Former FBI director's firing triggered the special counsel investigation.

SARASOTA — Former FBI Director James Comey has a lot to say — on leadership, his disdain for President Donald Trump and plenty of other topics — and on Monday the self-described “semi-employed celebrity” spent more than an hour expounding on his views during an appearance in Sarasota, where he disputed Trump’s frequent assertion that the special counsel investigation is a “witch hunt.”

“It sure caught a lot of witches,” Comey said Monday during a press conference before a speech at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall as part of the Ringling College Library Association Town Hall lecture series.

Comey was fired by Trump on May 9, 2017, in one of the most consequential acts of Trump’s presidency.

The firing prompted Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel to investigate potential ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. It also prompted Comey to start speaking out about Trump, and to write a book titled “A Higher Loyalty.”

Asked by a local high school student about his newfound status as a prominent political figure and "how does that compare to your ... position on not taking a stance on political issues," Comey noted he was fired and “as a private citizen I had to decide should I get involved and speak.”

“And in a way the decision was made for me by the president, because he immediately began lying about me and the FBI,” Comey added. “And I thought the easiest thing for me to do would be to be quiet. I don’t love my life as a semi-employed celebrity, but I would be a coward if I didn’t speak. I’m really worried about the impact this president has on our values that we all have in common.”

Comey has been heavily criticized by both the right and left since the 2016 election, but the packed Van Wezel audience was happy to hear what he had to say. He received two standing ovations, and his jabs at Trump were well received.

“An effective leader never asks for loyalty,” Comey said to big applause at one point.

Comey was referencing his allegation that Trump pulled him aside in a private meeting and asked for loyalty, a request that Comey said he met with silence. Trump has denied asking Comey for loyalty. The president has repeatedly called his former FBI director a liar and even suggested he should be in jail.

"I never asked Comey for Personal Loyalty," Trump tweeted last year. "I hardly even knew this guy. Just another of his many lies."

Asked Monday about Trump calling him a liar, Comey noted that he "testified about my encounters with the president under oath in the Senate at a time when there was the very real prospect that there were tapes of what I was testifying about."

"I would have to be a maniac to commit perjury in front of the Senate,” he added.

Comey said his reaction to such criticism has been to "shrug it off."

"That's a problem," he added. "The president sometimes wakes up in the morning and tweets that I should be in jail, and my reaction is I kind of shrug and I move on with the rest of my day and I shouldn't. Because close your eyes if you're a Republican and imagine the next president of the United States is a Democrat and he or she wakes up in the morning and starts announcing which private citizen should be in jail. What would your reaction be, Republicans? Your head would explode. So why is it not exploding now? We can't become numb to the constant erosion of core values."

Few public figures have generated more controversy or drawn more attention in the last few years than Comey. From investigating Hillary Clinton’s emails to being fired by Trump and subsequently becoming an outspoken critic of the president, Comey has been at the forefront of one of the biggest public dramas in American history.

Clinton’s emails came up repeatedly Monday. Comey reiterated that he has no regrets about how he approached the investigation into whether Clinton mishandled classified information as a public official by using a private email server, including his decision to notify Congress 11 days before the election that the FBI had discovered more emails and was reopening the investigation. Clinton wrote in her book that "if not for the dramatic intervention of the FBI director in the final days we would have won the White House."

Comey said it makes him “sick to my stomach” to think that his handling of the investigation may have influenced the presidential election, but added that “I think we made the right decisions.”

Concealing the fact that the FBI was looking into another batch of emails would have "ruined" the agency and caused "catastrophic damage" to the nation's institutions of justice, Comey said Monday. The crowd applauded after hearing Comey's explanation.

On the special counsel’s investigation, Comey said investigators likely are in the “fourth quarter of their work, but I don’t know for sure.” He said there should be “transparency” when it comes to the special counsel’s findings but added that “I don’t know whether that will mean releasing a report or a summary of a report or something.”

On Sunday Trump again criticized the special counsel investigation as a “witch hunt” during a CBS interview and dismissed the fact that 34 people have been charged so far by noting that the charges “had nothing to do with” Russia and the election or “were people that got caught telling a fib or telling a lie.”

Far from being a witch hunt, Comey said the investigation is “a serious important investigation being conducted by serious people.” And he took issue with the president’s effort to minimize the charges against those accused of lying to investigators.

“I have a wry smile when I hear people, especially Republicans, calling these process crimes,” Comey said. “The same people who thought Bill Clinton should be impeached and removed from office for lying.”

“It really matters that people be held accountable for lying during a criminal justice investigation,” Comey added. “Because all we have is the insistence that people tell the truth in an investigation, and if that ever slides away from us, we’re lost. So these aren’t process crimes; they are very serious crimes that strike at the heart of our criminal justice system.”

Coming across as relaxed and at ease despite the immense public pressure on him in recent years, Comey laced his speech — which centered on his thoughts on good leadership and the importance of having leaders with strong values — and an earlier media appearance with jokes about his height, the Sarasota weather and his celebrity status.

At one point the 6-foot-8 Comey described himself as a “maniac giraffe” during a story about hustling to get to a meeting with former president George W. Bush. Comey said he does not relish all the recent attention but feels compelled to speak out.

“I hope this period of my life will go away and you will no longer recognize me walking through an airport,” he said.