Comey also touched on a number of issues, including whether he will run for office and his thoughts on recent school shootings.
WASHINGTON — Former FBI Director James Comey said Thursday that Donald Trump would have been charged with obstruction of justice if he was not a sitting president, based on the findings in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe report.
Who is James Comey?: A hero who helped expose President Trump’s behavior, or a villain whose politics damage the FBI?Comey added that the episodes he thought were most likely to be the basis of an obstruction charge against Trump weren't the ones involving him but others detailed in the report. He pointed to former White House counsel Don McGahn being asked by Trump to fire Mueller, which McGahn refused to do.
Barr last month told senators, without providing evidence, that Trump's 2016 campaign was spied on. Comey, however, said that Barr"knows better than that," adding that the FBI cannot conduct electronic surveillance without getting a warrant from a federal judge. "We all should have been fired if when we learned that, we didn't investigate to figure out is there a connection between any Americans and this Russian effort," he said. "We acted in a responsible, limited and constrained way," he said."I'm proud of the way we conducted ourselves."
"You cannot have a president who is a chronic liar," he said, later adding that Trump is an"amoral leader." Barr summarized Mueller's 448-page report in a 4-page memo to Congress. He later released a redacted version of the report, but Democratic lawmakers are urging the Justice Department to release an unredacted version and the report's underlying evidence.
Will he run for office?Comey had one simple answer when asked whether voters would ever see his name on a ballot:"No, never."
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