The witness Trisha Newbold was afraid of retaliation. Shes crying out. Shes begging us to do something. You issue a big memo and a big press release after interviewing one witness. Ive been on this Committee Ten years and never seen anything like this. Oh, please. I mean, every day that we go on without getting to the bottom of this matter is a day that we are putting hundreds if not potentially thousand of americans at risk. I mean, really. What is next, putting Nuclear Codes in instagram dms . We remember going to talk with the attorney for whistleblower Trisha Newbold later this hour. First though, house judiciary chairman jerry nadler is planning to authorize a subpoena tomorrow to get access to the full unredacted Mueller Report. Of course at the heart of the case over obstruction is the former fbi director fired by President Trump, james comey. He led the investigation into alleged links between the Trump Campaign and russia, and he says that hes confused by the barr left and muellers decision to punt on obstruction. Lets go live now to christiane amanpour. Now all of this is detailed in his book a higher loyalty and the painback version comes out next month so let us now get some answers from the man himself, the former fbi director james comey joins me here in washington. Welcome to the program. Great to be with you. So can i just ask you, because yesterday which was april fools day you caused quite a stir saying and tweeting im in. You know, somebody in the middle needs i mean, do you need a stress buster . I mean, we all need to laugh from time to time. Especially today if you dont laugh youll cry so i was trying to be fun an prank people on april fools day. A big tradition in the states. Did anybody take you serious successfully. I dont know for sure. A whole lot of reporters called and getting me to confirm it and blaming their editors like they were in on it. You are given to quite dramatic interventions. Right after mueller dropped his report, and we heard the summary from the attorney general, you did tweet a pretty interesting picture of yourself in the woods, and you said so many questions. That was more than a week ago. Do you feel that youve had those questions answered in any more detail in the intervening days . No. Maybe with the exception of my question about will we get full transparency. I think i see more promise signs that have in the recent letter that the attorney general sent to congress. He says that hes going to put it out with some redactions by midapril, and the thing is hes also talked about these redactions and he says hell redact secret grand jury testimony, material the Intelligence Community identifies as potentially compromising, sensitive sources and methods, material that could affect other ongoing matters, information that would unduly infringe on personnel privacy and reputational interests of peripheral third parties. Democrats fear that there will be an attempt to redact issues and elements that might damage the president or be uncomfortable for him. What your perspective, do you have confidence that enough of this will come out to satisfy everybody who wants to see it . I cant say for sure until we see it. Those are reasonable concerns for democrats to have, but billback, our attorney general, deserves the benefit of the doubt. Give him a chance to show us what he feels like he cant show us. I have to imagine that former director mueller wrote the report with an eye towards it being public some day, so i cant imagine a lot needs to be cut off of it, but lets wait and see. The attorney general deserves that chance. What is normal redactions in cases like this . I mean, you must have seen a lot of this in your tenure and in all your positions. I mean, you know, the jokes are that it will all be redacted except for a couple of words. You just said give him the benefit of the doubt. What should one expect beyond what he just said . You should expect a good faith effort by the department of justice to protect things in those categories, you dont want to reveal classified information. You want to damage ongoing investigations and you dont want to smear people who had no part in the investigation and thats all easy to figure out if you know the case as mule ear people do. And the democrats promising to subpoena a full unredacted version, do you think they will win, that and should they and congress and Elections Officials be allowed to see it with no redactions . I dont know what would happen in a battle of speech a. I do know theres a long tradition of sharing classified sensitive material with the leaders in congress. Chairs of relevant committees, so its possible youll see one version go to most of the house and the public and a more full version go to selected leaders. Youvguess, look, where do ye down on the immediate sort of monday morning quarterbacking or analyzeding of the little we know of the Mueller Report . There are some who said well, you know, he punted. We dont know whats going on. There are others who say, you know, the attorney general took that that summary of his and scored, quote, a idt. What should we make of the fallout in the few days since the report has been, you know, delivered to the Justice Department . Well, monday morning quarterbacking to borrow your term is a natural thing. Theres been a whole lot of it done about decisions ive made. What we have to do is just keep an open mind and wait for the details. The attorney gene American People of the case but showies his work. Why did you make the decisions you made . Why did you handle it the way that you did . Im confident that he understands this. Hes an institutionalist and loves the department of justice and the only thing he those lose is his reputation and he deserves the benefit of the doubt and us uncharacteristically giving him some patience to show us. You worked for Robert Mueller. Hes a big presence in your life. You may have called him your mentor. Do were you surprised by what we know of what he came down with on the conspiracy and on the obstruction of justice, lets take the conspiracy first, where he said could not establish he didnt use the word collusion but conspiracy or crime in that regard. Yeah. Again, all i snow from the attorney generals letter that he could not the evidence did not establish a conspiracy and he defines conspiracy as a tacit or expressed agreement between an american and the russians. It doesnt surprise me. I didnt know what the result was going to be. Thats the reason we were investigating it when i got fired. I didnt know where it would end up. Im confident that if he reached that conclusion, thats reached in good faith, but ill be very interested as all of us will to see the details that have. You have said because many, including the president , called this for a long time a witch hunt, a hoax and all the rest of it. To those of his supporters who might say, look, it amounted to a hill of beans what we know so far. This never should have happened. Whats your answer to that . Two things. First, take aoohat happened to mueller and the mean being corrupt and evil and a nest of deep state traitors that they reached a conclusion that the president is the happy with. Just dont move front that. Your president tried to burn down the department of justice and take a look in the mirror and ask what you have learned from that experience, and second you have fired all of us if we didnt investigate what we learned in the summer of 2016, when we got smoke, not fire, but smoke that americans might have assisted the russian effort. We had to investigate, that and no serious person could think otherwise, and it was done in a serious way, and it reached a serious result, and now we all ought to get transparency on. So you were dish mean, you started as fbi director the the investigation into the russian interference in the election. It started as a counterintelligence investigation, right . Yes. Did you think that it would move into the criminal area, and i guess even on the counterintelligence, how worried were you and do you remain about the threat that russia continues to pose to Democratic Institutions, to american elections in the future . It started as a counterintelligence investigation, but every counterintelligence investigation potentially has a criminal element because if you discover someone was working with a foreign adversary to damage the United States, that is an important intelligence finding but it could also be evidence of a crime so they run together and so it was important to do, important to look at. Both from what should we know about what the adversary is doing, but also were americans involved, and remember this, there was a massive effort by the russians to interfere in this election, to hurt one candidate and to health over. The good news about what the attorney general said is thats been verified. There was such a thing. It wasnt a hoax. What we had to figure out starting in the summer of 16 was were any americans part of that, and we had good reason to think that, so the counterintelligence investigation had to be done. Apparently reached important conclusion, and i dont know what they say about the continuing threat. Look, russia succeeded in 2016 beyond its wildest dreams in its effort to damage our democracy, especially they will be back, especially given that the president not only hasnt criticized their effort, hes denied it. I saw some fool a majority of reasons cans dont think that the russians intervened in the election in 2016. Thats crazy stuff, but that tells the russians youll get away with it in 2020 so they will be back. Again, its almost difficult its actually difficult to have a conversation until we know whats in the whole report but i want to the ask you this because you heard many, many commentator, you know, former Administration Officials basically accusing the president of potentially being a russian asset. Now that youve seen the little that youve seen and the very important nut graphs, is it an important thing that america can see that so far the evidence suggests, according to Robert Mueller, that there wasnt a crime of collusion and conspiracy committed, or at least not enough to establish that . Theres two separate pieces to my reaction to that. The first is yes, its a very good thing that the special counsel appears to have concluded there isnt sufficient evidence to establish any americans were part of this effort. I dont care what party youre in. That should be good news to you as an american citizen. Thats that question. I dont know what the special counsels work was with respect to the continuing threat and whether there is some counterintelligence risk associated with this president or this administration and russia. As i understood his mandate is was there what do you know about the russian interference in 2016 and whether the americans were involved . I dont think he looked im not suggesting theres something there, but i dont think he looked at the question about is there something about this president s finances or personal affairs or something that creates a situation where hes reluctant to criticize russia . I dont think that was his mandate. I dont know the answer to that question. I ask it just because ive been struck during my time as fbi director and struck since about the president s reluctance to criticize russia, even if private, but i dont know if thats a question thats going to be answered by muellers work. You think we might never know . We might never know. On the obstruction of justice case which, again, everybody wants to get to the bottom of because in muellers own words, repeated by the attorney general william barr, can i not yet establish i cannot establish a crime, but im not exonerating the president or the president is not being exonerated. Would you agree obviously that the obstruction of justice question centers on you yourself and your firing. At least in part. Yeah, i think again, i dont know because i havent seen the work, that two of the episodes that involved me according to press reports were the subject of investigation. The question and direction by the president on valentines day of 2017 that we drop our investigation of michael flynn, and second his firing me and then telling the tv interviewer and i think the russians themselves in the oval office that he did it because of the russia investigation. I dont know where he ends up on those things. I didnt know the answer whether that was obstruction when i was director so i dont know what hes found. It appears hes found on some episodes that he investigated and it could be the ones that involved me, that theres substantial evidence that incullcates the president and theres evidence on the other side and for some reason he didnt call it. Hand what is your view of the fact that mueller didnt call that and some said punt it had to the attorney general, maybe punt it had to cook. What is your view . Should he have done given husband Counsel Title and his remitt and the parameters . I dont know and i cant tell from just what the attorney general said. Thats one of the pieces of work that we have to see. Why it was done that way . These are serious people and as with the attorney general bob mueller is entitled to the ben of the doubt but i cant tell from here because the design of special counsels is to release the Political Leadership of making those kinds of calls so that folks dont have doubts about whether it was done in an apolitical way, so there must be some very good reason why bob mueller did it this way. It could be there was some legal question that only attorney general could resolve tore could be he intended the attorney general just to pass the whole thing to congress and not decide it. I just cant tell. Well, on that issue, lawyer George Conway who wrote in the Washington Post shortly after it was dropped, its hard to escape the conclusion that mueller wrote the report to allow the American People and congress to decide what to make of the facts and thats what should and must happen right now. Do you think that the that it will be made public, and we touched on it a little bit before, but to the satisfaction of the Political Class and the public. Those are two different things. I think youll have transparency that satisfies the broad swath of the american public. Partisans i think do you think there will be transparents . I do. To satisfy the people. I do. I think republicans are now against transparency. I think if im keeping it right and democrats for it. It used to be different about that. Forget them. The American People will get substantial transparency. Im optimistic about this. So the issue apparently around obstruction of justice is intent and whether there can be, you know, corrupt intent, and you all know that william barr wrote a letter to congress in which he said in cataloguing the president s actions, many of which took place in public view, the report identifies no actions that in our judgment cops tuite obstructive conduct and had a nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding and were done with corrupt intent, so the president says hes not guilty of conspireing with the russians. Mueller hasnt been able to accuse him of that and charge him. Thats possible that there was no corrupt intent, therefore. I think a prosecute orthowould express it this way. There was insufficient evidence of corrupt intent. I couldnt see inside his head when he told knee drop the flynn investigation. Was he doing it out of a humanitarian gesture for flynn, he felt sorry for the guy, he wanted a darker intention, that he wanted to keep this away from him in some fashion. I just dont know. Its interesting that you bring that up because obviously a lot of his supporters will say that. Ive spoken to people who are on his side and his advisory cabinet if you like who say that that you dont go public if youre not ready to make a prosecution and in fact you did go public just a very short time before the election in 2016 with yet another issue on those emails that you said you were going to look at them again. Do you accept that that was busting a norm, and do you think that maybe you shouldnt have done it. I know you talked about this a lot. Look, i get why people asked. It involves the collision of to you norms. I totally agree with the norm that if we can avoid it we take no action in the runup to the election that would have an impact on the election. Ive believed that my whole career and i also believe were honest and candid with tribunals and offer testimony. If it turns out its false we fix it, so what do you do 11 days before an election when you found a choice between those two norms. Do you break one and speak one that might have an impact on the election or do you console that what you told congress all summer long and that people were relying on that this thing is done is not true and and by the way i thought about it essentially lied to congress and the American People. Good reasonable people can see it that way. It wasnt a decision to take a flame thrower to norm but trying to figure now the an agonizing situation which is the least terrible option, and even in hindsight, as painful as it is, i think i chose the least terrible option. I rather would not have been involved frankly, but there we were. Clearly the democrats dont believer that and Hillary Clinton herself doesnt believe it was the least terrible on, i spoke to her several months after she lost and this is what she told me about your intervention. It wasnt a perfect campaign. There is no such thing. But i was on the way to winning until a combination of jim comeys letter on october 28th and russian wikileaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off, and the evidence for that intervenings event i think is compelling, persuasive. Do you ever thing that you might be responsible for the election of President Trump . Does that keep you up at night . Sure, and i hope some day somebody proves that what we did was irrelevant, but as i said when we were making the choice between the two paths we but it kind of it kind of was irrelevant because you came out and said its fine. Theres nothing there are. Well. It turned out that it didnt change our judgment with respect to secretary clinton. T