“I can’t answer that question,” Comey says when asked whether he thinks the US would have been better off if Hillary Clinton had been elected president https://t.co/HzVqTeHbi9
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) April 19, 2018
Former FBI Director James Comey on Thursday said he couldn’t answer whether the country would be better off if Hillary Clinton had defeated President Trump in the 2016 election.
“That hypothetical is too hard for me to go back in time and answer,” Comey said on CNN’s “The Lead.”
“I think we have the current president who was — in my view was legitimately elected, is serving as president,” Comey said. “The question is, is he adhering to our values? He’s clearly not.”
Clinton and some of her supporters have blamed Comey for her election defeat.
{mosads}Comey publicly said months before the election that Clinton would not be prosecuted for her handling of classified information. However, he wrote a letter just days before Election Day stating the FBI had uncovered new emails related to the case.
Though Comey eventually said no new information was found in the emails, Clinton’s team blamed the letter for her sharp drop in the polls leading up to the election.
Comey has spent the last several days blasting Trump as “morally unfit,” “untethered to truth” and possibly compromised by Russians.
On Thursday, making the latest stop during his media blitz for his new book, Comey reiterated that his problems with Trump are not over policy, but over his values.
“I’m not criticizing President Trump because he’s a Republican or because he has a certain view on taxes or immigration or anything else. I’m criticizing him on the grounds of values,” Comey said.
Trump and the White House have been going on the attack against Comey in response to his media appearances. The president referred to him as a “slime ball” and said he’d go down as the “worst FBI director in history,” while White House officials have argued Comey lacks credibility.