Did Former Director James Comey Try to Warn The Administration About The Rise of ISIS?

James Comey may have been spot-on when it came to concerns about the radical terrorist group ISIS.

ISIS attempts to motivate distraught Americans to commit acts of violence has become more of a terror interest to the United States than a strike by al Qaeda, the Former FBI Director said in 2015.

The successful thwarting of ISIS members in the field could lead to more terrorist attacks in the West, Comey said at a cybersecurity conference at Fordham University last year. The Former FBI Director seemed to be a voice of concern when it came to what ISIS was capable of doing and how they would expand. He even posited that ultimately crushing ISIS in Syria and Iraq would most likely end terrorism elsewhere.

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Comey also spoke about ISIS to a crowd at the Aspen Security Forum two years ago, insisting that the group has swayed a substantial but unspecified number of Americans over a year-long operation through social media by telling Muslims who aren’t able to get to the Middle East to “kill where you are.”

When asked if the risk of ISIS attacks had overshadowed those of the opposing group that hit the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, Comey replied, “Yes.” The U.S. kept tabs on groups of Americans, ages from 18 to 62, who went to Iraq or Syria with intentions of fighting alongside the Islamic State group, he said.

“I worry very much about what I can’t see,” Comey added. He said those who recruited for ISIS use encrypted communication software to prevent the U.S. from eavesdropping. Twitter, one of ISIS’ methods of communication, has multiple accounts allegedly used to communicate with more than 21,000 English-speaking users around the world, he said, and thousands of those followers could be U.S. residents.

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The FBI detained a substantial number of people in a span of eight weeks who had been radicalized, Comey said in 2015 without specifying details. He noted that numerous people who were arrested were scheduling attacks around July Fourth of that year. The department has hundreds of pending investigations into similar cases across the country.

"This is an order of magnitude greater than anything we've seen before," Comey said. "A lot of terrorists fled out of Afghanistan... this is 10 times that or more."

"We saw the future of this threat in Brussels and in Paris (attacks last year)," he added.

There has also been an increase in ISIS strikes worldwide, especially in countries close to its territory, which have been dwindling because of military losses in Syria and Iraq.

"At some point, there is going to be a terrorist diaspora out of Syria like we've never seen before," Comey said. "Not all of the Islamic State killers are going to die on the battlefield."

The firing of Comey put an end to the diminishing relationship between the former FBI director and President Donald Trump, both of whom rarely saw eye-to-eye. Trump is a president who puts peculiar emphasis on loyalty, and Comey was a neutral and impulsive director with the power to possibly disrupt the president’s administration. Trump terminated him while Comey was spearheading a criminal investigation into whether Trump’s advisers colluded with the Russian government to influence the result of the 2016 presidential election.​