the judgment of the
nation
and leave the stage and allow this
nation to try to heal
we're now a week on from those scenes of
mayhem
violence on the capitol several lives
were lost
what do you make of what you saw
i was sickened as i hope not just all
americans but all human beings were by
an attack
on a symbol of democracy the center of
democracy for our country and a symbol i
hope for the whole world
and i was also angered as a former law
enforcement official
for the life of me i can't understand
why that hill was not adequately
defended i think it's going to be very
important for our country
to take a look back as we did after 9 11
and understand what happened and why
so it never happens well you famously
led the fbi and the question many are
asking this time is
where were they they must have known
what was going on they must have
infiltrated those
groups they must have seen what was
planned
what went wrong how can the director
christopher wray
still be in place
that's those questions can't be answered
yet those are the right questions to ask
but you need to do a much deeper dive in
a much more
careful thoughtful gathering of
information to understand
so what did they do what did they do
with what they knew who acted on that
information it can't
it just can't be judged from this
vantage point but it should be judging
it's kind of late in the day i guess to
be you know deep diving on this because
some will be concerned that for four
years
the key institutions of america have
been scared of upsetting
a fragile president do you share those
concerns
this is just speculation but i think the
fbi director who followed me has been
very careful
to maintain a lower profile so that he
doesn't get fired by an erratic
president and have the fbi decapitated
at a critical time in our nation i bet
he's thinking that right now
this week it's important not to let the
eye of sauron
fall on you and and have the fbi
director fired
the fbi we know has warned of the
possibility of further riots further
action by militias
we know of foiled pipe bomb attacks what
is your fear
for the coming days are you worried
about inauguration
i'm worried that there are serious
threats but i also know
because i've been involved in securing
two inaugurations
that this for american security services
is the super bowl of security
we know how to secure to completely lock
down a large
piece of ground and i'm confident that
will be done but at the same time i know
the threat is real
do you believe that the maga movement
itself is becoming
synonymous with a conspiracy-led
extremism threat
there's a reason the american people
associate the red hats with something
racist and and that they should be
fearful of
it's probably an exaggeration because
there's so many millions of americans
who are not violent people they're not
racist people they're just been people
who've been fooled
would you see it as a domestic terror
threat now
oh definitely not i'm not talking about
the maga movement as a whole
but significant aspects of and you saw
it live and on television
at capitol hill significant aspects of
those people who
consider themselves devotees of donald
trump are
people that i would classify as domestic
terrorists in your book you've written
that uh donald trump shouldn't face
prosecution
i know it was penned uh earlier in the
autumn do you still believe that
i still think that that on balance the
best decision for the united states of
america will be
not to grant donald trump the platform
that prosecuting him would give him for
every day for three or four years in the
nation's capital as united states versus
trump appeared on television
every day i think the better thing for
our country and our new president
is to push donald trump to the side a
bit i'd rather the tv lights go out
and he stand on the lawn at mar-a-lago
shouting at cars in his bathrobe
where none of us can hear that it is an
odd position isn't it for a federal
prosecutor
i mean you've built your career on on
doing the right thing in the name of
justice and being transparent and
showing
more importantly that actions have
consequences
um so if the appearance of fairness
matters if
you know we arrest drug dealers and
shopkeepers
why wouldn't you extend that same sense
of
the appearance of fairness look i know
it's an odd thing for me to say given my
career and given that the guy's been
saying i should be in jail for the last
four years
but i'm trying to make a judgment about
what's best for the country
i obviously think he belongs in jail but
i don't think pursuing that
is in the best interest of the entire
nation do you think
joe biden should pardon trump as ford
did nixon
i don't know he should he should
consider it now i don't know whether
donald trump
he's not a genius but he might figure
out that if he accepts a pardon
that's in a mission of guilt the united
states supreme court has said
so i don't know that he would accept a
pardon but as part of healing the
country and getting us to a place where
we can focus on things
that are going to matter over the next
four years i think joe biden's going to
have to at least think about that
there's a lot of talk of donald trump
attempting to pardon himself
does he open himself up to more
litigation more prosecution if he does
that
yeah that would be an unusually dumb
thing even for him to do
because it's unsettled as to whether a
president can do that
i believe a president can't it would be
a lawless act
it would prompt the department of
justice to have to prosecute him
so that they could litigate this
question about whether that's an
effective release from
criminal liability so in a way by trying
to give himself
a shield he would be inviting the sword
of the department of justice
what about those who've enabled the
false narrative this time around ted
cruz
josh hawley senators who've pushed to
overturn the election result
do you believe they're guilty of
attempted insurrection
would you suggest they should be removed
from office
i don't i can't offer an opinion on
whether they're legally responsible
because that's a that's a technical
question but they're morally responsible
they they lit a fire in a crowded
building knowing exactly what they were
doing
and now they're standing outside saying
they were shocked shocked that people
ran from the building and got hurt by
the flames
how would you answer house republicans
who say the whole impeachment process is
just political
and unnecessarily divisive at this time
someone who says that is really not
worthy of a response
james comey last time we spoke um about
the 2016 election the part you may have
played inadvertently
in bringing donald trump to power when
you told the public you were reopening
the investigation into
hillary clinton's emails nine days
before the election i remember you said
to me you had to choose between
a bad decision and a disastrous one you
hoped you'd made the least
bad choice when you look at where we are
today
do you honestly still believe that
i do i do it it makes it all the more a
painful decision but
even if i could travel back in time you
can't have the fbi director making
decisions based on who he thinks should
be president you just can't
that's the road to ruin and so you're
right it was between bad and disastrous
and
and i would love never to have been
involved but having been involved
we had to choose the choice that we we
chose do you think that history
students will come to see this as a
moment when
the democratic institutions of america
held up
under enormous pressure or will they say
gosh they came perilously close to
collapse
i think they will say this was the
greatest stress test
of american institutions probably since
the american civil war
and they held the judiciary held
congress held the media held civil
society
held donald trump was not able
to bend them to the breaking point now
he bent them significantly which is why
it's a little bit of both
the republican party acted in a way that
should stain it forever
and certain aspects of parts of the
american media acted in a shameful way
but in the main
institutions that make america america
held
do you think the republican party will
hold i don't know i hope not
i hope it either goes away entirely or
it splits
and trumpism is pushed to a darker
corner of american life
and in a patriots principled patriots
who people on the democratic side may
disagree with fiercely
but people of integrity rebuild that
party
james comey thank you very much thanks
for having me