Comey’s Friend Says “Trump Should Be Scared,” Just Media Hype For Now

Fired FBI director James Comey has a pending testimony and according to Comey’s friend and confidant, president Donald Trump should be scared. But CNN’s sensational title is an over-dramatization.

Yesterday, Benjamin Wittes, who describes himself as a “Comey confidant,” told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on AC360 that he “found it interesting and very telling that [Comey] declined any opportunity to tell his story in private,” and “this is a guy with a story to tell.” Wittes, who also runs a blog called Lawfare and is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution didn’t mince words during his discussion with Cooper on CNN. But his interview also didn’t provide the drama that the left likely hoped that it would.

Comey has agreed to meet with the Senate intelligence committee after Memorial Day.

Wittes says he decided to speak out about discussions he had personally with Comey about his contact with Trump because of a recent report that Trump made a request for a pledge of loyalty at a dinner shortly after he took office. Of course, a loyalty pledge may seem a little odd, but it’s not out of the ordinary. Private companies often have employees sign “non-disclosure agreements” which could almost be considered the same thing. Considering the government is the largest corporation on earth, it could be seen as routine. But since it bothered Comey, Witts has decided to issue soft threats to the president, saying he “should be scared” of Comey’s testimony.

And that’s literally all there is to it as of right now since Comey hasn’t testified yet.

Benjamin Wittes  Photo Credit: CNN

Listening to the whole interview, it’s clear that it’s nothing more than overhyped drama from CNN. There isn’t really much of a story here, to be honest. It feels like the typical media tactic of “look over here” as a distraction. There was an honest attempt to find good information in the interview with Wittes, but there just wasn’t any, other than “Trump should be scared.”

“I was very shocked and it certainly crystallized in my mind what a whole lot of these interactions that I have had with him meant and why he had reacted to them the way he had reacted. I suddenly understood them in a different and frankly, a more menacing and upsetting light than I had at the time of the conversation,” Wittes said.

“He did not regard the people in the Trump White House as honorable?” Cooper asked, to which Wittes replies, “That’s correct. I have no doubt that he regarded the group of people around the President as dishonorable.”

Cooper pointed out that defenders of the President could look at Trump’s interactions with Comey as just a businessman trying to win people over to his side.”People have said he’s a more transactional person,” Cooper said. “In business, he’s schmoozing, back-slapping — that it’s just an attempt to kind of make the relationship personal of friendly.”

“I think it’s perfectly possible to read it that way,” Wittes says. “I’m not going to even say that’s the wrong way to read it. It’s not the way Comey read it.”

The exchange was not all that menacing, it simply seems like Comey has a bone or two to pick with the president, according to his friend. It boils down to political gossip. Supporters of Donald Trump can relax, and enemies of the president shouldn’t think this is somehow going to result in the president’s impeachment.  It’s simply a friend’s comments on his perception of Comey’s interaction with Trump. They hype over these comments about Trump being scared was overly sensationalized by CNN.

Maybe Comey has something to say when he testifies, or maybe he doesn’t. We won’t know until then. But save your popcorn for the testimony, not for CNN’s anti-climactic drama.

Watch the entire exchange here.