Comey got in a lot of a jabs during the biggest hearing of 2017

And he aimed at more people than just Donald Trump.
 By 
Colin Daileda
 on 
Comey got in a lot of a jabs during the biggest hearing of 2017
Former FBI Director James Comey takes his seat after being sworn in during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C. Credit: AP/REX/Shutterstock

Former FBI Director James Comey spoke a lot of words during his hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, some of which were quite juicy.

He appeared before the committee to talk about what led to his firing by President Donald Trump, and had some choice words for the president (as well as a few others).

Comey pulled no punches in his testimony.

Lies

"Although the law required no reason at all to fire an FBI director, the administration then chose to defame me and, more importantly, the FBI, by saying the organization was in disarray, that it was poorly led, that the workforce had lost confidence in its leader. Those were lies, plain and simple."

"Nature of the person"

Comey made it clear he didn't document conversations he had with President Barack Obama or President George W. Bush, but he did write down his conversations with Trump.

Why?

OK!

"Lordy, I hope there are tapes."

After Trump fired Comey, the president tweeted that the former FBI director should be worried that tapes of their conversations may come to light.

But Comey doesn't seem to worried.

"Lordy, I hope there are tapes," he said during the hearing.

Some digs at Loretta Lynch

Comey opened up just a touch about the current and most recent attorneys general, showing he has viewed each with skepticism at one point or another.

Loretta Lynch, the attorney general during the 2016 presidential election, asked Comey to avoid the word "investigation" when talking about the FBI's investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

"At one point the attorney general had directed me not to call it an 'investigation,' but instead to call it a 'matter,' which confused me and concerned me," Comey said.

Sessions is "problematic" in more ways than we knew

In what may wind up being the most underrated noteworthy detail of the Comey hearing, the former FBI director said an...interesting thing about current Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Comey was answering a question about why the FBI was confident that Sessions would recuse himself from investigating the relationship between the Trump campaign/administration and the Russian government.

"Our judgement, as I recall, was that he was very close to and inevitably going to recuse himself for a variety of reasons," Comey said. And then... "We also were aware of facts that I can't discuss in an open setting that would make his continued engagement in a Russia-related investigation problematic."

Hhmmmmm...

Wonder what they're talking about in the afternoon closed-door hearing...

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Colin Daileda

Colin is Mashable's US & World Reporter. He previously interned at Foreign Policy magazine and The American Prospect. Colin is a graduate from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. When he's not at Mashable, you can most likely find him eating or playing some kind of sport.

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