Posturing like an above-it-all gentleman, Comey then spoils the effect in his book with a series of petty—and not very original—rips on Trump’s physicality. “His face appeared slightly orange, with bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assumed he placed small tanning goggles,” Comey writes on meeting him. His hair is “impressively coifed, bright blond hair, which upon close inspection looked to be all his,” his “tie was too long, as it always is,” and Trump’s hands were “average size.”

Comey speaks repeatedly of the importance of “transparency” in his ABC interview and in his book. But as Garrett M. Graff writes in his Rolling Stone review of A Higher Loyalty, Comey frequently goes opaque after raising the topic. “Comey stops well short of the thorough and full-throated explanation of his own actions throughout the 2016 campaign that so many Americans hunger for,” Graff writes. When the memoir recounts the summer-long debate about whether to tell the public in 2016 of the FBI’s Russia investigation, Comey devotes only two pages. “Comey portrays himself and the FBI as all-but passive players in the debate—despite the fact that the DNC hack was an FBI investigation, the bureau a critical player in the discussions,” Graff continues.