FBI Director Quotes

We haven't seen a situation where you have the FBI director talk about an investigation side by side with the attorney general who confirms, yes, I accept the recommendation of the FBI director.

I actually went to law school with Jim Comey. We were in the same class, and he was respected by our classmates just like he was respected by the agents that he supervised.

I was going to say we saw Secretary [Hillary] Clinton reported that she believes that she would've won the election but for the interference of the FBI director James Comey.

Full disclosure: James Comey is a friend. I won't pretend to neutrality about him. He is a highly honorable and decent person, and I have no doubt that he made the many judgments for which people loathe him in good faith.

[Donald Trump] has confidence in Director [James] Comey. We have had a great relationship with him over the last several weeks. He's extremely competent.

If you're a history buff, you know about J. Edgar Hoover. He was likely the most powerful man in the US. If you start reading about him, the books contradict each other constantly. I was often left with very little sense of the man personally. I had a sense of what he did and didn't do and what people disagreed about whether he did this or didn't do this or that, but I was like, "Why? Why was he doing all of this?" That was my big question.

Do I think J. Edgar Hoover was gay? Yes. Do I think he cross-dressed? No.

[ James Comey] was acting in concert and coordination with the House Republicans. End of story. He gave a letter to them. They gave it to FOX News. Also, we have this extraordinary case of the KGB being involved in this race and selectively leaking things from the [Hillary] Clinton campaign that they hacked.

It's been clear for some time that FBI Director Comey has lost the confidence of Republicans, Democrats, and broader institutions, and his removal as FBI Director was probably overdue.

Bob Mueller for the FBI, myself, met with a particular group of executives that have major roles in the so-called ISPs, the Internet service providers, what they could possibly do. We have met with leaders in private industry in terms of the core critical infrastructure of the country as to what they can possibly do with cyber-attacks.

It's a big deal when you have got to fire the deputy director of the FBI because he lies four times, twice under oath. It's also a big deal when you have got to reassign people off the Mueller probe, when you have got cash at the Democratic National Committee that is convertible into a warrant to spy on American citizens.

Hillary Clinton said there was no marked classified information on her server. The FBI Director said that's untrue.She said that she did not email any classified information. The FBI Director says that's untrue.

As the Director of the FBI, I am committed to ensuring that the Bureau is being transparent and responsive to legitimate congressional requests.

I didn't think this whole business with Director James Comey was handled well. So there are sort of day-to-day aspects of the operation that I think are really troublesome. And I know that there are a lot of people in the country who have lots of issues with decisions that Donald Trump has making on the domestic side.

[James Comey] term extends for some time yet. There's no plans at the moment in changing that term. And we've enjoyed our relationship with him and find him to be extraordinarily competent.

I think there's no question Comey abused power.

We're interested in complex characters and he's a complex character, [J. Edgar] Hoover. I like these types of dramas. I've made a few of them and I'm also interested in power structures so it just has elements that fascinate me, and the more you learn about Hoover, the more polarizing you realize he is.

If you read any of the biographies on J. Edgar Hoover, you find that they contradict each other more than they agree. Often times, they're often told from a political perspective.

I can't imagine a situation where, as FBI director, I would be giving a press conference on an uncharged individual, much less talking in detail about it.

I just kind of had my own impressions growing up with Hoover as a heroic figure in the 40s - actually the 30s, 40s, and 50s and beyond - but this was all prior to the information age so we didn't know about Hoover except what was usually in the papers, and this was fun, because this was a chance to go into it [ during filming 'J. Edgar Hoover' ]

If [Donald] Trump wins narrowly, Democrats can blame the loss on FBI director James Comey, who inserted himself late in the campaign in an unprecedented way.

To me, you couldn't write a character like J. Edgar Hoover and have it be believable. I mean, he was a crock pot of eccentricities. We couldn't even fit all his eccentricities into [ the same named] movie.

[Hillary] Clinton campaign says and we heard it at front, they tried to do that, they wanted to do that, they were blocked by James Comey.

It's an incredible education [for the movie J. Edgar Hoover] . It was like I did a college course on J. Edgar Hoover but not knowing and understanding the history and reading the books, but understanding what motivated this man was the most fascinating part of the research.

[ J. Edgar]Hoover, I'm sure, felt that he was right in everything he did and even the things that we don't like about his character.