I can still hear ringing in my tired teenage ears her voice as she snapped open the shades every single morning and said, rise and shine and show the world what you re made of. at the college of william and mary in virginia, comey shows the world an unusual set of interests, majoring in chemistry and religion. i was in the fraternity of jocks, jim was not. he was in kind of the tough guy football fraternity and i was in the library. in college he meets his future wife, patrice failor, who nominates him for dorm president, his only experience with elective office. when he graduates, comey attends law school at the university of chicago. there are a lot of people at law school called gunners because they re constantly raising their hands. that wasn t jim comey.
In his book, comey says the he wants to build a relationship but not necessarily to protect the country but maybe to co-opt comey and sort of win him over. then comes their most contested encounter. after a meeting at the white house with attorney general jeff sessions, comey says the president asks everyone to clear the room so he can speak with comey alone. jim comey looks sort of imploringly over his shoulder at the attorney general saying, don t leave me alone with him, please! something terrible is about to happen. he has a premonition. what happens, according to comey, is that trump asks him to back off the investigation of his national security adviser michael flynn, whom he fired a day earlier for lying about his conversations with the russian ambassador. the request raises questions. was trump asking comey to move past the flynn
Thing with trump and russia is a maid-up story, it s an excuse by the democrats for having lost an election. reporter: a day later the president address his former fbi director via twitter, james comey better hope there are no tapes of our conversations. for the president to threaten tapes that don t seem to exist and if they probably did exist would back up jim comey s side of the story is intimidation but what he s trying to do. reporter: according to the report the tweet forces his hand. he will make the conversation public by giving it to a friend, danielle richmond. i think from the get-go he thought it was imperative to protect the bureau and insure there would be no obstruction of the russia investigation. insure the memo he gave me was unclassified. the contents of the memo are
that hearing is a turning point. trump, we know, demands loyalty over everything else and in fact had asked jim comey for loyalty. in trump s mind, apparently loyalty means standing up and saying that the sky is red because i, the president, have said the sky is red. and comey, like most honorable public servants, wasn t willing to do that. comey tells trump he is not the subject of the investigation but says the president still asks him to lift the cloud of the russia probe. in the end, the decision is not comey s to make. comey is out in los angeles. he s talking to some staff there. and he looks up and sees on the television in the back of the room the breaking news alert that he s been fired. he says, that s funny. his aides come up to him and say, actually, sir, this is not a joke.
Families at the u.s. border. calling for a quick end to the zero tolerance crack down. president trump plans to meet with house gop members on tuesday to talk m graimmigratio. the first lady is releasing a statement. for now. back to headliners. now back to headliners: james comey. to know jim comey is also to know his fierce independence and deep integrity. when robert mueller s term as fbi director is up in 2013, president barack obama chooses james comey to replace him. it s seen as an inspired choice by barack obama. he s picking a republican, willing to stand up. comey is confirmed by a vote of 93-1 in the senate. he takes control of the bureau in fall of 2013.