Donald Trump should not be impeached, says former FBI Director James Comey. Although the reason for that is not because Comey doesn’t believe Trump hasn’t committed any impeachable offenses. Rather, he believes that the best form of justice for the 45th president would simply be to be voted out of office by the American people.
As Yahoo News reports , Comey has been making the rounds of talk and news shows to promote his upcoming book, A Higher Loyalty , which drops this week. And in one of the most wide-ranging, and perhaps surprising, interviews, Comey spoke at length to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
When the subject of impeaching Trump came up, Comey answered with surprising candor. What’s more, his take on the issue could be seen as surprising. Specifically, Comey doesn’t think impeachment is the way to go. That’s because he thinks the people of America should do the job of removing Trump from office — at the ballot box, in 2020.
“I think impeaching and removing Donald Trump from office would let the American people off the hook and have something happen indirectly that I believe they are duty bound to do directly. People in this county need to stand up and go to the voting booth and vote their values.”
My assessment from March 2017 that @realDonaldTrump told the truth when he said he was “wiretapped” has been confirmed; also confirmed is how @comey , Clapper and Brennan all lied when asked. National security capabilities were used for domestic politics: https://t.co/gFnasAIvRc
— Tony Shaffer (@T_S_P_O_O_K_Y) April 16, 2018
Comey’s strong and unambiguous language is described as “unprecedented” by Yahoo News writer Michael Isikoff, who speculates that Comey is putting aside decorum because of Trump’s attacks against him. Specifically, Trump has called Comey a “slimeball,” a “liar,” and a “leaker.”
On Sunday, as Mother Jones reports , Trump spent much of the day stepping up his attacks on Comey.
Unbelievably, James Comey states that Polls, where Crooked Hillary was leading, were a factor in the handling (stupidly) of the Clinton Email probe. In other words, he was making decisions based on the fact that he thought she was going to win, and he wanted a job. Slimeball!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2018
In one tweet, Trump even appeared to suggest that Comey deserves jail time.
The big questions in Comey’s badly reviewed book aren’t answered like, how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail), why did the DNC refuse to give Server to the FBI (why didn’t they TAKE it), why the phony memos, McCabe’s $700,000 & more?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2018
In another revelation that came out in Comey’s Sunday interview with Stephanopoulos, Comey revealed that he directly told Trump that he (Trump) was not personally the target of the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Comey even did so against the advice of his former boss at the FBI, James Baker.
“The FBI general counsel was concerned about me in the first instance telling then President-elect Trump he wasn’t under investigation.”
That wasn’t good enough for Trump, however. Comey claims that Trump repeatedly pressured him to publicly declare that Trump wasn’t the focus of the investigation. Comey was unwilling to take such a public step, in part because Baker didn’t even want him to tell Trump that information, let alone the general public.
Comey’s book will be available in bookstores on Tuesday, April 17.
