In addition to planning his doomed summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, whipping up hysteria over the brutal gang MS-13, and stoking the flames of a culture war over NFL players’ peaceful protests against police brutality, President Donald Trump has seemingly dedicated much of his attention of late to what he’s dubbed “SPYGATE” (caps his).
And no, we’re not talking about the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame or the New England Patriots’ spying on their opponents, we’re talking about a conspiracy theory of the president’s that appears to allege the Obama administration, including his Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, paid a spy large sums of money to embed in the Trump campaign, only to then—for whatever reason—not disclose the spy’s findings pertaining to possible Trump-Russia collusion prior to the election, thus allowing Trump to win the presidency.
President Trump tweeted on Thursday, “Clapper has now admitted that there was Spying in my campaign. Large dollars were paid to the Spy, far beyond normal. Starting to look like one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. SPYGATE - a terrible thing!” (Fact check: False.)
That very night—talk about timing—Conan O’Brien welcomed former FBI Director James Comey, who was famously fired by Trump for, some say, investigating the aforementioned Trump-Russia ties, onto his TBS late-night program.
Comey, promoting his bestselling tell-all book A Higher Loyalty, was asked about the above tweet by Conan, and appeared completely dumbfounded. “As best I can tell, it’s made up. I don’t know where he’s getting that from, honestly. A number of things he’s announced were ‘the biggest scandal since Watergate,’ my guess is two weeks from now there will be something different from this. But I don’t know anything about those facts.”
“Do you find it to be at all possible or probable…that there was a spy inserted into his campaign by an intelligence agency?” pressed Conan.
“I don’t find it possible, and I know it not to be true. And the facts are knowable, and I got to tell you, there was a meeting on Capitol Hill where Democrats and Republicans got to see the actual facts, which is why I’m confident that something else will be ‘bigger than Watergate’ next week—no, he’ll find something to tweet about” and claim it’s bigger than Watergate.
“He’ll get an undercooked burger that’s ‘bigger than Watergate,’” chimed in co-host Andy Richter.