Leadership – and particularly transparency – have been at the heart of Comey’s professional interests for decades, a personal study shaped by his time at the Justice Department as well as the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, which practices, as he says, “a culture of complete transparency and honesty,” and whose founder Ray Dalio penned his own bestselling business leadership treatise last year. “I said nothing about my shirt, but people noticed,” Comey writes. He explains that his first action on his first day as FBI director – wearing a blue shirt – was meant to make clear he departed from Mueller, who always wore a white shirt and insisted his leadership team did the same.
Mueller, for his part, would edit his speeches as FBI director to excise the phrase “I,” striking it throughout a text and replacing it with “we.”Ĭomey’s tale is about the “I,” not the “we.” In fact, the gregarious Comey – quick with a laugh and a 1,000-watt smile – explains in detail how different his leadership style was from the strait-laced former Marine Robert Mueller he replaced. Similarly, having now read Higher Loyalty, it is impossible to imagine Robert Mueller writing the book that Comey did, one that places himself at the center of the drama and in which all the supporting players exist as incomplete stubs – with one notable exception, the “slightly orange” man with “impressively coiffed, bright blond hair which upon close inspection look to be all his,” who would ultimately fire him. Whether or not the IG report represents the full truth – and there’s good reason to believe it doesn’t – there likely will be little love lost between McCabe and Comey, who provided the key testimony to the inspector general that led to McCabe’s firing last month just hours before he was to retire with his full pension. The former FBI director’s memoir has been highly anticipated for months – each pending media interview trumpeted anew – and news from the book happened to coincide with the release Friday by the Justice Department’s inspector general of a harsh report accusing Comey’s deputy, McCabe, with lying to Comey and to investigators. James Comey’s A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, will be officially released on Tuesday, but the juicy bits began to leak Thursday.
The president made that accusation explicit on Friday, tweeting “McCabe is Comey!!” But actually, the 48 hours that unfolded on Thursday and Friday laid bare just how different the three men truly are: In fact, it seems increasingly clear that perhaps the only thing they really share is that all three are lifelong Republicans. One of the odder bits of the public controversy surrounding President Trump and the Russia investigation is how Robert Mueller, James Comey and Andrew McCabe have become lumped together, as if all three G-men were the same.
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