Former FBI agent: ‘I literally wanted to rinse myself off’ after Comey statement

A former FBI agent said he felt “completely disgusted” after reading the prepared testimony of former FBI Director James Comey regarding interactions with President Trump.

“I read this and I literally wanted to rinse myself off afterwards,” James Gagliano said on CNN.

“I felt completely disgusted.”

Gagliano’s comments came after Wednesday’s release of the opening statement Comey is set to deliver Thursday to the Senate Intelligence Committee

“I read this and I literally wanted to rinse myself off afterwards,” said the former FBI agent. “I felt completely disgusted.”

“Can you expand on your sentence you felt like you had to rinse off?” requested Gergen, a White House adviser to four presidents.

“The vision of a small table in the Green Room with the President and the FBI director seated there having a quiet lunch in a cavernous room, with two Navy stewards waiting on them, and Director Comey feeling uncomfortable, awkward, knowing that they shouldn’t be having that … meeting,”
“Beginning with that first awkward handshake that we saw on camera when Director Comey and the President met and … it started out as a handshake, turned into kind of a half hug,” Gagliano said. “You could tell — it was palpable — how uncomfortable Director Comey was.”

“For 48 years … FBI Director (J. Edgar) Hoover pulled puppet strings, and had presidents on their heels,” he said. “We now have a President that was attempting to put an FBI director on his heels.”