Former FBI director James Comey’s book details his early career as a prosecutor, and his work at the justice department and FBI under George W Bush and Barack Obama. But the chapters on Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and the 2016 election have attracted most attention since the Guardian and others obtained copies of the book on Thursday. Here are the key points:

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First encounter with Trump

Comey recounts his visit to Trump Tower in January 2017 to brief the president-elect for the first time. “His face appeared slightly orange,” he writes, “with bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assume he placed small tanning goggles, and impressively coiffed, bright blond hair, which on close inspection looked to be all his. I remember wondering how long it must take him in the morning to get that done.” Comey also writes that he surreptitiously checked the size of the president-elect’s hands; smaller than his own, but not noticeably smaller than usual.

Russia

Told of Russia’s attempt to influence the election in his favour, Comey writes, the president-elect and his advisers asked no questions about the apparent attack by a foreign power and concentrated only on the political implications and media strategies – while intelligence leaders stayed in the room. “Holy crap,” writes Comey, who has discussed at length his early career as a mob prosecutor, “they are trying to make each of us an ‘amica nostra’ – a friend of ours. To draw us in. As crazy as it sounds, I suddenly had the feeling that … the president-elect was trying to make us all part of the same family.”

One-on-one

When Comey and Trump spoke alone about the Steele dossier, with its claims of Russian connections, Trump began to talk obsessively about women who had accused him of sexual assault. Seeking to cut him off, Comey told him he was “not under investigation” personally. Comey says he did so despite the view of the FBI’s general counsel, Jim Baker, that such a statement was too narrow, given Trump’s leadership of a campaign that was being investigated. After the meeting, Comey went to the FBI building in Manhattan: “After the uncomfortable conversation I’d just had, it was like taking a shower.”

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‘Pee tape’

In a phone call, Trump obsessed about the allegation he consorted with prostitutes in Moscow during Miss Universe in 2013: “I’m a germaphobe. There’s no way I would let people pee on each other around me.” “I actually let out an audible laugh,” Comey writes. “I imagined the presidential suite of the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow was large enough for a germaphobe to be at a safe distance from the activity.”

‘Mob boss’

Recounting an Oval Office meeting, Comey writes that Trump remained behind the Resolute desk, making his visitor uncomfortable, where George W Bush and Barack Obama took meetings on couches and chairs. Trump talked and talked. “I once again was having flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the mob,” Comey writes. “The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. 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 organization above morality and the truth.”

Dinner for two

At a group gathering at the White House, the 6ft 8in Comey tried unsuccessfully to blend into the curtains to avoid the president’s gaze. Later, Trump’s invitation to dinner at the White House is replayed like a scene from some Washington thriller – a single table in the middle of the Green Room, the two powerful men alone. Comey realised his own job security was “on the menu”. Of Trump’s now famous supposed demand for “loyalty”, Comey writes: “To my mind, the demand was like Sammy the Bull’s Cosa Nostra induction ceremony – with Trump in the role of the family boss, asking me if I have what it takes to be a ‘made man’.”

Firing

After Comey found out about his firing – like everyone else in the room in which he was giving a speech, via the TVs behind his podium – John Kelly, then secretary of homeland security, called to say “he was sick about my firing and that he intended to quit in protest. He said he didn’t want to work for dishonorable people who would treat someone like me in such a manner. I urged Kelly not to do that, arguing that the country needed principled people around this president. Especially this president.” Kelly is now (an out of favour) White House chief of staff.

‘Leaks’

Comey writes that as he did not trust the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, whom he describes as “overwhelmed and overmatched at his job”, and describes how as he was now a private citizen, he decided to “prompt a media story by revealing the president’s 14 February direction that I drop the Flynn investigation”. He sent a copy of an unclassified memo to the New York Times via a friend, Columbia professor Daniel Richman. “To be clear,” he writes. “This was not a ‘leak’ of classified information, no matter how many times … the president calls it that.”

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Clinton’s emails and his press conference



Comey’s retread of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server is painstaking and painful. “No matter what the honest outcome, the [FBI’s] credibility – and mine – would be damaged.” He adds: “Unusual transparency might be necessary to reassure the American people and to protect the institutions of justice.” Of the infamous July 2016 press conference at which he excoriated Clinton, but then said he would not charge her, he writes: “I knew this was going to suck for me. From the Democratic side would come predictable stuff about my wanting the spotlight, being out of control, driven by ego. From the Republican side would come more allegations of justice department incompetence or corruption. But I believed – and still believe, even in hindsight, it was the best thing for the FBI and for the Department of Justice.” He should, he adds, “have tried to find a better way to describe Secretary Clinton’s conduct than ‘extremely careless’”.

11 days before the election

Shortly before election day, Comey was informed of “an enormous trove of Secretary Clinton’s emails” on a computer belonging to the disgraced husband of Clinton’s closest aide. “We really were screwed,” Comey writes, “… ‘avoid action’ was not an option. Speak or conceal – both terrible options.” He decided to inform Congress because he assumed, “as nearly everyone did, that Hillary Clinton would be elected president of the United States in less than two weeks [and] what would happen to the FBI, the justice department or her own presidency if it later was revealed, after the fact, that she still was the subject of an FBI investigation?”

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Obama

Comey, a Republican, writes of a good working relationship with Barack Obama. In a one-on-one Oval Office meeting at the end of Obama’s presidency that foreshadows meetings with Trump, the president salutes his FBI director’s “integrity and ability”. Comey writes that he was moved “almost to the verge of tears” and told Obama: “I dread the next four years.”

Judgment

In a short and damning epilogue, Comey considers Trump’s character. “Our country is paying a high price” for the 2016 election, he says: “This president is unethical, and untethered to the truth and institutional values.” Trump’s presidency is like a “forest fire”, he says: “Important norms and traditions will be damaged by the flames. But forest fires, as painful as they can be, bring growth. In the midst of this fire, I already see new life – young people engaged as never before, and the media, the courts, academics, nonprofits, and all other parts of civil society finding reason to bloom.”