James Comey book – live reading: Fired FBI director finally reveals all about the 'pee tape', Trump's hands and more

Comey says that, during the briefing, the Trump team only seemed to care about whether the election was legitimate or not. They didn't, for instance, ask about what the threat from Russia in the future might be. (Comey criticises Trump for not asking, though he doesn't say that he told him anyway.)

And he lays into the team – particularly Reince Priebus – for the fact that as soon as this briefing was over they immediately began to discuss how to spin it to their own advantage. He says that he never saw this kind of thing with Bush or Obama, and how worried he was that Trump didn't seem bothered about the mixing of politics and intelligence.

And this is where he compares Trump to a mob boss, which he says happens as he was sitting in the meeting and was struck by the image. He thought of the New York social clubs that were hubs for the mafia. "I couldn't shake the picture. And looking back, it wasn't as odd and dramatic as I thought it was at the time."

He thought the meeting was working on the same logic, too. It was trying to bring him into the family, just like a mobster might do. Comey wanted intelligence to be his thing and politics to be Trump's – but the president-elect was trying to draw the intelligence community into politics, he says.

After that meeting was over, Comey asked if he could have some time in a smaller group. Trump said that they could talk one-on-one. And we're into...

"The Pee Tape."

Comey doesn't call it that, obviously. He says that he explained the Steele dossier in broad terms and then moved onto discussing "the allegation in the dossier that he had been with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel in 2013 and that the Russians had filmed the episode. I didn't mention one particular allegation in the dossier – that he was having prostitutes urinate on each other on the very bed President Obama and the First Lady had once slept in as a way of soiling the bed. I figured that single detail was not necessary to put him on notice about the material".

Comey says Trump was really interested in this one bit of the tape. (Obviously he's not alone in that...) He kept insisting it wasn't true; Comey kept saying that he was merely making him aware of the contents of the tape, and informing him since part of the FBI's job was to keep him safe from coercion.

After that, he kept talking about cases of women who had accused him of sexual assault, Comey claims. He became more defensive, Comey says.

And then he used his Trump card, and told the president that the FBI wasn't investigating him. They shook hands and left.

Then the dossier leaked, and with it the accusation of the tape. Trump publicly attacked the publication, and held a press conference; privately, he rang Comey and said that he didn't even stay in Moscow. Plus, he says:

"Another reason you know this isn't true: I'm a germaphobe. There's no way I would let people pee on each other around me. No way."

Comey goes on to give his response to this. And it's a little strange itself, really:

I actually let out an audible laugh. I decided not to tell him the activity alleged did not seem to require either an overnight stay or even being in close proximity to the participants. In fact, though I didn't know for sure, I imagined the presidential suite of the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow was large enough for a germaphobe to be at safe distance from the activity. I thought all of this and said none of it.

It's inauguration day!

Comey says he didn't want to go along, initially. But everyone told him it would look bad if he didn't – and, anyway, he could just record the American football games he was so excited for and watch them after. So he went along after all, and just committed to keep "a health distance from Trump. So I figured out which way the president would likely enter the room and mingled my way to the opposite end [...] I couldn't get farther away without climbing out of the window, an option that would begin to look more appealing as time went by". Comey seems like an awkward man.

But it worked, at least initially. Comey says that he'd accidentally stood next to a blue curtain, wearing a blue suit, and so had blended in. "I literally clung to the blue curtain, all in the hope that I could avoid an ill-advised and totally awkward televised hug from the new president of the United States". Yes – he's definitely a very awkward man!

Anyway, Trump spotted him. He called him over. And we are given our second detailed depiction of just how terrible it sounds to hug James Comey:

The president gripped my hand. Then he pulled it forward and down. There it was. He was going for the hug on national TV. I tightened the right side of my body, calling on years of side planks and dumbbell rows. He was not going to get a hug without being a whole lot stronger than he looked. He wasn't. I thwarted the hug, but I got something in exchange. The president leaned in and put his mouth near my right ear. 'I'm really looking forward to working with you,' he said. Unfortunately, because of the vantage point of the TV cameras, what many in the world, including my children, thought they saw was a kiss. The world whole 'saw' Donald Trump kiss the man who some believed got him elected. Surely this couldn't get any worse.

If I've learnt one thing from this book so far, it is this: do not try and hug James Comey.

Now I know that, at least ostensibly, James Comey is so awkward because he doesn't want to get close to Trump for both personal and ideological reasons. But he's so awkward! And just after the hugging, we're treated to another demonstration of that fact:

Comey is telling the story of being called up by the president and asked to come over to the White House for dinner. They settled for 6.30 and he got ready to go. He was initially worried but it was suggested to him that other people were being invited. Then he arrived – and what he saw chilled him to the bone.

Standing at the entrance to the Green Room, as we continued waiting and chatting, I saw it – a table unmistakably set for two. One place setting was marked with a calligraphy card reading, 'Director Comey.' The other spot, presumably, was for the president. I was deeply uncomfortable and not just because I did not love the idea of a third discussion of Russian hookers.

Anyway they sit down, have a look at their menu cards, and get to chatting:

"They write these things out one at a time, by hand," he marvels, referring to the White House staff.

"A calligrapher," I replied, nodding.

He looked quizzical. "They write them by hand," he repeated.

Now we're into the meat of the dinner: Trump called it to suggest that Comey owed him something, and to find out if he could rely on him to keep his part of the bargain. "The president of the United States had invited me to dinner and decided my job security was on the menu."

This meeting has now become somewhat infamous, because someone (presumably Comey) has been fairly liberal in leaking details of it. Comey said that Trump could rely on him to tell the truth, which didn't seem to please the president. He said he wanted more: "I need loyalty. I expect loyalty."

Comey doesn't like this. He compares Trump to a mafia boss again, and suggests that Trump's supporters consider what would happen if Obama or Bush had done the same (not that they would, he says).

So the two men just look at each other for ages, in yet another awkward confrontation. They start looking at each other and they don't stop. "In an earlier time in my career and at a younger age, I wouldn't have had the nerve to keep my composure, to not break the icy stare with a nod or some muffled word, signaling agreement." But Comey is an experienced man, a veteran – he's "fifty-six, with a fair number of scars, and in my fourth year as a director of the FBI". He is ready to look at a man awkwardly for ages, even if he has to talk to himself in his head while he does it. "I sat inches from the president, staring him directly in the face."

Anyway eventually Trump breaks up the bizarre staring contest and they talk about something else. "My cold response didn't seem to faze him much, if at all."

Trump spent most of the rest of the time giving his explanation of various things. Explaining to Comey what he thought of his recent work as the director of the FBI; explaining why he hadn't made fun of a disabled reporter, despite the fact there's video of him doing that; explaining that he hadn't assaulted any of the various women who claim he did. Also explaining that he likes the decor in the White House ("This is luxury. And I know luxury.")

Comey tells us all this and then breaks into a short rundown of what he thinks this says about leadership. He says that we tend to think of things being about us but they're not really about us. Leaders have to stop doing that, he says. "I see this as the heart of emotional intelligence, the ability to imagine the feelings and perspective of another 'me'."

Often, as now, when Comey breaks into these sort of didactic bits about how to be a leader or a good person, it has this strange element of having just discovered basic parts of being alive for the first time. Anyway, he says that Trump didn't have this skill – that nobody had taught him those basic aspects of emotional intelligence.

With that we're back onto the pee tape, for the second time. (So far – it's coming back.)

Unprompted, and in another zag in the conversation, he brought up what he called the 'golden showers thing,' repeating much of what he had said to me previously, adding that it bothered him if there was 'even a one percent chance' his wife, Melania, thought it was true. That distracted me slightly because I immediately began wondering why his wife would think there was any chance, even a small one, that he had been with prostitutes urinating on each other in Moscow. For all my flaws, there is a zero percent chance – literally absolutely zero – that [Comey's wife] Patrice would credit an allegation that I was with hookers peeing on each other in Moscow. She would laugh at the very suggestion. In what kind of marriage, to what kind of man, does a spouse conclude there is only a 99 percent chance her husband didn't do that?

Comey breaks into a disconnected, but interesting, diversion here: Has Trump ever laughed? He says that he's never seen him laugh – that he has scoured through the thousands of hours of video footage that has been taken of him on YouTube and found only one laugh.

That laugh came at a campaign event in 2016, when there was a noise at the back that sounded like a dog barking. He asked what it was; someone said it was Hillary.

But otherwise, the man has never laughed. And it's true – I've never seen Trump laugh.

"I suspect his apparent inability to do so is rooted in deep insecurity, his inability to be vulnerable or to risk himself by appreciating the humour of others, which, on reflection, is really very sad in a leader, and a little scary in a president."