Tale of the tape
Having had a wealth of experience with Donald Trump and Jim Comey over the decades, New Yorkers know both men pretty well. As the two question each other’s memory and integrity — Comey in the context of his new book, Trump as he continues raging against a deep-state “witch hunt” — that experience correctly colors our judgment.
Comey, who bases his account on meticulous notes taken in his time as FBI director, writes that Trump never expressed concern about Russian meddling in the 2016 election, but did seek to steer investigators away from getting too close to his aides.
He says Trump was obsessed with disproving claims in a dossier on his ties to Russia, especially the allegation that he paid prostitutes to urinate on a hotel room bed in a 2013 trip to Moscow.
He calls Trump’s behavior tantamount to that of a mob boss, and says he was, and is, “untethered to the truth.”
Trump denies it all, smearing Comey as a “showboat” and a “liar.” Whom to believe? We know Trump as an exhausting and shameless self-promoter whose North Star is publicity, of any kind. His falsehoods have been repeatedly disproven; he remains unchastened.
Begin with a recollection from our competitor paper, former New York Post Page Six editor Susan Mulcahy. Writing in Politico in 2016, she related her dealings with Trump in the 1980s: “he could not control his pathological lying. He lied about everything, with gusto.”
Recall the full-page ad Trump took out in this paper and others calling for the death penalty for the five young men convicted of a rape in Central Park in 1989.
Years later, DNA evidence linked another man to the crime; he confessed and said he had acted alone. Trump has never apologized or expressed a smidgeon of doubt about his shameless smear campaign.
In 2007, Trump was put under oath, in a deposition in a libel case. He had sued a reporter for defamation, accusing him of being reckless and dishonest. Thirty times in that interview, Trump was caught having spread blatant falsehoods.
In 1993, in a sworn deposition given in the bankruptcy case for Trump Plaza, Trump’s own lawyer, Patrick McGahn, testified that attorneys always visited the client in pairs.
The reason: “We tried to do it with Donald always if we could, because Donald says certain things and then has a lack of memory.”
McGahn continued: “He’s an expert at interpreting things. Let’s put it that way.”
This is the same man who in 2016 said mostly false, false or pants-on-fire false things in seven out of 10 campaign statements rated by Politifact.
By another reliable count, Trump made 2,140 false or misleading claims in his first year in office.
What of Comey, who makes serious allegations about things the President said to him behind closed doors?
From 2002 to 2003, this board knew him as the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York; George W. Bush had appointed him as the nation’s preeminent federal prosecutor. He served honorably.
The service continued when he was promoted to deputy attorney general; in one notable bout of conscience, he threatened to resign if the Bush White House overruled a Justice Department finding that warrantless wiretapping was unconstitutional.
Tapped by President Obama as FBI director in May 2013, he was confirmed by the Senate 93-1, and generally served in that post with distinction.
Comey is no saint. He has made grave errors of judgment, including in how he closed, then reopened, an investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. He has a penchant for sounding sanctimonious.
But no one has ever had reason to question Comey’s honesty or integrity. Until now. The man who does quite obviously has neither.