Former FBI director James Comey lambasted Trump in a Wednesday op-ed for The New York Times that he billed as an attempt to explain Attorney General William Barr’s capitulation to the Oval Office. “How could Mr. Barr, a bright and accomplished lawyer, start channeling the president in using words like ‘no collusion’ and F.B.I. ‘spying’?” Comey began in the op-ed, which was published while Barr testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “And how could Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, after the release of Mr. Mueller’s report that detailed Mr. Trump’s determined efforts to obstruct justice, give a speech quoting the president on the importance of the rule of law?”

After spending four months working alongside Trump, Comey wrote, he thought he had an answer: “Proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing,” he wrote. “I think that’s at least part of what we’ve seen with Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein. Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like Mr. Mattis’s to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.”