Comey talked about his reasoning in dealing with Hillary Clinton, about the investigation into White House attorney Vince Foster’s death during Bill Clinton’s first administration and his views on former Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Below is one of the exchanges, and here is a link to the entire transcript.
George Stephanopoulos: "Doesn't that cast a cloud over the attorney general, an unjustified cloud over the attorney general?"
James Comey: "In a way, yeah. I mean, I like Loretta. As I said, I respect her even today. And so in a way, it's unfair to her. But when you're in the business of running a Justice Department institution, what people think matters. Public faith and confidence is everything to the Justice Department.
“And so whether or not it was true, the fact that it would be out there and allow people to argue that something terrible was going on in this investigation cut in favor of more transparency. I'm not saying it's true. But because it will undermine confidence in our work, the way to react to that is show people your work. And again, Justice Department policy allows for this. What made it different was the separation between the FBI and the Justice Department. Now, that-- of course, that material -- I'm talking about it carefully because it's still classified, that was just one brick in the load. The major brick in the load happened just before.”
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