A copy of former FBI Director James Comey's new book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership. Bebeto Matthews / AP
A copy of former FBI Director James Comey's new book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership. Bebeto Matthews / AP
A copy of former FBI Director James Comey's new book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership. Bebeto Matthews / AP
A copy of former FBI Director James Comey's new book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership. Bebeto Matthews / AP

Comey 'novelistic' memoir fails to land its punches


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For the second time in 2018, a book originating behind the scenes of the Trump White House erupts onto the nonfiction bestseller lists: the year began with Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, and now readers get A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Loyalty by former FBI director James Comey, whose firing by Donald Trump in May of 2017 helped to trigger the US Department of Justice probe headed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller and tasked with investigating any possible Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election – an investigation the FBI had first begun under Comey's direction.

Now Comey has written a book. A Higher Loyalty is technically a memoir, but it's unlikely that any of its millions of readers will care about the details of Comey's upbringing and personal life, nor about his departmental work-life. In reality this is almost exclusively a Trump administration exposé, and unlike Michael Wolff's book, this one is written by a former member of that administration. Wolff could be dismissed by Trump's defenders as a mercenary gossip. But a former FBI director writing a tell-all about a sitting president? That's a far, far more serious thing.

Or at least it should be. But directly underneath its starchy pieties and pseudo-literary veneer, there are a great many touches here that can only be called "novelistic". A Higher Loyalty reads like just another gossipy tattle piece, essentially Fire and Fury 2: This Time It's Personal.

Comey makes serious, albeit by now very familiar, criticisms of Mr Trump: that he's “unethical and untethered to truth and institutional values,” that his leadership is “transactional, ego driven and about personal loyalty,” and, in what is sure to be the book's main media talking point, that he runs his White House like a Mafia boss – an atmosphere familiar to Comey from his years prosecuting the Gambino crime family: "The boss [is] in complete control,” he characterizes things. “The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organisation above morality and above the truth."

Comey's portrait is one of a megalomaniacal narcissist, someone drastically unfit for office and, as he writes in the book's final pages, someone who's a serious danger to the country. The whole account should be unprecedentedly damning.

Two things stop it from being that. The first is minor but also screamingly hypocritical: sprinkled throughout the book is exactly the kind of schoolyard mockery for which Mr Trump himself has been rightly condemned. Mr Trump's hands and hair and eyes and face and posture all come in for snide asides.

But much worse is the book's most stunning revelation, which is about Comey, not Mr Trump. Two weeks before the election in 2016, then-FBI director Comey announced to Congress that the organisation had re-opened its investigation into the private email server Hillary Clinton had used as US Secretary of State. Such a grandstanding play was totally out of line with the FBI's normal procedures, and Mrs Clinton's standing plummeted in the polls overnight. She subsequently lost key states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan by such slim margins that the blame can easily be laid at Comey's feet. More than any other single person, James Comey himself is responsible for President Donald Trump.

In A Higher Loyalty, Comey admits that his actions in 2016 were politically motivated. His torturous logic? Like most of the country, he was certain Mrs Clinton would win the election and didn't want her new presidency tainted by the revelation that he'd kept quiet about the re-opened investigation. And his utterly unbelievable contention in these pages? That despite his 15 years of experience as a Washington insider serving under two presidents, the chance that his announcement would wreck Mrs Clinton's campaign never occurred to him. And the question of what the FBI director was doing meddling in a presidential election for any reason is never addressed.

It ultimately sinks the book. Readers of A Higher Loyalty will be left with the deeply ironic impression that James Comey is actually very Trump-like: his higher loyalty is reserved mainly for himself.

While you're here
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Sinopharm vaccine explained

The Sinopharm vaccine was created using techniques that have been around for decades. 

“This is an inactivated vaccine. Simply what it means is that the virus is taken, cultured and inactivated," said Dr Nawal Al Kaabi, chair of the UAE's National Covid-19 Clinical Management Committee.

"What is left is a skeleton of the virus so it looks like a virus, but it is not live."

This is then injected into the body.

"The body will recognise it and form antibodies but because it is inactive, we will need more than one dose. The body will not develop immunity with one dose," she said.

"You have to be exposed more than one time to what we call the antigen."

The vaccine should offer protection for at least months, but no one knows how long beyond that.

Dr Al Kaabi said early vaccine volunteers in China were given shots last spring and still have antibodies today.

“Since it is inactivated, it will not last forever," she said.

 

 

World Cup warm up matches

May 24 Pakistan v Afghanistan, Bristol; Sri Lanka v South Africa, Cardiff

May 25 England v Australia, Southampton; India v New Zealand, The Oval

May 26 South Africa v West Indies, Bristol; Pakistan v Bangladesh, Cardiff

May 27 Australia v Sri Lanka, Southampton; England v Afghanistan, The Oval

May 28 West Indies v New Zealand, Bristol; Bangladesh v India, Cardiff

FIXTURES

All kick-off times UAE ( 4 GMT)

Friday
Sevilla v Levante (midnight)

Saturday
Athletic Bilbao v Real Sociedad (7.15pm)
Eibar v Valencia (9.30pm)
Atletico Madrid v Alaves (11.45pm)

Sunday
Girona v Getafe (3pm)
Celta Vigo v Villarreal (7.15pm)
Las Palmas v Espanyol (9.30pm)
Barcelona v Deportivo la Coruna (11.45pm)

Monday
Malaga v Real Betis (midnight)

MOUNTAINHEAD REVIEW

Starring: Ramy Youssef, Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman

Director: Jesse Armstrong

Rating: 3.5/5

'The worst thing you can eat'

Trans fat is typically found in fried and baked goods, but you may be consuming more than you think.

Powdered coffee creamer, microwave popcorn and virtually anything processed with a crust is likely to contain it, as this guide from Mayo Clinic outlines: 

Baked goods - Most cakes, cookies, pie crusts and crackers contain shortening, which is usually made from partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Ready-made frosting is another source of trans fat.

Snacks - Potato, corn and tortilla chips often contain trans fat. And while popcorn can be a healthy snack, many types of packaged or microwave popcorn use trans fat to help cook or flavour the popcorn.

Fried food - Foods that require deep frying — french fries, doughnuts and fried chicken — can contain trans fat from the oil used in the cooking process.

Refrigerator dough - Products such as canned biscuits and cinnamon rolls often contain trans fat, as do frozen pizza crusts.

Creamer and margarine - Nondairy coffee creamer and stick margarines also may contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.

The specs

Engine: 2.9-litre, V6 twin-turbo

Transmission: seven-speed PDK dual clutch automatic

Power: 375bhp

Torque: 520Nm

Price: Dh332,800

On sale: now

The Lost Letters of William Woolf
Helen Cullen, Graydon House 

Sole survivors
  • Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
  • George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
  • Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
  • Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.