>> here are some of the current best-selling nonfiction books according to washington d.c.'s politics and prose bookstore. topping the list, pulitzer prize winning author isabel wilkerson explores what she calls a hidden caste system in the united states. then he first weimar the presidential memoir a promise land, former president barack obama reflects on his life and political career. after that and keep sharp neurosurgeon sanja gupta offers advice on how to maintain brain health. that's filed by the late basketball coach john thompson's autobiography, i came as a shadow. and wrapping up our look at some of the best selling books according to washington d.c. politics and prose bookstore, is twilight of democracy pulitzer prize winning historian and on the rise of nationalism and authoritarianism around the world. some of these authors have appeared on book tv and you can watch the programs online

booktv.org. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ spigot good afternoon. and welcome to washington post live. i am carol emma national investigative reporter here at the "washington post". and i am privileged to have with me today former fbi

director jim comey. welcome jim, we are going to talk about your book, saving justice truth, transparency and trust. but i'm really glad you could join us. subject thanks for having me carol it's good to be with you. sputnik i think this is our second time in this kind of forum. but a lot of things have happened since we last saw each other. and i think we have to immediately go to those astonishing few days that we just experienced. let's go right twosome questions about the siege on the capitol. tell me first off, what was your reaction, when he saw this unfolding on january 6. >> i had two different reactions. one is i hope every human being watching it has as i was sickened to see the symbol, this reality of our democracy under armed assault.

we have the fbi saying that they got a warning the day before but they didn't really put in people's faces. what's your thought about that failure? >> it's hard to answer from this vantage point from the outside and without a copperheads of investigation. but it seems that it's not about a failure of imagination, which is what the 9/11 commission besides the government for after 9/11. that we hadn't envisioned the way in which the attack might come because this threat was so obvious and so transparent to the world that it wasn't a

failure of imagination, it's just a failure. at the why behind that, why the capitol didn't have the perimeters it needed and officers and troops it needed really has to be figured out through investigation, i can't tell from here who knew what, when, who made what decisions based on information. but we need to find the answers because this threat is not going away. >> one thing that ties your book so cleanly to this experience is that you view many of the things you are struggling with, the failure on the hill, and to notice this threat, was the disturbing instigation of the president with this group. do you feel there is a large group of people in law enforcement and the fbi and the police forces that protect us that didn't view this as a serious threat because these were white conservative pro-blueline followers and

friends? >> i don't know, i sure hope that's not the case but it's a question that has to be asked, was it something about the way these people looked that they are not people of color, to cause law enforcement to pick about them differently, i don't know. i hope not but you have to ask and that's gotta be a part of the examination we have to do. >> there have been some discussions about the insider threats, lawmakers, potentially aiding or encouraging donald trump junior, rudy giuliani, and the president himself encouraging this march, this storm. if you are in charge, would you be looking at whether or not they could be charged with the federal crime of inciting riots? >> isi would be and i assume the fbi and u.s. attorneys office in dc are doing that. looking not just at the point

of attack, who attacked a law enforcement officer, who killed a law enforcement officer, who was involved in that assault, but who was part of it maybe not physically but by directing it, funding it, organizing it, and inciting it. you have to take all that seriously. it's not just about what happened on that hill. >> if you were the fbi director today, are there other steps you feel would be important and are there things you think we should be prepared for as the public to see in the coming days and months? >> you'd want to be doing two things at the same time which i assume they are doing, looking backwards at the attack and trying to lock up everybody who participated, understand who corrupted, funded, who conspired as part of that, also looking forward because the threat is ongoing, to what do we know about threats not just to the inauguration but to other parts of the country from people motivated by this sense

they need to bring violence to the democracy in this way. they have the resources to do both but i assume around-the-clock bureau is squeezing sources and various collection points to understand the threat going forward and find evidence to unwind one what went on before. >> host: jim, i want to move now before we get to her book, to a fifth character, essential to your first book, he is a key character in your second book "saving justice". that's donald trump. how much do you put this at his feet? the undermining of faith in an institution you revere, and honestly that i revere, i have covered this department and the ausa's that work in the trenches, how much of this do you put solely at donald trump's feet or do you think there is something else bigger than that? >> i think donald trump both

reflects and furthers a trend in this country, he didn't start it but it's become the prime mover in the last four years, five years to destroying norms and institutions he sees as threats and trying to destroy the idea that the truth can be found at all. he is to blame for the flamethrower that's been taken to the institutions of justice over the last four years. he's got a lot of acolytes around him that echoed the lies, they been heard thousands of times by american citizens but donald trump is the one who's tried to burn down the justice department. with help from people like bill barr, but to do that because he is saw as a threat. for the same reason he tried to burn down the media and portrayed as an enemy of the people. >> host: i think about some of the things you read about in both of these books, moments when the president did not face consequences, moments when leaders who could have made a difference didn't step into the fray, what is our hope for

returning to normalcy in the next presidency or the presidency after that? if justice is so easily undermined, if the independent objectivity has so many forces working against it, if donald trump who wasn't exactly the most organized tactician could accomplish this, what hope do we have going forward? >> we have hope because we've done it in the past, never more clearly than after watergate, which i wrote about in the book, when the department of justice had become a tool of nixon's partisan attack on many parts of our democracy. we are reliving that history in a way, a different very demagogic leader who has poisoned the minds of millions of american with his lies but the path back is similar. internally we just need the right leadership from the department of justice and i think the president has selected as his attorney general nominee the perfect

sort of person for that role. that's actually going to be easier to restore the department internally, the harder part is going to be winning back the trust of those who have been surrounded in a fog of lies over the last few years about the fbi, department of justice, that is hard to change because you can't get people out of a fog of fraud by yelling at them and telling them that their facts are wrong. you have to do it slowly by showing them what competent honest leadership looks like, i'm optimistic the new president will do that, and his attorney general and the other leaders he selecting but that takes time. that's a much longer-term struggle even in locking up the ããtrying to tear down our united states capitol. >> i really like that conversation and we will get to that in the future, as you call it the long climb up and back. let me ask you a few more

things about but donald trump. you said you don't think he should be impeached, new presidency. i go to consequences. why do you view that as unemployment? why do you view the issue of consequence as secondary? >> first i think you miss a spell, i definitely thought he should be impeached, i think he should be convicted by the senate and ideally her before he leaves office of his remote but at a minimum so he's banned from other further office. i also think the local prosecutors in new york investigating him for the fraudster he was before he was elected president should continue their work. and he should be sent to the new york state jail for crimes. what the harder question for me, i wrote about it when i finish the book in the fall, it was a hard question then, even harder now, is it in the national interest to give donald trump center stage in our national life in washington

dc through the drama of united states versus donald trump? a prosecution that would take years to complete and that would pull the spotlight away from the competent honest leadership of new president biden and put it right where we don't want it to be in the life that donald trump so craves. it's really hard call because i think it's important to vindicate the rule of law and pursue a corrupt executive but here i actually think it's close but the better call is likely to be don't give him that platform, let him go to mar-a-lago and stand on the lawn and yell at cars in his bathrobe turn off the lights, hold him accountable to the impeachment and conviction process and local prosecution let joe biden go about the work of healing, literally, our sick and spiritually sick country. >> host: thank you for clarifying, i would also add that it's pretty unusual for somebody in your history and position, the positions you held, to let what you view to be criminal, a person at the

center of a multi-your conspiracy to let that person go. let me ask you about self pardoning. the president as we reported has been considering this, there has been aids around him telling him not to do it that it will be crazy, do you think it will stand up in court? >> guest: i don't know, it has not been settled, there is no court decision on that question. i think the better would be the legal scholar argument, that they ãparty would not be affected. the only way to figure out whether that's true or not would be for the department of justice to charge him after he attempts to pardon himself and have a court decide that. i know our president is not a genius but even he should know to figure out that he pardons himself he will provoke the department of justice almost into being required to prosecute him so that we establish that a corrupt chief

executive can't pardon himself. i think i said this before, i just want to be clear, i think donald trump lawns in jail, the hard question for me, is there a national interest that's better served by not pursuing that incarceration at the federal level in washington dc? i could easily be wrong about that but i'm trying to figure out what's the best thing for the country, despite my feelings toward this corrupt chief executive. >> host: understood. in the question about letting bad guys go, the president has pardoned a host in recent days of white-collar criminals primarily, operators or contractors i guess you would say in the murder of several foreign national children, women, he's pardoned largest medicaid fraudster in u.s. history. tell me how that hits the doj and fbi workforce, who clearly must've spent some time on those cases and may have been decades of work when you put

all the people together. >> guest: it sickens them, and concerns for them that were led by a criminal chief executive without any regard, not just for their work but how the rule of law is perceived and how it lived in the united states of america. it's disgusting. but they also feel powerless to do anything about it given the nature of the pardon power. >> host: we talked a little bit about the long and steep road back, what donald trump reflects and instigates and insights in our country about this trust, and distrust in honorable public servants trying to do their job. tell me a little bit about your thoughts on merrick garland and obviously an honorable guy, he was cheered by republicans and democrats when he was nominated to the federal bench. is viewed by people of different parties as a noble

person but he is been away from the justice department for a long time. you see the person that's going to be able to show his work and went back the trust of this group the american public that is so distrusting? >> i think so. i wrote in the book that i thought we needed a new attorney general in the model of the one that the united states president shows the last time that the department of justice needed saving. that was right after watergate. after watergate in 1974 president ford chose the president of the university of chicago, guide named edward leavy, people couldn't figure out his politics, he'd never been involved in politics and that was the reason he was the perfect person he stopped he was apart from the political warfare in the united states. he had been the department of justice in decades. very similar situation with

judge garland, who i don't know personally but who my reputation is that kind of person who's outside of politics, he knows the department in the way that matters, he knows it's values, he's a very smart person, he will get up to speed quickly on modern challenges and modern techniques. he knows what matters most that the department must be seen as a "other" in american life. it has to have a blindfold on the statue of lady liberty and not a maga hat. and must make decisions that people can trust are not with regard to race or creed or color or partisan affiliation. i think he's the kind of person to do that. >> host: you worked with sally yates who was a contender as well, during very tense time the first weeks and months of the trump presidency for both of you. you both ended up getting removed from your position.

if she had been named ag would you also think she would have a road forward? do you think she would have been an inspired pic? >> i think sally would have been a strong attorney general, maybe still will be at some point. a person of deep principle and integrity who knows the department and its work really well. i suspect a challenge for her nomination at this point is that she spoke at the democratic national convention. it would be harder to say that this is a pic entirely outside of politics but she is somebody who ought to have a bright future in leadership in our justice department. >> host: in my reporting, sources have told me that a series of federal prosecutors had their resignation papers ready if donald trump had been reelected. how broken is our system if federal prosecutors who do view themselves as objective ãã were at that stage? were ready to throw in the towel? >> guest: it just underscores the damage of this president and his second attorney general bill barr did to that institution that it could rain the morale of people who have devoted their lives to try to

do good to the institution of justice. it shows you how consequences consequences of this last ãã we came very close to a situation where a whole lot of good people would've headed to the exits. now i hope the reverse is going to happen to stop a whole lot of good people did not come into government or left government after donald trump was elected president. we need them back at all levels and all parts of the government. >> you write with a lot of passion about chris ray, the man who replaced you. you feel he has a job now to speak in a way that he was prevented from speaking. how worried should we be in the american public that chris ray was constrained from speaking the truth as the fbi director. and his only mission was to cower and try to protect his people, try to protect the mission they were pursuing.

and not speak up to the president, speak truth to power. how worried should we be that that happened? >> guest: i don't think you should worry about the person, chris ray is a person of integrity and great inner strength. we should all worry about the circumstances in which he found himself, which is needed to protect an institution and rule of law in the face of a lawless dishonest president. i don't doubt we make tactical judgments about when to press against attorney general bill barr or when to press against the president and that's not of his doing. i think he was doing wise things and being careful about how he approached it but that to me speaks to why it was such an enormous mistake for this country to have a corrupt chief executive. that's not chris ray's fault. >> are been asking you a lot of questions about your book especially the end of your book. when you talk a little bit about the beginning of your book, i want to hear some of

these examples, you talk about key moments where you had to basically grow in the job as a prosecutor. as a baby prosecutor and not so baby prosecutor. talk about your choice in prosecuting mr. sleet? >> i was a junior prosecutor in the southern district of new york and i was assigned a drug case that was ready for trial and there were two defendants. one of whom was clearly guilty and deeply involved in this kilo procaine drug conspiracy and the other, a guy named henry was a tangential figure in this case, all he had done was introduce the dea and informant to the source and doesn't appear he got paid for it, he wasn't involved in the deal, it was a situation where he was technically guilty because he knew the dea source was looking to buy drugs so he introduced us to a fellow colombian who he knew was a drug dealer and that was it for him. when i got the case i saw that

he was guilty but i felt deeply uncomfortable with it, kind of as a moral matter. it didn't seem right, this guy was going to go to jail for a long stretch of time and he was so low on the totem pole, not even on the poll i went to my supervisor and i said i just feel wrong about this. they asked does he technically meet the requirements of the statute and i said yes. they said, it's your job to prosecute it. they ordered me to prosecutor. i didn't have the courage, the wisdom, to say no i'm not going to do that. i became part of the department of justice only to do those things i believe were right and this feels wrong to me. either reassign it or let me discuss the case against henry. instead i went and i tried the case against these two guys on the jury convicted, clearly guilty guy and the jury i don't know what they read in me but i did my job as ordered and they acquitted henry, as they should

have. they were a voice of american justice, they were wires or maybe a little stronger than i could be and i learned a searing lesson from that that part of my oath was never to make an argument i didn't believe in. never to take a position i wasn't comfortable with and to advocate for justice because my client was not the dea agents on the case, my client was not rudy giuliani who was then the u.s. attorney looking to run for mayor so there was no way they were going to want to dismiss drug cases in the bronx, my client was this idea of justice. it was a painful lesson to me. one i remember even though i'm an old guy, so i wrote about it. >> host: i do enjoy a lot of the parts of your book where you take us behind the scenes, in cases that i either was tracking or writing about myself as a reporter and didn't know everything you are experiencing in real-time. tell me what the quandaries were you ããin the case for

you of the jordanian suspect, the judge was saying you didn't handle properly and probably should be released. you decided that you would argue this case before the supreme court. argue the appeal. tell me why you chose to do that. it's a little bit attention hall, people accused you of that. but why did you decide to do it? >> guest: i became the u.s. attorney in the southern district of new york manhattan by complete accident, without ever applying, without thinking about being a part of that job. they called me out of the blue when i was a citizen ããthe bush administration asked me to go to new york. i knew new york had a tradition of fierce independence where it was of the department of justice but never entirely. it saw itself as something apart. i thought that was in the interest, not just of the district but of the country. tradition that went back to 1906 when a guy named henry stenson became roosevelt picked

to be u.s. attorney and change the culture of the office to be fiercely independent. i found out over being assistant u.s. attorney there and from going in as this surprise pick the u.s. attorney that part of the way in which u.s. attorneys had maintained the independence was that they all had throw weight of a certain sort. others who are really superstars in the community to stand up against the district in a way that's imposter coming from a career ausa job enrichment credit. i was very worried about protecting the independence, especially from maine justice, headquarters of justice.one of the ways i chose to do that was that i would insert myself into the breach when maine justice tried to take some of our cases. that's what happened in that circumstance. the terrorism case that the department of justice announced

they are going to send one of their lawyers into argue the appeal in the case and to stop that from happening and show the main justice didn't take over the southern districts work, i said i am going to personally argue this appeal, so i did. i wasn't doing it because i wanted to argue appeals. i thought it was important that i stepped in, for the same reason i tried to generate press attention in the southern district of new york for me not to run for office but so that i could manufacture throw weight, i wasn't famous i wasn't rich, i didn't have a famous family of long lineage. nobody with any connections. i could sort of build my own juice to protect the district in that way. so i tried to do that. >> host: do you think this is the beginning of when you start to realize the press is part of your throw weight? people in my business are salivating for the inside details and the scope. you have been accused of using the media to their benefit no

doubt and to yours, to rail against this president. you are roll into the information that went out about how you are pressed for loyalty. you think about this moment for example going to the media about the jordanian suspect was when you started to realize that some press coverage could really pull people in your direction, even if it was for the right purposes. even if it was for justice. >> i think it was both that i thought about certainly different than that and it was earlier than that that i realized it. i figured out when i was first a prosecutor that was important to understand who your client was and 10 ããbe truthful at all times. the bedrock principles. it wasn't until i went to virginia and in charge of the richmond u.s. attorney's office i realized that wasn't enough. to earn the trust of the american people was everything

for the department of justice because you couldn't be affected without their trust and confidence in you and then to facilitate that trust you had to do the right thing at all times. which also had to communicate with them, show them your work and tell them what you are doing and why you're doing it. and the way to do that is through the media. i came to realize as a fairly low level supervisor the richmond office that we had to have an engagement with the media because they were the people through whom we spoke to the american people. i didn't see it as trying to use the media or trying to use the media for personal gain, i actually came to believe what i still believe is if you are going to work in the justice system at a leadership level you must communicate to the american people through the media, or you are never going to earn their trust. as i say in the book with the subtitle, trust comes from truth, plus transparency. you have to have both. >> host: your point about showing your work is resonating with me because i think they

undermining of the press also is causing us to reassess we need to show our work more and more. what are the specific things in the justice department case, fbi investigation, that you never would have talked about before, and i'm not talking about hillary clinton's emails, what are the things that ag merritt garland is going to have to talk about and u.s. attorneys around the country are going to have to talk about that they never felt comfortable doing before, to show their work and build trust. >> i think most importantly in connection with what the new administration justice department assigns to do about crimes committed in the trump administration by people and governments, including people in your government, looking at rudy giuliani, whatever they decide to do, i'm not telling them what to do, they have to be transparent with the american people about that to earn their trust. i think judge garland and the

u.s. attorneys are going to have to redouble their efforts to lead into the transparency piece. i know there are people who are going to tell the truth but you are not going to get to trust without also giving transparency to the american people. gerald ford did an extraordinary thing after he decided not to pursue criminal prosecution of richard nixon after watergate. he went by himself to the house of representatives, the president of the united states and sat alone at a witness table and explained to the american people why. i don't know how they will approach these prosecutions, how they will approach the question of donald trump but whatever they decide to do they have to share the wind with the american people to generate that trust. >> is a really interesting challenge, it's a very daunting one. i want to thank you for the time you've given us jim. i'm going to ask you one last question, it can be just one phrase, what's next for jim comey?

>> not this. i'm excited, i love you, but i'm excited about not being a part of public life any longer. i'm looking forward to january 21, which coincidentally is my first day teaching at columbia university. that's what i'm going to do next. >> host: fair enough. thank you for the time. i think you answered really interesting questions. i appreciate it and i want to thank all of our audience at washington post live. thank you for your interest, your key watching, thanks for being here, we will look forward to the next time. >> you are watching booktv on c-span2, every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. booktv on c-span2, created by america's cable television company. today we are brought to you buy ãã