The former FBI Director who led an investigation into a Hillary Clinton email server controversy in 2016 and later into allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 Presidential election, said in an interview he can’t wait until he can finally delete his Twitter feed and move on to something else.
“I have a fantasy about on January 21, 2021, deleting my Twitter and moving on to something else,” he said. “But until then, I can’t.”
In an exclusive interview with The New York Times, Comey – a vocal Trump critic - pledged to spend the next 13 months attempting to drive Trump out of office.
“I feel stuck, like I can’t do something else. And I couldn’t look myself in the mirror if I went and did something easy,” he said.
He admitted in the interview that while he doesn’t think he is “that important in the great sweep of American history,” he believes his firsthand insight into the president’s psyche will be beneficial to the anti-Trump movement.
Apart from Twitter, which Comey uses for spouting his anti-Trump sentiment, Comey engages in a wide variety of platforms, including signing an op-ed contract for The Washington Post, and travelling across the country giving speeches on what the Times calls “ethical leadership,” at times receiving “six-figure” fees for his appearances, the Times says.
“I’ve probably now had dozens — and maybe dozens isn’t enough — of encounters with uniformed military, intelligence community people and FBI people in grocery stores, in airports, in hardware stores,” Comey said. “They’ll just come up and touch my arm and say, ‘Please keep speaking. Please keep speaking.’”
Comey enjoys little sympathy from not only the Trump camp, but also among the many supporters of former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who claim that the former FBI director “chose spectacle over discretion” during the 2016 email probe. Comey himself insists that he instead opted for “disclosure over concealment.”
Critics say Comey’s handling of the email investigation effectively handed the election victory to Trump, after the law enforcement chief reopened an investigation into Clinton’s emails just weeks before the elections. When asked whether his current crusade against Trump is an attempt at atonement for what many insist is his role in the outcome of the 2016 elections, he told the Times that he does not connect the two issues.
“I don’t think so. At least in my own conscious mind, I don’t connect those things,” he said.
Despite Comey’s dedication to taking down Trump, the former FBI director spoke against the impeachment inquiry.
"As a citizen, I kind of hope [Trump isn't impeached] because I think the American people would be let off the hook if Donald Trump were impeached and removed from office," he said, according to The Hill. "And a lot of his supporters would think some sort of coup had taken place."
James Comey was fired as FBI director by Trump on 9 May 2017. After Comey’s dismissal, the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections was handed over to US Special Counsel Robert Mueller by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.