The devastating testimony of the former FBI director exposes the threats to American democracyPresident Donald Trump’s dealings with James Comey,the former director of the FBI, make a anecdote which demands the talents of one of the remarkable American crime novelists. It would open with a scene beyond most fiction writers imagination: a conversation between the director of the FBI and the director of national intelligence as to which of them would contain to break to the president-elect the existence of an intelligence dossier setting out with unforgettable details all the blackmail material which the Russian government might contain on him. Mr Comey drew the short straw. The conversation that followed in which Mr Trump angrily denied everything, and as he has done ever since – so shocked the very experienced FBI director that he emerged from it determined to record every detail he could remember. This was unprecedented. On Thursday he told the Senate why. “I knew there might come a day when I might need a record to defend not just myself but the FBI and our integrity and … independence.”“I was honestly concerned that he might lie approximately the nature of our assembly,” Mr Comey told the Senate intelligence committee. It was what he came to know personally of the president’s character which led him to write his notes of every assembly. Of all the shocking things to emerge, this willingness to employ the verb lie” is one of the most surprising. Mr Comey is not some startled fawn who has wandered into the tiger enclosure where real politicians work. He is himself a formidable bureaucratic politician. Such people contain many more subtle ways to say an enemy is lying, or most of which Mr Comey also deployed in his testimony. His repeated employ of phrases like “I don’t mediate I can answer that in an open session” is razor work worthy of Francis Urquhart.
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Source: theguardian.com