Trump, Comey step up war of words
WASHINGTON» The verbal war between former FBI Director James B. Comey and the president who fired him escalated dramatically Sunday, as Comey denounced President Donald Trump as “morally unfit” and a “stain” on those around him and Trump suggested the former FBI chief should be imprisoned.
In an extraordinary interview with ABC, Comey called Trump a habitual liar, likened the president to a mob boss and said he thinks it is possible that the president is in fact compromised by Russian intelligence.
Asked in the interview whether he thought Russia “has something” on Trump, Comey said: “I think it’s possible. I don’t know.
“These are more words I never thought I’d utter about a president of the United States, but it’s possible,” he told the interviewer, ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos.
“It is stunning” that the possibility can’t be ruled out, “and I wish I wasn’t saying it, but it’s just — it’s the truth,” he said.
The interview is the first Comey has given since his firing by Trump last May, and it comes during a publicity blitz for his book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership,” which is scheduled for release Tuesday and is already a best-seller.
Though the interview added few new facts to what Comey said in congressional testimony last year, it was striking for the detail of his recollections and his rough language about the president. The network released a transcript of the entire five-hour interview.
Asked about Trump’s mental condition, Comey said: “I don’t think he’s medically unfit to be president. I think he’s morally unfit to be president.”
He likened Trump to a “forest fire” that threatens the norms of American democracy.
“A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it — that person’s not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds,” Comey said.
“The challenge of this president is that he will stain everyone around him.”
The interview is certain to escalate the president’s anger, which already had reached a high pitch Sunday, with a vicious series of tweets attacking the former FBI chief as “slippery” and a “slimeball.” Trump claimed that he “hardly even knew this guy.”
“Slippery James Comey, a man who always ends up badly and out of whack (he is not smart!), will go down as the WORST FBI Director in history, by far!” the president tweeted.
He appeared to call for Comey’s imprisonment, declaring that Comey’s book did not explain why he “gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail).”
Trump offered no evidence that Comey committed either of those offenses.
In the interview, as in the book, Comey described Trump as obsessed with his own reputation — including allegations involving Moscow prostitutes — and unconcerned with countering attacks from Russia.
He also repeated his book’s description of Trump as “untethered” to truthfulness and its statement that Trump’s White House style reminded him of the mob.
“The loyalty oaths, the boss as the dominant center of everything — it’s all about how do you serve the boss, what’s in the boss’ interests. It’s the family, the family, the family, the family.”