Comey book: Trump ‘untethered to truth’
EX-FBI director blasts president as ‘ego driven’
WASHINGTON — Former FBI Director James Comey blasts President Donald Trump as unethical and “untethered to truth” and calls his leadership of the country “ego driven and about personal loyalty” in a forthcoming book.
Comey reveals new details about his interactions with Trump and his own decision-making in handling the Hillary Clinton email investigation before the 2016 election. He casts Trump as a mafia boss-like figure who sought to blur the line between law enforcement and politics and tried to pressure him personally regarding his investigation into Russian election interference.
The book adheres closely to Comey’s public testimony and written statements about his contacts with the president during the early days of the administration and his growing concern about Trump’s integrity. It also includes personal jabs at Trump.
The book, “A Higher Loyalty,” is to be released next week. The Associated Press purchased a copy this week.
Comey also describes Trump weighing whether to ask the FBI to investigate, with an eye toward debunking, a salacious allegation involving Trump and Russian prostitutes urinating on a bed in a Moscow hotel. Trump has strongly denied the allegation, and Comey says that it appeared the president wanted it investigated to reassure his wife, Melania Trump.
Trump fired Comey in May 2017, setting off a scramble at the Justice Department that led to the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation. Mueller’s probe has expanded to include whether Trump obstructed justice by firing Comey, an idea the president denies.
Trump has assailed Comey as a “showboat” and a “liar.”
Trump has said he fired Comey because of his handling of the FBI’S investigation into Clinton’s email practices. Trump used the investigation as a cudgel in the campaign and repeatedly said Clinton should be jailed for using a personal email system while serving as secretary of state. Democrats, on the other hand, have accused Comey of politicizing the investigation, and Clinton herself has said it hurt her election prospects.
Comey writes that he regrets his approach and some of the wording he used in his July 2016 press conference in which he announced the decision not to prosecute Clinton. But he says he believes he did the right thing by going before the cameras and making his statement, noting that the Justice Department had done so in other high-profile cases.
Every person on the investigative team, Comey writes, found that there was no prosecutable case against Clinton and that the FBI didn’t find that she lied under its questioning.
He also reveals new details about how the government had unverified classified information that he believes could have been used to cast doubt on Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s independence in the Clinton probe.
While Comey does not outline the details of the information — and says he didn’t see indications of Lynch inappropriately influencing the investigation — he says it worried him that the material could be used to attack the integrity of the probe and the FBI’S independence.