For nearly a decade, President Donald Trump and James Comey’s working relationship has descended into deep turmoil: the president has accused the former FBI director of being disloyal and lying; Comey has criticized Trump and stood by his tenure as the head of the FBI.
On Thursday, Comey was indicted on charges of making a false statement and obstruction related to his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020, just days after Trump issued a public demand for his Justice Department to act “now” to bring prosecutions against Comey and other political foes.
However, the pair once had a more cordial relationship — including during the end of the 2016 presidential campaign between Trump and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Comey announced in October 2016 — less than two weeks before the presidential election — that the FBI was going to investigate Clinton’s private email server, months after federal investigators said it would not recommend charges. Trump praised the decision.
“I have respect that the FBI has given it a second chance,” Trump said in 2016.
However, the then-FBI director cleared Clinton two days before the election. Trump told reporters he was disappointed.
“Hillary Clinton is guilty. She knows it, the FBI knows it, the people know it,” he said.
After Trump’s inauguration, he was seen embracing Comey at the White House and singing his praises.
“He’s become more famous than me,” Trump told reporters on Jan. 22, 2017.
That praise was short-lived.
On Jan. 27, 2017, Trump and Comey met over dinner, where the then-director claimed that Trump sought his loyalty.
“The dinner was, at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create some sort of patronage relationship. That concerned me greatly, given the FBI’s traditionally independent status in the executive branch,” Comey, who said he took notes immediately after the dinner, testified to Congress later that year.
In March, Comey publicly confirmed the FBI had been investigating suspected Russian interference during the 2016 election and potential links to the Trump campaign.
Even though the director said that Trump himself was not personally under investigation, the president chastised Comey and called the Russia probe a “hoax.”
Trump slammed Comey often on social media.
“FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!” Trump posted on Twitter in May 2017.
On May 9, 2017, Trump fired Comey, contending, “he wasn’t doing a good job.”
Comey would testify before Congress a month later and refute the president’s claims that the FBI was in disarray.
“Those were lies, plain and simple,” he said.
During the hearing, Comey also testified that Trump pressured him to drop federal investigations into adviser Michael Flynn.
A day after the bombshell hearing, Trump told reporters that Comey was a “leaker and a liar” and accused him of lying to Congress, with no evidence.
Comey kept a lower profile after the hearing, but stirred more ire from Trump in April 2018 when the former director’s memoir “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership,” hit bookshelves. The book detailed Comey’s time in government, including his dealings with Trump.
The president took to Twitter to attack Comey and his anecdotes in the book. At one point, Trump claimed without evidence that Comey “leaked CLASSIFIED information.”
Comey told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos days before the book was published that Trump was “morally unfit to be president,” citing the president’s response to a massive white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, during which a woman was killed when a car rammed into a crowd of counter-protesters. Trump condemned the violence at the rally, but blamed “both sides.” He added that there were “very fine people” among both the white supremacists and the counter-protesters.
“A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it; that person’s not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds,” he said.
On Aug. 29, 2019, the Justice Department’s watchdog said they found Comey violated FBI policies in leaking memos to the media, but it determined he shouldn’t be charged.
Trump tweeted that Comey “should be ashamed of himself,” but the former FBI director clapped back on Twitter.
“DOJ IG ‘found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media.’ I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a ‘sorry we lied about you’ would be nice,” he posted.
Comey went on to endorse Joe Biden in the 2020 election. That year, he testified before the Senate again during a hearing about the Russia investigation and stood by his 2017 testimony, where he maintained he did not leak information to the press.
The 2020 testimony is now the center of the federal indictment against Comey.
Trump would continue to berate Comey during news conferences and interviews — continuing after he returned to office in 2025.
Comey came under fire from Trump in May after the former FBI director posted an image on his Instagram page of shells on a beach arranged to spell out “86 47.” Some, including the president’s allies, took the image to refer to “86ing” or threatening someone, but Comey maintained it was an honest mistake.
“It never occurred to me but I oppose violence of any kind,” Comey said in another post on Instagram.
Trump told Fox News that he didn’t buy Comey’s explanation.
“He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination,” the president said.
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