Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday said his organization is “not on anybody’s side” while acknowledging that people were “confused” by its actions last year.
“We confused people — we did a lot last year that confused people, because they’re seeing the world…through sides,” Comey said during an event in Washington, D.C. for a new television documentary about the FBI. “If you see the world through sides, the FBI doesn’t make a lot of sense to people. Because you’re saying, ‘why did they help this person and hurt that [person]?'”
“We don’t see the world that way,” Comey added. “We are not on anybody’s side. We really don’t care. We’re trying to figure out what’s true, what’s fair, that’s the right thing to do.”
Comey’s comments at the Newseum premiere of new television documentary Inside the FBI: New York came the same day President Donald Trump told Fox News that Comey “saved” Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election. Trump also said “it’s not too late” to ask the FBI director to resign while saying he nonetheless had “confidence in him.”
“Director Comey was very, very good to Hillary Clinton, that I can tell you. If he weren’t, she would be, right now, going to trial,” Trump told Maria Bartiromo.
Comey said he allowed a production team led by Dick Wolf to film inside the New York FBI bureau as a way to lift the curtain of the organization and help improve the FBI’s image after a year of intense public scrutiny.
“I worry sometimes that people don’t know us,” said Comey. “We have to care what the people think of us because the faith and confidence of the American people is the bedrock that allows us to be believed, and by being believed, to accomplish the good that they try to do in this country.”
“We want to find as many different things as possible to show people what we’re really like. And especially in a hyper partisan country, which is what we are right now, to understand we are not on anybody’s side.”
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