President assails Comey over book
Former FBI chief: ‘Some evidence’ that president obstructed justice
WASHINGTON — Former FBI Director James Comey and the president who fired him lobbed rhetorical bombs at each other Sunday, keeping up a verbal war that has ratcheted up the tension in the White House even as it has contributed mightily to the advance sales of Comey’s new book.
In an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC, Comey said he thinks there’s “certainly some evidence of obstruction of justice” in the actions of President Donald Trump.
Comey answered “possibly” to whether the president was attempting to obstruct justice when he asked Comey to end an FBI investigation into former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn. Trump has denied that conversation, but Comey insisted that it occurred.
On the matter of obstruction, Comey noted that he’s just a witness in the case and not an investigator or prosecutor.
Comey also said he could not discount the possibility that Russia might have something on the president.
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 President Donald Trump as “untethered” to truthfulness and its statement that Trump’s White House style reminded him of the mob: “The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and above the truth,” he said in the book.
Trump, hours before the interview aired, blasted Comey with a series of tweets attacking the former FBI chief as a “slimeball” and “slippery” and claiming that he “hardly 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, which is scheduled to be released Tuesday, did not explain why he “gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress ( jail).” Trump offered no evidence that Comey has committed either of those offenses.
Comey’s book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership,” offers a withering portrait of Trump, which he described during the hourlong interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
Comey said that Trump asked him to investigate and disprove allegations contained in the so-called dossier — a collection of allegations compiled by a former British intelligence agent working for Trump’s political opponents. Trump focused repeatedly on an allegation that he had been compromised by Russian intelligence by consorting with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel in 2013.
“He may want me to investigate it to prove that it didn’t happen,” Comey said. “And then he says something that distracted me because he said, you know, ‘If there’s even a 1 percent chance my wife thinks that’s true, that’s terrible.’ ”
“And I remember thinking, ‘How could your wife think there’s a 1 percent chance you were with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow?’ ”
By contrast with Trump, some other Republicans have tried to stay clear of the debate. On Sunday, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., declined to defend Comey.
“I don’t know him very well,” Ryan said of Comey on NBC News. “I’m not trying to be evasive. But what I don’t want to do is — is join some food fight, some book-selling food fight. I don’t see any value in that.”
Ryan said again that he does not see the need for Congress to pass a law protecting special counsel Robert Mueller in case Trump moves to fire him. Mueller is leading the wideranging investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether Trump or his aides committed crimes before, during or since the campaign.
Eleven days before the election, Comey departed from Justice Department protocol and sent a letter to Congress saying the FBI had reopened an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server to handle her emails. Clinton and her allies have said Comey’s actions helped cost her the election.
In the interview, Comey acknowledged that at the time, he was convinced Clinton would win. “I don’t remember consciously thinking about that, but it must have been because I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump, and so I’m sure that it was a factor,” Comey said.
“I don’t remember spelling it out, but it had to have been that she’s going to be elected president, and if I hide this from the American people, she’ll be illegitimate the moment she’s elected, the moment this comes out.”