With the end of the chaos in the U.S. Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives resumed the joint meeting to certify the presidential vote on the evening of January 6 local time.
According to the latest news from CNN and other media on the 7th, the U.S. Congress confirmed that Biden won the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Trump then delivered a video speech after his Twitter account was restored, saying “The new administration will take office on January 20, and my focus now is to ensure a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power.
This moment needs healing and reconciliation.”
Looking back on January 20, 2017, four years ago, it was the day when Trump was sworn in as President of the United States. More than four months later, on May 9, Trump fired James Comey, then the director of the FBI, setting off a huge wave in American politics.
James Comey joined the U.S. Department of Justice in 1987 and was named as the director of the FBI by Obama in 2013. He is the seventh head of the FBI in its history.
During his more than 30 years of career, Comey has witnessed the replacement of five U.S. presidents and worked directly with three presidents. His achievements include eradicating the New York Mafia, investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks, pursuing al-Qaeda members, and investigating the Mailgate and Prism Gate. A year after being fired, Comey published his own autobiography.
Today, on the eve of Biden’s official White House, let’s take a look back at Comey’s memory of Trump’s entry to the White House four years ago and the story behind their first dinner together
Start with lies
On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, but there was a lot of debate about the number of people who visited the presidential inauguration that day.
The new president announced that the number of people who came to visit his inauguration was considerable, which exceeded the number of visitors to Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, but it did not.
He refused to believe the video taken or other evidence, that is, he firmly believed that he had more attendance than Obama. In fact, no one thinks so except his own propaganda team.
This seemingly small problem makes us deeply worried about those who pursue the truth. In our view, whether it is to investigate criminal activities or to assess the plans or intentions of hostile forces in the United States, the truth needs to be sought.
Our lives are always full of a lot of ambiguous things and various statements, but there are always some objective facts that exist in the world, which are black and white.
Trump’s statement that his inauguration was the largest in attendance in history, which is obviously false, not true. His statement is not a personal point of view, a personal point of view, a personal point of view, but a complete lie.
Sunday, January 22, just two days after the inauguration, I will attend a reception at the White House residence later. Those who went to the reception were all law enforcement leaders who participated in the security tasks of the inauguration ceremony.
The FBI’s counter-terrorism, intelligence and special police departments work closely with the Secret Service to be responsible for the security of the presidential inauguration ceremonies, as have been the case for successive presidential inauguration ceremonies.
I was told that President Trump wanted to thank these people who worked hard for the inauguration and for our efforts.
Hearing the news, I think Mr. President is really sweet to do this. But despite this, I personally don’t want to attend this reception for many reasons.
First of all, I don’t think it would be a good thing for the FBI if the media filmed me living closely with the new president.
Because in the eyes of many people, it was me who helped Trump ascend to the presidency, and if I behave intimately with Trump on such an occasion on behalf of the FBI, it will undoubtedly deepen this misunderstanding.
Second, the major NFL game is being televised on the afternoon of the day.
This 5pm reception will make me miss the Green Bay Packers vs. Atlanta Falcons, and the Pittsburgh Steelers and New England Patriots openings. Don’t Mr. President watch the ball?
But my people argue that this meeting is very important and I must attend. I’m the director of the FBI. I don’t want to embarrass other leaders because of my absence, nor do I want to give a dismay to the new government.
So I advise myself not to worry. This is a reception party. There are a lot of people present, and there will be no personal chance to take pictures with the president. At the same time, I decided to record the night’s game with DVR (hard disk recorder) and not participate in any discussion about the score and win or loss before watching the game.
So I went to the White House for a meeting
Embarrassing hug
As I thought, as soon as I arrived at the scene, I saw many leaders of law enforcement gathering here, including the leaders of the U.S. Congressional Police Department, the leaders of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department and the United States Park Police Department.
The FBI has worked with these agencies many times over the long time, and we are familiar with each other.
We gathered in the oval blue conference room, and the White House staff put many small tables near the wall, with refreshments and soft drinks.
I walked around the room a few times and shook hands with other leaders at the meeting, thanking them for their full cooperation with the FBI.
Before I came, I thought about keeping my distance from Trump, so I carefully observed and calculated which side Mr. President would enter the conference room, and then I walked in the opposite direction.
I walked to the window, outside the South Lawn of the White House and directly opposite the Washington Monument. This is already the furthest place to the entrance in the house. If I hide again, I have to climb out of the window, although as time goes by, I really want to climb out of the window.
I stood farthest away from the door and felt that I could be a little safer.
Next to me is Chief of the Secret Service, Joseph Clancy, who was previously the director of the Secret Service Presidential Security Service.
After retirement, he was rehired by President Obama to lead the work of the Secret Service.
Clancy is very nice, gentle and down-to-earth.
As we were chatting, the door of the conference room opened and several strong beams came in, illuminating the side far away from me. I really guessed which door the president would go, but I was afraid that there would be a lot of media present, because these arc lights that emitted strong lights represented the presence of media and journalists. In my opinion, it is a little unusual for such a low-key law enforcement meeting to invite so many media.
After a while, the president and vice president came in, and a large group of photographers and cameras hula surrounded them.
The president began his speech, and while still talking, he glanced at the whole room and looked at the people in the room. His eyes swept over me and landed on Clancy. He called Clancy’s name and let him go forward.
Clancy didn’t like to appear in the spotlight, but he was invited to walk through the whole conference room and go to the blind spotlights. The president hugged him and made him stand with himself and the vice president. Honestly, this hug is a little out of place, and Clancy is standing there as if he was showing something.
Then, Trump began to scan the whole house again, looking at the left side of the conference room, not looking at me.
I can’t believe my luck. He didn’t see me! How is this possible? Then I thought that I wore a blue suit today, and behind me was dark blue curtains. Although the color of the suit and curtains are not the same, they are also close.
It must be the color of the curtains that protect me! Great! I’m secretly glad that fortunately in this conference room, if it’s in the green or red conference room, I don’t have any suits of those colors at all. It’s really a help!
I took a few steps to the other side of the curtain and stood close to the curtain, trying to disappear from the president’s sight. It is no exaggeration to say that I almost stood close to the blue curtain, hoping to avoid the hug of the new president.
Someone must have given him some wrong advice. It’s too embarrassing to hug in front of the camera.
“Credit pool” threatened
The color of the curtains is indeed an umbrella. But the umbrella will also break.
Trump sweeped the whole room with his eyes as he made a stream of consciousness speech and thought about where he said it. I was not so lucky this time.
He saw me standing by the curtains, and those small eyes with white half-moon marks were locked on me.
“Jim!” Trump shouted, “He is much better known than me.”
In the face of these dense flashes, I think it’s so long to walk from me to Trump.
At that time, Patrice, his wife who was watching TV, pointed to the screen and said, “Jim’s expression must be saying ‘It’s over’ in my heart.”
Indeed, I shouted in my heart: “How could he let me pass? He is the protagonist of this media show! It’s over. This is a disaster. I can’t hug him, never.”
The FBI and the FBI Director are not in any political ranks.
The nightmare of the Hillary email case happened because the FBI wanted to protect its independence and impartiality and the Department of Justice, and to protect our “credit pool”. Trump publicly thanked me as soon as he took office, which is a great threat to our “credit pool”.
The long road was finally over. I walked to Trump and stretched out my right hand to shake hands with him.
We only shake hands, never hug, and we can’t do anything else. The president took my hand tightly and pulled forward. God, he wants to hug me in front of the national media.
My right body exerted my strength, mobilizing the ability to do side flat support and dumbbell lifting over the years, and tried to make myself motionless. As long as he is not much stronger than he looks, he will definitely not be able to pull me.
He is really not strong. I dodged his hug, but in exchange for worse results.
The president leaned over, put his mouth close to my right ear, and said, “I really look forward to working with you.”
Unfortunately, from the perspective of media shooting, he seems to be kissing me, even my children watching this scene in front of TV. The whole world “saw” Donald Trump kissed the man who sent him to the presidency. God, nothing is worse than this.
President Trump gestured and seemed to ask me to stand with him, the Vice President and Clancy.
I stepped back, waved and smiled, saying no. With the expression of “I don’t deserve it”, I said in my heart: “I don’t want to kill myself.” As I thought, I retreated to the other side of the house. I was almost defeated and fled in frustration.
Subsequently, the media withdrew from the conference room, and senior police officials and directors stood in a row to take pictures with the president. Everyone was very quiet. I sneaked out of the back row, walked through the green conference room, entered the hall, and went down the stairs. On the way, I heard someone who said the Green Bay Packers vs. the Atlanta Falcons. It’s really great.
Maybe I think too much about Trump’s exaggerated behavior, but his behavior really worries me.
I know President Trump is different from previous presidents and behaves completely differently. I can’t imagine Barack Obama or George W. Bush made the same move as asking his opponent to take the stage in the competition program.
This is what Trump asked the leaders of law enforcement agencies and national security agencies to do, which worries me very much. It’s like an ancient emperor let his men come forward and kiss his ring to express obedience and loyalty.
However, it is too important that the leaders of law enforcement agencies and national security agencies must not do this, even if it seems to be done.
Trump either doesn’t know this or doesn’t care. But I want him and his team to know this. So, in the next few weeks, I had a life of deep memories and extremely painful.
Sudden dinner
Friday, January 27, 2017 It’s been 21 days since I first met Donald Trump, and I’m back in the White House. That afternoon, I was having lunch in the office as usual, and my assistant Olsiah James turned a phone call.
The call came from the White House. It was a female voice saying that Mr. President wanted to talk to me. Then, Mr. President’s voice came in and asked me, “Would you like to come to the White House for dinner?” This request is a little unusual, but I feel that I have no choice but to answer “Of course, sir”.
Then he asked me, is it okay to 6:00 or 6:30? I replied, “Just think so, I can do it.” He chose 6:30. I hung up and called Patrice and said I couldn’t go with her for Thai food at night.
That afternoon, I met Jim Clapper, the recently retired director of national intelligence. We attended an event in the FBI to award Clapper the title of “Honorary Agent”, and few people won it.
While we were waiting to come to power, I told him that the president invited me to the White House for dinner, and told him that I thought it was a little strange.
He guessed that it might be a group dinner, saying that he had also heard that other people were invited to the White House for dinner. Listening to him, I have relaxed a lot.
It is impossible for the president to have dinner alone with the director of the FBI.
If he wants to do this, someone in the White House must tell him no, at least not from President Nixon and Director Hoover.
I still remember that President Obama asked me to the White House to chat before I officially accepted the appointment and said to me, “Once you take the position of FBI director, we can’t chat like this.”
The FBI director cannot meet with the president in private or chat with the president alone, especially after the 2016 election. Just thinking about it, such an idea will damage the integrity and independent image established by the FBI after years of painstaking operation.
And what I’m afraid of is that Trump just wants to destroy the image of the FBI.
I went from West Executive Street to the White House. The FBI security team parked the car at the entrance where I went to the Situation Room before. I walked in and told the special agent on duty that I was here for the presidential dinner.
The staff on duty looks a little bit awkward. Please sit down and wait for a while.
In a short time, a young girl introduced me. We walked for a long time, walking through the West Wing of the White House, walking across the Rose Garden, and walking to the first floor of the White House. She took me up a staircase I had never seen before, turned up to the green conference room on the main floor.
I waited at the door for a while chatting with two naval waiters outside the door while secretly paying attention to where the other guests of the president were.
Through the gap in the doorway, I saw a table for two, a card written in one seat with the words “Director Comey”, and the other seat must be the president’s.
At 6:30, the president arrived on time to see that I had been waiting at the door.
He said, “I like you like this. I like punctual people. I think people who are leaders should be on time.
He is wearing his usual dark blue suit, white shirt, and a red tie is still a little long. He went into the room, ignored the waiter, and reached out to ask me to sit down.
The table is placed in the middle of the rectangular room. Above the table is a gorgeous chandelier, and the table about one meter wide separates the two of us.
As the name suggests, the green conference room is decorated with many green silk hanging decorations. Later I read that John Adams used it as a bedroom, Thomas Jefferson used it as a dining room, but later presidents usually used it as a living room. That night, the furniture in the room was removed so that we could have dinner here.
Through the president’s right shoulder, I saw two statues behind it, one side by the fireplace, and the white marble mantel was on the statue’s head, which looked very painful.
On my plate is a milky card with four dishes for today’s dinner – salad, Norwegian sea crayfish, parmesan cheese chicken with spaghetti, and vanilla ice cream.
The president picked up his own menu and began to enjoy it.
He praised: “These staff in the White House, they write these things by hand every time.” I nodded and agreed: “Yes, there is a writer.”
With a hint of ridicule at the corners of his mouth, he repeated, “They are handwritten.”
Become “your own person”?
Shortly after dinner began, Trump suddenly asked, “So what do you want to do?”
This question is so strange that I didn’t understand it at first. But he didn’t wait for me to answer and then he knew very well what he wanted to ask.
He wanted to ask me, and I wanted to continue to be the FBI director.
He said that many people want to be the director of the FBI, but he personally thinks highly of me. He said he heard that others also spoke highly of me and knew that I had a high prestige within the FBI.
But nevertheless, if I want to “leave”, he can understand it. After all, I have experienced so much. But then he said that if I really left, it may have an impact on my personal image, because others will think that I may have left because I did something wrong.
He ended up saying he could “make some changes to the FBI” as long as he wanted, but he wanted to know what I thought.
Having said that, I completely understand the situation.
This dinner, the arrangement of this private dinner, and previous Trump’s trials on various occasions whether I will continue to serve as FBI director have convinced me that he wants to establish a mutually beneficial relationship with me.
Someone may have reminded him, or maybe he thinks so himself that he thinks he gave me the job for free, and now he wants something in return. Knowing this, I feel more strange to him. The President of the United States invited me to dinner and discussed my own stay with me?
I replied that he was indeed ready to fire the FBI director, but I want to continue this job I love.
I don’t think I have anything wrong with my duty. I told him that I didn’t intend to return to the government before, but I benefited a lot from this job, and I hope I can fill my term.
Judging from his reaction, he may want to hear me say something else, so I added that I have a little “completely reliable”, but the word here has no political meaning, unlike the political “completely reliable” votes, but refers to me that I will always tell him the truth.
I told the president that I didn’t do anything sneaky, and I didn’t leak information.
But I am not in anyone’s political camp. It is impossible to become the so-called “political ally” in the traditional sense, which is actually the best choice for the president.
The FBI and the Department of Justice investigate the most controversial issues in the country, often involving high-ranking government officials who have the ability to conduct such investigations and draw credible conclusions.
If the Department of Justice and the FBI do not have such a reputation and become the tools of the president to maintain political rule, the president can no longer investigate those disputes within the government, so he has to appoint special prosecutors to investigate.
My explanation obviously did not satisfy him.
After a while, he looked at me seriously and said, “I need loyalty. I hope you can be loyal to me.”
I didn’t talk, didn’t move, and the expression on my face remained unchanged, so the atmosphere calmed down.
What just happened? How can the President of the United States want the director of the FBI to remain loyal to him? This is simply incredible.
If the FBI director is investigating senior officials of the Obama administration, President Obama invites him to dinner alone and discusses with him at the dinner table whether his job can be kept, and then the president said he wants the FBI director to remain loyal to him.
The next day, someone on Fox News must have attacked Obama and demanded his impeachment.
I can never imagine that Obama would do such a thing, George W. Bush can’t either.
In my opinion, such a request can only be made by a gang boss like “Bull Sammy”.
Only the gang boss will ask me at the initiation ceremony if I want to be my own person, and Trump at this time is like a gang boss.
I have never been anyone’s “own person” and will never become anyone’s “own person” in the future.
So at that time, I decided that I must not give the president any hint and make him think that I would agree to his request, so I kept an absolute silence.
We looked at each other for a while, as if it had been a long time, but maybe it was actually only two seconds. I looked at his calm blue eyes and the white half-moon under his eyes.
What I thought of at that time was that the president did not understand the role of the FBI in the lives of the American people, nor did he care about the purposes and guidelines of the FBI that we people have built for more than 40 years.
He really doesn’t know or care at all.
In the early years of my career, when I was young, I never dared to be so silent and let the atmosphere go so cold. I would nod or mutter a few words to express my agreement with each other.
Even if I am 56 years old now, I have experienced many things, and I have been the director of the FBI for four years. When I sit with the president, I still have to do a good job of psychological construction to dare to look him in the eye. I have a voice in my heart: “Don’t move, don’t move.”
This awkward silence was broken by Trump, who looked down at his plate and changed the topic.
My previous silent response did not make him cold. He was not cold at all. We continued to eat, and the atmosphere became relaxed and pleasant.
A one-man show
Our meeting continued – I don’t want to use the word “dialogue”, because the dialogue requires exchanges between the two sides, but our meeting is basically Trump singing a one-man show.
Once again I tried to let the President know that it is important for the FBI to keep a distance from the White House. But it’s a little difficult to interrupt his endless long speeches.
During the next meal, in addition to sometimes stopping for a few bites, he has been talking, from the number of people who visited the inauguration ceremony, to the number of times he appeared in the media during the election, to the viciousness of people in the election.
Next, he began to talk about the decoration of the White House, probably saying something like “This is luxury, I know what luxury is”. I looked up at the two poor statues behind him with mantelpieces overhead, thinking that his words made sense.
Then Trump said that he did not laugh at the poor disabled journalists, that he had not abused the women, and he told me in detail one by one, and talked like he was participating in an oral riddle contest, and the timekeeping kind.
Like a popcorn bean, he will pick up one topic and talk about it. After talking about it, he will change to another irrelevant topic, and occasionally return to the topic just now, and cycle back and forth. But these topics were all his beginnings, he said, and then he stopped this topic and switched to another.
These behaviors are by no means a way for good leaders to establish harmonious relationships with subordinates.
My wife Patrice spent several years trying to tell me, “Honey, these things have nothing to do with you.” She often reminds me that no matter what other people feel – happy, sad, afraid or confused – it has nothing to do with me.
They may have received a gift, lost a friend, got some inspection report, or just couldn’t understand why their lover didn’t return the phone. Those are other people’s lives, other people’s problems, other people’s hopes and dreams, not mine.
Human nature makes it difficult for us (or at least me) to understand these naturally. After all, we can only understand the world through our own experience, which always makes us believe that everything we think, see and hear is related to ourselves. In my opinion, we all do this.
But leaders need to constantly train themselves not to think like this. Such insight is important to leaders.
First of all, it gives you a moment to breathe and believe that you are not that important. Second, realizing that people aren’t always paying attention to you makes you wonder what they’re focusing on. I regard it as the foundation of emotional intelligence, and can imagine the cognition and feeling of another “ego”.
Some people are born with a good feeling for emotional intelligence, but all of us can make up for the defects of emotional intelligence through acquired practice, at least most people can.
And I think no one has ever taught Trump this.
The president basically doesn’t ask some questions that will trigger discussion, but always says some of his views and judgments.
This makes me feel whether my silence means that I have become “everyone” as he puts it, agree that the largest number of people visiting his inauguration is the largest in history, agree that his speech at the inauguration ceremony is unparalleled, agree that he has never abused any women, and so on. These words basically extinguish the possibility of sincere two-way dialogue.
He also told some confusing and unnecessary lies. For example, the president told me that Chief of Staff Raines Pribas did not know that we would meet, but it was a little unlikely.
If the president eats alone with the FBI director, the chief of staff should know. But after eating for a while, Trump casually said, “Reins knows about our dinner.”
He went on to say it on his own, explaining why none of these statements could be true, and finally said that he wanted me to investigate all the allegations against him and prove that they were false.
I said it was up to him to decide. At the same time, I also said that if so, there must be rumors that the FBI is investigating him, but even the investigation is difficult to confirm that nothing has happened. He said I was right, but asked me to think about it again, saying that he would think it over himself.
He also asked me other questions, but it didn’t seem to be brainless. He asked me how Attorney General Eric Holder compares to Loretta Lynch.
I said that Holder’s relationship with President Obama is closer, which has both advantages and disadvantages.
So I took the opportunity to explain to him why the FBI and the Department of Justice should keep a distance from the White House.
I say that this relationship is actually a harmonious contradiction: from ancient times to the present, there have been some presidents who feel that they want to maintain a close relationship with the FBI and the Department of Justice, because the FBI and the Department of Justice are both sources of “trouble”.
But once intimate relationships cross the border, these troubles will be exacerbated, because it will reduce people’s trust in government agencies and weaken people’s recognition of their ability to work.
I don’t know if he understands what I say, and I don’t know that he is not interested in what I say.
“I need loyalty”
As the meal was about to finish, he asked me a question – this was the first time he wanted to know the person who had dinner with him all night. He wants to know how I became the director of the FBI.
In answering this question, I said that when I knew that President Obama’s perception of the position coincided with me, I was really surprised and happy.
At that time, President Obama said that he wanted the director of the FBI to be competent and independent, and did not want the FBI to be involved in politics.
He just wanted to sleep peacefully at night, knowing that the FBI was functioning normally and protecting every American citizen.
I was thinking at that time that my first conversation with President Obama, both in terms of discussion and in the form of discussion, was very different from tonight.
After listening to me, President Trump said that I was very happy to stay with him, because many people around him think highly of me, even the Secretary of Defense and Justice he chose.
Then he returned to the topic of loyalty and said again, “I need loyalty.”
I paused again and said, “I will always be honest, know everything, say everything.”
He paused and then continued, “This is what I want, honest loyalty.” Obviously, in his opinion, what I said is to reach a certain win-win “deal” on behalf of us.
I stopped again and said, “Know everything, say everything.” I don’t want to go on. I really want to get rid of this deadlock.
I said to myself, I have done everything I can do, I can say everything I can say, and I can never say it more clearly.
At that moment, I suddenly realized that this “leader of the free world”, who boasts of being a great business tycoon, does not understand what leadership is.
A good leader never asks his subordinates to remain loyal to him.
Only those who lead others by making people afraid, like American gang leaders, ask subordinates to remain loyal to their personal.
Good leaders care about their subordinates and teach them to treat others honestly and do things with dignity; good leaders promise a lot of money and dare to sacrifice; good leaders are very confident, so they can be polite to corporals and treat others humbly; good leaders have self-knowledge, know what their strengths are, and are afraid of themselves.
Problems caused by limitations.
They know that they can’t always understand the problem, always find the reason, always see the truth of the world, and always be blinded. They can tell the truth and know that only when they hear the truth can they make a wise judgment.
In order to obtain the truth, they create a high standard of environment.
They know what makes the team last and what makes the team achieve outstanding achievements. They know that the most effective way to achieve this is “love”.
At the end of the dinner, each of us had two ice cream balls, and then I went home.
When I got home, I wrote a memo for this dinner, and then I wrote a memo after every single meeting with Trump.
I have never done this before, nor have I made a memo as the director of the FBI after meeting with others.
But after meeting with Trump, I have to do this.
There are many reasons. One is that we will discuss some topics about the FBI’s responsibilities and the president himself, and after watching Trump’s election process, I am very suspicious of whether this person is honest or not.
I have to protect the FBI and protect myself, because I can’t hope that he will speak frankly about our conversation.
After writing, I printed two memos, one shared with the FBI leadership team, let my chief of staff file and keep it, and the other I locked it in my home. I also locked one of them in my home for two reasons.
One reason is that I think memos are my personal property, just like a diary, that needs to be kept. Another reason is that I think it is necessary to record the process of dealing with the president, and I don’t know which day it will be used.
