The Shakespearean scene lived up to the hype.
Comey captivates crowd with levity, humility and style
WASHINGTON — On the 140th day of the Trump presidency — one for each allotted character on the executive Twitter feed that stayed conspicuously silent all Thursday morning — a tall man with a strange place in this bewildering moment in U.S. history strolled into Hart Senate Office Building 216, shot a quick glance at the masses arrayed behind him and presented a seen-it-all city with something unusual.
In a capital accustomed to overcooked spectacle and insufferable congressional testimony, James Comey delivered on the hype.
For about 2½ hours, the room fell into an anxious hush, punctured sporadically by audible emissions of surprise at the remarks of a deposed FBI director with a collection of Trump-branded knives in his reputational torso.
Senators settled into their telegenic gazes, steely but approachable, often whispering to one another as the witness held forth.
Photographers clicked with impunity, descending on every twitch: a wave of the hand, a cock of the head, a woman delivering glasses of ice water to Comey’s table before he arrived.
And the headliner summoned a theatrical swagger to match the moment, assuming a role with little precedent: a dispatched federal employee — hero, villain, Shakespearean character in the 2016 election and early Trump administration — staring into the cameras and talking to the president who had fired him.
“I’ve seen the tweet about tapes,” he said in one flourish, referring to a Twitter post in which President Donald Trump suggested that he had recorded his interactions with Comey. “Lordy, I hope there are tapes.”
Trump’s response?
So much about the Trump era has scrambled Washington’s sense of itself, as promised. In the haze, it can be difficult to tease out which baffling elements arrived with this president and which were pre-existing conditions, already endemic to an industry town with a Trumpian self-obsession long before he moved in.
Inside the room Thursday, these dual forces seemed to hurtle into each other, fusing in real time. Echoes of scandals past — Iran-Contra, Anita Hill, Monica Lewinsky — wafted overhead, visiting the memories of Senate veterans.
But something was different. The zingers ricocheted instantly across the web. Reporters kept an eye on Twitter, awaiting a presidential response that did not arrive as Comey spoke. (Trump’s son Donald Jr. did weigh in.)
A modest walk away, the proceedings were aired above the bar at the Trump International Hotel.
At the Capitol, attendees took stock of the ubiquity and wondered. A Trump supporter, Patrick Wells, 49, who had traveled from Massachusetts, marveled that the hearing had knocked “The Price Is Right” from its broadcast perch.
“They usually only do that if it’s an assassination or a terrorist attack,” he said.
Wells eyed the slithering line for public admission warily before resigning himself to an overflow room.
Even the lawmakers seemed taken by the spectacle.
“West Virginia is very interested in this hearing that we’re having today,” the state’s Democratic senator, Joe Manchin III, said dryly at one point.
For much of the morning, boldfaced names dotted the crowd, at least by Capitol standards, spawning the sort of dialogue that might translate poorly in most corners of the country.
• Who was that woman snapping all the cellphone photos? (It was Greta Van Susteren of MSNBC.)
• Isn’t that the congressman who resigned in disgrace a few years ago? (Yes, it was former Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., who had scored a seat inside.)
• Get a look at Preet Bharara, the also-axed former U.S. attorney for Manhattan. (He sat a few feet behind Comey, live-tweeting in support of his comrade-in-job-loss.)
‘Captain Courageous’
Mostly, though, attention rarely strayed from the witness chair, where Comey held his audience with an uncommon skill set for a veteran law enforcement official: a novelist’s instinct for narrative and, occasionally, levity.
He likened reporters to sea gulls on the beach. He used “fuzz” as a hard-to-track metaphor and quoted England’s Henry II.
He defended his credentials as a reader of people with: “I’ve had a lot of conversations with humans over the years.”
And he appeared inclined to win support among viewers, inside the building and out, with an implicit contrast in style to Trump, reaching often for notes of humility.
“Slightly cowardly,” he said of his own behavior in one interaction with Trump.
“I don’t want to make you sound like I’m Captain Courageous,” he mustered later.
When Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., thanked him for coming, Comey reminded her that his employment status had opened up his calendar.
“I’m between opportunities now,” he said.