James Comey’s Book Party Was Larded With Journalists

WASHINGTON — “This is my first and only book party, and I didn’t do the invites,” the former F.B.I. director James Comey said Tuesday night, peering out over a sparse crowd on the seventh floor of the Newseum. (This was easy for him to do as he is, famously, 6-foot-8.)

Mr. Comey, by now a bona fide bipartisan pariah, was sipping California pinot noir from a paper cup and celebrating the remarkable success of his juicy new memoir, “A Higher Loyalty,” with perhaps the last crowd left in town who will gladly have him: journalists.

In a city not known for snappy dressing, Mr. Comey cut a sharp figure in a bespoke blue plaid suit made by the haberdasher The Tailored Man of Alexandria, Va., and brown R.M. Williams Chelsea boots he says were given to him by friends from the Australian police force (not to be confused with the black Chelsea boots Mr. Comey wore for his prime time “20/20” interview, which earned him plaudits from Esquire and GQ).

As a late-April rain lashed the museum’s panoramic windows, the man of the hour cheerily recounted tales from his whirlwind media tour. “The clutch of people coming up to me in airports, that’s probably the hardest thing to get used to,” he said.

Who was scarier to face: the ladies of “The View,” or the New Yorker editor David Remnick?

“I was nervous at ‘The View’ and ‘Colbert,’ because my wife cared about ‘The View’ and my kids cared about ‘Colbert,’ Mr. Comey said. “Those are the only two interviews I was nervous about.”

Besides this room of tweet-stained wretches, is there anyone left in Washington who still likes him?

“My family, they love me.”

Title of the sequel?

“HA!”

This reporter scanned the room somewhat desperately for political operatives and located Donna Brazile, the Democratic strategist. “This is definitely a media party,” she said. “But it’s good to be in the company of reporters, I don’t get to hang out with them anymore.” Plus, she said she’d never met Mr. Comey before.

Would Ms. Brazile, someone who’d also written a controversial retelling of the 2016 election, have any advice for him on weathering Clintonian wrath?

“I believe in grace,” she said. “They threw a lot of shade at me, but you know, the important thing is that he has put his book out, she’s put her book out, and others have put their books out.”

Certainly it’s been a boom time for Trump-trashing books (every top New York Times nonfiction best-seller this year has been about the president). And there are more to come.

“The real reason I’m here?” said James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence. “Well, my book comes out next month, so I want to see how one of these is done.” He was positioned near the bar, surrounded by a group of young women and sporting the red tie with little martini glasses on it that, according to page 202 of “A Higher Loyalty,” was regifted to him from Mr. Comey.

While Mr. Comey’s agent, Keith Urbahn, of Javelin (which was hosting the party) chirped that his client’s first week book sales dwarfed those of Hillary Clinton’s “What Happened” and Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury,” cable-television personalities and members of the White House press corps congealed around high-top tables, precariously balancing cocktails and iPhones.

Still, this counted as a night off for many of them: A few doors down on Pennsylvania Avenue, President Donald J. Trump was noshing on goat-cheese gâteau with guests — including Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall, Bernard Arnault and the French President Emmanuel Macron — sans press (and Democrats, save for the governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards) at the administration’s first state dinner.

In a speech to the room, with the illuminated Capitol building partly shrouded in mist behind him, Mr. Comey said he hoped the leadership lessons in his pages would prove to be especially useful to young people. “I’m going to use it in my class at William & Mary next year, and I’m going to give it to all of the students, because I don’t want to be that guy,” he said.

Around 8 p.m. he made for the exit — instinctively, yet unnecessarily, ducking his head when he reached the door frame.