How do you live in the skin of one of the most hated beings in the United States since the last elections?
That is the proposal made
by Comey's Law
to his viewers and does not talk about Donald Trump (although the president of the United States is part of the story).
The miniseries that Movistar + premieres today focuses on James Comey, who was director of the FBI appointed to his post by then-President Obama and fired by Trump a year after coming to power.
A man whom many, including Hilary Clinton, still blame today for the 2016 electoral debacle, for suddenly reopening the investigation against her for possible misuse of her email.
That just 11 days before the election date.
He closed the case again without finding incriminating evidence, putting alleged Russian interference in the US elections in the background and serving Trump, his future nemesis, victory on a silver platter.
"I hope I don't sound arrogant, but knowing what I knew then, I would continue to make the same decisions," he says in an interview in Los Angeles with EL PAÍS, keeping the poker face that gives a career in the main criminal investigation agency of the Department of Justice of the United States.
There is not a drop of regret in his words.
“I was between a rock and a hard place.
The rules had conflicted with each other.
I never wanted to influence the elections, but neither did I want to lie to Congress or the people of the United States, "he explains in person, as he did in his book,
A Higher Loyalty
, a volume published two years ago and a bestseller in which He detailed not only this moment in his career but his subsequent conversations with Donald Trump.
The book is not a
mea culpa either
.
He wrote it out of the need to educate his readers, to inform them of what happened so that it would not be repeated.
That was also the argument with which the screenwriter and director Billy Ray
(Captain Phillips)
convinced him to return to the public light when what he would prefer is to go unnoticed.
“He told me, 'In the publishing world, if you sell a million books, you have a
best seller
.
On television, with a million viewers they cancel the series'.
Fame is not among my goals.
Or dedicate myself to politics.
I wrote the book to be useful, to reach a new generation and show them what a true leader can be and what our institutions can offer, ”weighs this 59-year-old man who is still optimistic about the system.
Even after working with Trump.
“We will do well.
I know the mood of the American people, not just the FBI, and we will get out of it.
But it is very important to elect a new president in November, "says someone who has always declared himself apolitical and who, while in public office, did not cast his vote in order, in his opinion, to maintain his impartiality.
"Joe Biden has to be our next president and he must restore the values of this nation," he adds.
Ray often compares the story
of Comey's Law
to that of
Frankenstein
.
In his opinion, the former director of the FBI created the monster that has occupied the White House for the last four years.
A monster that killed its creator when he did not give it the loyalty it sought.
"I still have a hard time when I see that sequence," admits Comey in reference to the private conversation he had with Trump and in which the US president made it clear that the separation of powers was going to be a fallacy in his government.
A sequence that he saw filming the only day he approached the set in Toronto and where the realism of a Jeff Daniels capable of giving this giant the necessary height (the real Comey measures more than two meters: Daniels had to wear leggings).
Brendan Gleeson, who portrays Trump without winks or parodies in all his ego, gave him emotional nausea.
“There was our conversation, word for word, the threat.
Someone capable of carrying all the pillars without accepting any responsibility.
Throughout my career I had contact with organized crime and their treatment was that of a mafia boss.
Theirs was not a conversation, it was extortion.
Talking to Trump reminded me of Cosa Nostra.
A bully, a shack loudmouth, a downright liar ”.
A well connected bully.
This production of 40 million dollars was about to not see the light, or at least not before the elections, a fundamental moment for all those involved in this attempt to educate the electorate.
The only explanation given from the heights of ViacomCBS was that they did not want to load the inks before the elections.
Comey is satisfied with the result.
“It helps me to know that all of this will pass and soon I will be another big American at the airport again.
In the long run, good news outweighs bad dreams. "
