>> susan ferrechio is the chief congressional correspondent for the washington examiner, and you can read her writing at their website www.washingtonexamineer.com and you can tweet her @susanferrechio. thanks for joining us. >> thank you. >> and we returned to the politicon conference in nashville. speaking now, former fbi director james comey and former white house communications director nicole wallace. mr. comey: do it without embarrassing him, and embarrassing me, without creating a war in the fbi was front and center in my mind, so that is why i was a little distracted. the meeting started off the rails very quickly. ms. wallace: like what? mr. comey: i explained to him without using any of the terms you used, but to explain to him

the nature of this information, why we were telling him, and that provoked from him a long monologue that had nothing to do with what i had asked about, reviewing and then denying other allegations of sexual misconduct i women who had said he assaulted them. >> 19 of them. mr. comey: i don't know if they went through 19, but he went through one after another. it was a woman on a plan, a woman here and here, and i think he said, do i look like a guy who needs to go there? meaning prostitutes. rich eisen was rhetorical, so i did not answer. which ilad he -- assumed was rhetorical, so i did not answer. >> i'm glad he did not ask me. it was going off the rails, so i pulled out -- and the rhetorical sense -- so i reduced the temperature by saying, look, we are not investigating you. which was true. we were not.

we are not investigating this, we simply thought you would need to know this because as i told you, the press is about to run with this breed we do not keep secrets from the president of the united states. we need you to know this, but we are not investigating you. that was the essence of that second meeting. >> that story is so important in my attempt to understand his war against law enforcement and now it appears the war that attorney organized.r has i just -- i think it is important to remind people that when you went in to brief and incoming president of this country, he asked you not one attackn about a russian on america's democracy, which should have been his foremost concern, and he wanted you to reassure him he was not under investigation. have either of those dynamics changed? do either of those orientations from donald trump suggest any of

the investigations into him were misguided? say whether cannot in his head his thinking about those changed. i have seen no indication he has been able to let go of this indication that he sees the intelligence communities finding as some attack on his legitimacy as president. because he sees it that way, he must attack it and all those behind it. >> are you surprised he now has an ally in the effort to attack the organization in william barr , who seems very comfortable meddling in the investigation being run by the u.s. attorney from connecticut? mr. comey: i can't tell what is going on with the attorney general and that investigation. i was deeply concerned i some things he said early on about using the word spying and saying there are things that don't make sense, and at the time i said, that is not the way it operates. tothere is a w reason probe something, then you shut

up and share the facts. i still feel that way. i don't know what they are looking at, so i'm not in a position to say you should not investigate. if you are going to investigate, investigate. john durham has a strong reputation. someone for years i thought was an excellent prosecutor. i cannot tell what is going on with the attorney general. i would hope that mr. durham will do everything possible to protect his reputation from being damaged by those in leadership and the most important way to do that is give us transparency. i am not worried about a single thing in connection with any of the matters under investigation. gather the facts. write a report, and share it with the american people. please do that because all the stuff in the media with attorney general same stuff doesn't just , it is an attack on the integrity of the institution, which he is supposed to be leading. way to protect that is show the folks the facts. lay it out.

don't leak it out, give it out. and i'm confident that when the american people see the picture of why we did what we did, their confidence in the institution will be maintained, restored, and protected. [applause] of the things that leaked out about that investigation, and i wonder if you think mr. durham has an obligation to clarify this, is it is criminal in nature and operate what crimes could have been nature.d? -- in what crimes could have been committed? mr. comey: i don't know what to think of that. first, is it true at all? there is all kinds of stuff pushed out of this justice department by anonymous people which turned out not to be true, so i don't know that. it is also possible that what happened to something like this, been lookingas at the fbi's use of the phis

authorities, if they come across someone who they might have bought made a false document, they will refer that to the department of justice for investigation. it is possible that was referred to look at. i just don't know. here is what i do think. again, this kind of news reporting is damaging to the credibility of the institution. from both directions. it allows people from one side to say bill barr has engaged some inappropriate effort to distract from president trump's problems or to carry water for president trump. that is bad. it comes from the other side also saying, a-ha, the department of justice is discovering the fbi and cia are corrupt. both of those things are bad, so if you run the department of justice, you ought to stare at the policy that allows you to offer transparency to the american people when there is strong public interest. we don't talk about pending investigations much except when it matters most.

this strikes me as an opportunity for the attorney general to say, folks, here is what we are investigating to clear that up. it is unfortunate someone talk to the media, ok, now cleared up and offer transparency. >> i want to ask you about clearing up -- about bob mueller. captures thetion attention and imagination across the ideological sector for different regions -- reasons. people who thought they could russia'sr exactly what role was in 2016 and wanted to know the extent of the trump campaign's coordination with or awareness of the russian hack, as well as people who watched in real time donald trump's efforts to obstruct investigation into the russian attack and his involvement. do you think mueller answered either of those questions to the public satisfaction? mr. comey: yes and no. yes in the sense that using

really talented people, he ran to ground the nature and extent of the russian attack. he laid it out in great detail in indictments and in the report. he removed any possible doubt -- i keep hearing the term "russian hoax." what thoughtful person thinks there is a hoax around the russian attack? >> i would not call them thoughtful, but donald trump and his followers got enough of a muddy picture from mueller. maybe this is my bias. you are a rare example of a government leader who understood clear communicating and the importance of it. what you just said is only known to people who read the mueller report. it may include the people in this room but not the general public. did he succeed in what he did? mr. comey: that is the no part of my answer. yes, he did a great piece of work, but no, he did not succeed in his mission because there was inadequate transparency to the american people on whose behalf

he was investigating. when i say inadequate, i mean it in two ways. both in the way in which his report was spun, massaged, and in my view, misconstrued by the attorney general. and the way in which it was physically presented made it impossible for the american people taxes to. presented a great report that is old-school, 446 pages long, but nobody has access to it, so nobody sees the work he did. and the american people, except for small slice, don't know that he removed any possible fuzz on the notion of russian attacks, that he laid out an extraordinary series of acts by the president that would have resulted in anybody in this room already in jail for obstruction of justice. there are special considerations for a president, i get that, but he lay that out in great detail. and because nobody knows that, my view, and i have talked to --

i have not talked to bob about this, i would get cc it differently, but part of his mandate is to make sure the people he represents have a reasonable understanding about what he found. people feel lot of that way. i feel that we having covered it and never getting over the exasperation that the things bob mueller did to protect the integrity of the investigation were lost on the people he was trying to protect, the subjects and targets in the investigation, and were missed by everyone else. is impeachment the remedy for that public political process? mr. comey: i'm not sure impeachment is the remedy for our failure as an american community to understand what bob mueller found, but i do think in part it is incumbent upon us as citizens. i hear essex lecture in my head. even though it is that long, you

should have gotten it and read it, but really? people are knocking to do that. if you are in bob mueller' issues, someone i admire, you have to take that into account. just sending it to the attorney general and then allowing him to mislead about it in my mind is not finishing the work, and then i would have had a different view than he on how to testify about it. reasonable people criticize the way i offer transparency great some say it is too much and some say it should have different content. i get that. i'm not sure i'm right, what i think a special prosecutor should do more to tell the people they are working for, here is what i found and the significance of it. >> do you think that mueller, people on his team, expected that report to trigger an impeachment inquiry? mr. comey: i do. i think they make clear that they are laying out the obstruction pattern for two reasons. first, for future prosecutors. they say essentially

that an interesting language which is, we cannot charge this person now, we want to collect all this so that -- the way i read it -- and he can be charged, the evidence has been gathered, and second, so that the constitutional responsibilities of congress can be discharged. i forget the exact language but that is the gist of it. i have not talked to him or anyone on his team, i would expect they thought that, first of all, they were surprised the attorney general and deputy attorney general decided to make a call, no obstruction here, move on. and second, that it was not taking up in a more, in a deeper, more lasting way by congress. barr, the that bill attorney general who did that, put his finger on the scale before, after, and during the release of the mueller report, were you surprised that rod rosenstein, the government official who appointed bob mueller, was part of selling any chance of what mueller might have got would have been the

appropriate remedy for his findings, impeachment? mr. comey: i did. i had two questions about rod rosenstein's involvement. maybe someday someone will answer it. the first, what was he doing involved at all since he was a witness in at least at one of the obstructive incidents laid out in the report? how did that happen? what was he doing as a judge in the matter in which he was a witness? second, what was the thinking that led them to say we are going to decline any obstruction case against the president, there is insufficient evidence, when among other things, you have never interviewed the president? the obstruction case always turn on the contents of someone's mind. that is why people said to me when it was asked to drop the flynn case, is that obstruction of justice? i said, i don't know, but it depends on what he was thinking. the best way to find out what he was thinking is to talk to them and say, why did you do this and that?

having interviewed the subject mystifies me. maybe rob will write a book someday and explain it to me. >> i want to put you on the spot here to put all this together. do you worry that the justice department has been compromised or corrupted at the highest level? >> i worry that its reputation for standing apart -- justice department is in the executive branch, but can never be in a cultural sense, over the executive branch. i worry that that has been damaged in the short run. runill recover in the long by the attorney general in the way that he has channeled the president, adopted his language, and in ways that a reasonable person would think that he is

running errands for the president. that may not be true, but the perception matters. despite what your mom and dad told you growing up, when you are the attorney general of the united states, you have to care what people think, because your institution depends on the faith and confidence of the american people, see have to constantly worry about what do folks think about what we are doing and do they trust us? the things they have done in the past months have created doubt in the mind. i'm not talking about partisans who will always have reason to yell, but ordinary people will have reason to doubt whether it is in hearing -- adhering to its obligations. wouldald trump i think agree with your assessment, put the bar in the middle of impeachment by mentioning him on a call with ukraine. when he asked the ukrainian president to do him a favor. what do you think we know about

donald trump's conduct in foreign policy from the transcript released by the white house? is it enough to impeach him? >> it might be. the reason i say it that way is it is certainly powerful grounds on which to investigate. to house has no choice but pursue an impeachment inquiry. arei know about the facts coming from news accounts. all i know about the facts are coming from news accounts. i got a chance to read a few opening statements that were released publicly. i would like to withhold judgment until we have a chance as a country to see in public testimony, to get the transparency we deserve, but if the news accounts are accurate, the president engaged in a shocking abuse of power, and if the facts are accurate, i don't know how a member of congress

could bear true faith and allegiance to the constitution without pursuing this. again, i want to see the facts publicly. i'm trying to withhold judgment. >> why? >> there may be things i don't know. be exculpatory, when the president of the united states and his personal lawyer have basically copped to everything that has been testified to? they have admitted that aid was held up in exchange for digging andirt on the biden family apparently donald trump is more competent didn't -- confidently and every democrat in my building that democrat -- that biden is going to win the primary. this stuff about a server, which i understand is a server buried in a ditch in ukraine. >> maybe it is because of my training.

i think it is very important as an investigator and a citizen that you resist until the last possible moment drawing a conclusion. drawing conclusions early closes your view to facts you can't see. in a criminal case, it is a path to tragedy. if you walk to a crime scene and missed the things in your peripheral vision. think,eally important, i to insist that the process go forward. there be a credible gathering of evidence and wait and fight to keep an open mind until you have seen all the evidence. if what has been , iorted in the media is true offered my view of that. it is important to try to fight to keep an open mind. one thing that happened with bob mueller, people projected onto him. they said it is mueller time. mother is going to fix this.

knowd to say, i don't whether there is sufficient evidence to conclude that president trump or anybody around him conspired with the russians. that is why we were investigating, to see what was there. i was not surprised when mueller said there is lots of evidence, but not sufficient to charge. i would urge people to fight to predict the charge. if people would refuse to provide evidence in testimony -- but fight to keep an open mind until those facts are gathered, then reach a conclusion and insist that people hear your view. >> while we have you here, let's go through the facts. first of all, if you were the fbi director, would you open a criminal investigation? dirt?g military aid for >> i might.

i don't know the answer, because i would want to talk to the department of justice about how we should think about this. >> who would you talk to? barr? >> i would start with career people and see if they insist on going up the chain. >> for that conversation be like? go in early before barr gets there and, would you meet me? seriously, what would that look like? >> i would ask my folks in counterintelligence to talk to folks in the counterespionage section and say talk about this. what facts do they see, what do you see, what possible violations do you see and doesn't make sense to contemplate opening an investigation and if we think it does, should we push up the chain the idea that it can't be run the normal way by the department of justice? it is hard for me to sneak

around, because i am a giraffe. atould ask people to do it what we call the working level. one of my favorite terms. what kinds of witnesses would you look for, people like bill taylor who last week testified that there was a direct line on military aid for dirt? >> sure. again, i'm getting all this from news accounts but it seems like they are talking to the right people. it would be different if you were running a criminal grand jury investigation. they seem to be trying to gather people. the way you investigate something like this is you have an incident and talk to everybody in a concentric circle around the incident, gather their recollections, any documents they have. any communications they have on their circle or other circles, gather it until you have a degrees atm 360

different distances from the incident, then bring it together, figure out what it means and find a way to present it to a grand jury or a judge and in and impeachment proceeding, send it to us. this is what happened in the summer of 1974. show the american people what the evidence is. it rocked the american people's history 1974 and doesn't repeat itself, but they say it rhymes. i think we may see something similar here. i want to understand what a criminal investigation would look like, because it would seem that the democrats have received the message with both the reaction to mueller and the conduct of this department of justice that if there is going to be an investigation, it has to at least simulate a criminal one because it is not likely barr will authorize one being done into this president. is that a fair thing to say?

>> seems fair. >> i get my information from news accounts, too. could you lay out what are the possible crimes -- again, it is a political process, so impeachment will be a political calculation by the house members who will vote or not vote to impeach and the senate who will vote to convict or not, but it would seem like the eyewitnesses to the crime, which would be a commitment of military aid being conditioned on dirt on the bidens and an investigation into the origins of the russian investigation, that they are circling the right crimes and have the right witnesses. what does building that case look like? >> i just want to take issue with the word crimes. i think it is a mistake to say that. abuse of power. the president takes and to abide the constitution and ensure the laws are executed. the question is, is doing those

things consistent or inconsistent with that of and inconsistent in a big enough way that justifies removing the president from office? the reason i resist the idea of crimes is it lead you down the rabbit hole of people saying we don't have due process right. we need to cross-examine. that is not what this is. this is about gathering evidence. the legislature gathering evidence to share with the american people so they can offer their assessment about whether there is sufficient basis to remove the president from office. >> do you think there is? >> maybe. i want to insist i keep an open mind until i see whether there is evidence we haven't heard about that cuts the other way. certainly on the facts i have seen, it may be sufficient. i was against the idea of impeachment when it was just about molar material. in part because i thought it is so complicated, the american

people don't have a grasp of it. far better that the most important -- most important process of all, let's wait for an election. my view now is i don't know how as a member of congress you can look in the mirror and say i am abiding the oh theiss were if you don't take some action. let's talk about you. there was recently a new york times article -- i don't want to summarize it, but you are standing in your living room in the picture. you talk about your life and what you want for the country and for the end of this presidency. do you wanted to come sooner than later? >> change in the administration? yes. i am optimistic that even if there is not in impeachment proceeding, the american people are going to pass judgment on what kind of country we want to be.

we have strong disagreement on policy grounds. i don't care what your views are. her pew articulate and defend and listen. that's important. but we have something in common and i said it with the first question you asked. we have a set of values that hold this place together. i tried to explain to kids something that most of you know, we shouldn't exist. we don't have the normal human glue that holds a country together. common ancestry, language, faith. we have nothing in common except a set of values. that is the glue that holds republicans, democrats, independents together. i think the american people are alert to the threat that is above our policy disagreements. guns are important. immigration, abortion, taxes. above that is something we have in common. our leaders cannot be people who

lie all the time. they just can't. i hope people see that is true whether they are republicans or democrats. >> what if he wins again? will he -- will you still believe that? >> from my new home in new zealand, i will -- [laughter] i still will believe in america. >> i take your point about our values. when i worked on republican campaigns, my closest friends were like the people with my job dealing with the same knuckleheads on the other campaign. we knew that we worked for people with different views about foreign policy and economics, but we knew we worked for people who wanted the same things for the country and believe in the same institutions. i think it is fair to assert givedonald trump does not

a shit. i think he would say that. a chance --here is he is counting on winning again, because he is counting on provoking the democrats to nominate someone who will lead the middle to stay home. that is his path. if there is too much difference, people will have a hard time looking at the values and instead they will be preoccupied by the policy disagreements and that is his path to winning. who will bet person giving advice to the democrats on who to nominate. i will work for whoever is nominated, because whoever it is will have a set of values that are closer to the country's core than the incumbent but i hope whoever they nominate is someone who motivates that great exhausted majority that the study last year said is a

gigantic lump in the middle who normally stay home. participate and to vote. if they don't, there is a path for this person to serve another four years. country news is, this of ours will be ok. our history is an upward sloping line. i explained to students if you map progress against our values and on the other time, we are always making progress against our values. it is always progress, because we proclaimed truth to be self-evident while we held humans as slaves, but our path is always upward. i tell kids if you stare at the line, is jagged. we make progress, we retreat. the progress always exceeds the retreat, which is why it is sloping. we have been so much more screwed up than this in our history. we have always experienced this kind of retreat.

we elected a black man president. we legalized gay marriage. we change the definition of family and work and faith. it was inevitable that we would see this. i am optimistic that the next upward jagged is going to exceed that retreat and resume our path. our history should console us but not make us lazy because returned to the upper jagged as quickly as we decide to and a big part of that is engaging the exhausted majority in the middle of this country. [applause] >> why not you? >> why not me? >> try to leave the exhausted middle. the young people you talk to every day. ofi hope to be part encouraging them to participate, but i'm never going to run for office. admire -- i am so grateful

that good people participate and run for office. one of the sources of my optimism is i see women doing that in unparalleled numbers, military veterans in both parties running for office. get thee people who centrality of values to this country, so whether they are republican or democrat, it is a great thing veterans are running. but you don't have to run for office to be useful to your country and i hope in a small way to be useful without running for office. >> in the remaining time, let me just do a lightning round of other headlines. you have served in government and taken positions in opposition to your bosses in a republican administration. you had your walk through fire in the trump administration. he served president obama. wonder if you can talk about the silence of cabinet officials

like secretary mattis. people are exasperated by the fact that the man who served as the head of the pentagon, who was a revered general, will not say a word about what is to a lot of people the obvious lack of fitness of the commander-in-chief. >> i don't know. i admire his record of service to the country. i think about it differently than he does. it is one of the reasons i have been speaking since shortly after i was fired. i think if you have a vantage point and something useful to say, you ought to offer it to the american people so long as you abide your restriction on classified information. i have not walked a mile in his shoes, so i don't know how he thinks about it. there has been a lot of silence in this administration and it has been disappointing. >> what would you say to them? you have been on the receiving end of mean tweets. you do live to tell.

what you say to these people -- will be goldberg what he called man afraid of a mean tweets. >> i saw a congressperson from florida. >> a democrat who has come out welcome to the impeachment process. >> he said something like i'm going to be staring at my children a lot longer than the people in this room. i would hope that that sentiment would echo in the heads of everybody in that situation. you are going to have to stare at people -- i saw mitt romney say this the other day. you are all going to be asked, where were you and what would you do? i suspect what's going to happen is what happened after the joe mccarthy fever broke. mccarthy disappeared overnight and all of a sudden, no one had anything to do with it. i was never involved. trump who? this is going to go away quickly. we can't allow that to happen.

people have to be held accountable because you are responsible for what you say and what you do not say. if you are in a position to speak, you owe it to this country to speak. that is how i think about it. [applause] be a whole lot of republicans telling themselves this story, which is, i needed to be here to serve the american people and if i speak up, i may not be here, because as crazy as it sounds, they may run somebody against me and the american people will be deprived of my service. because my service is important to the country, i need to make a deal here and get through this. i would ask them to think about it differently. demonstrating integrity, a commitment to the truth and the rule of law are more important service to the american people than you getting your 175,000 dollars per year. [applause]

you have been here for a couple of days. he visited the lynching museum. obviously, this presidents , iser -- rhetoric on race one of the most fearing aspects of his presidency. rape card anytime he can. what sort of lasting harm do you think has been done -- playing the race card anytime he can. not in theis news, talking about it. what sort of lasting harm do you think has been done? >> there has always been a radioactive stew of racism in the united states. it is one of the most disturbing things about our history and you

don't need to visit the amazing memorial in montgomery, which i did the day before yesterday, but it is part of who we are as americans. the central challenge of our existence has been how to be contain that and we have done in two different ways. have built a containment building over that radioactive stew. we have made against the law to lynch someone. we made against the law to physically assault someone by virtue of their race, their gender, their national origin. we have prohibited employment discrimination. those are all important, but the most important thing we have done is pushed control rods into that radioactive stew and those are cultural. over the last 50 years, most of my lifetime, what has happened in the united states is the control rods have gone in and it is not ok to talk in a racist way if you a public figure. you may secretly harbor racist

views but your career is ruined if you speak that way. that is a cultural control rod we have pushed in. it is just not ok. what has happened to us since ,his president became president the control rods are being withdrawn. in encoded ways and not so coded ways, that message that it is not ok is being withdrawn and you are seeing the radioactive soup bubble. the fbi sees it in a huge increase in the investigations especially of white nationalists crime and conspiracy to commit crime. radiationct of that starting to bounce around. is the controlst rods. it is so important someone else be president's people listen to the president. when that president withdraws the control rods and god willing when the next president pushes

them back down. [applause] >> as good a place as any to stop. thank you so much. i'm glad you are a little underemployed as i get to talk to you. thank you. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [applause] announcer 1: looking ahead, at

6:00 p.m. eastern, we will hear a point counterpoint discussion with james carville and sean hannity. at 8:40, al franken makes his return to the national scene. on wednesday, former vice president and 2020 democratic presidential candidate joe biden visited his home town of scranton, pennsylvania. he spoke about growing up in scranton and how his proposed economic plan can help the middle class. this is about one hour.