Updated at 6.30pm
US President Donald Trump attacked former FBI Director James Comey on Friday as a "weak and untruthful slime ball," reacting to news accounts that cite Comey as searingly critical of the president in a memoir due to be published next week.
"It was my great honor to fire James Comey!" Trump said in a series of angry Twitter messages, adding he had been a terrible FBI director.
Trump fired Comey last May and has publicly criticised him since then, but not to this extent. His virulent attack reflected months of simmering anger against a career law enforcement bureaucrat who has emerged as one of his fiercest opponents.
He described Trump as volatile, defensive and concerned more about how his own image than about alleged Russian meddling in the presidential election
Comey had been investigating allegations that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election and possible collusion between Russians and the Trump campaign. His firing led to the Justice Department appointing Special Counsel Robert Mueller to take over the Russia investigation.
Trump has denied any collusion, but the Russia probe has been an open sore on his presidency.
"James Comey is a proven LEAKER & LIAR," Trump said. He also accused Comey of lying to Congress, apparently referring to Comey's Senate testimony last June, when he said he needed to get his account of his conversations with Trump in the public sphere in the hope it might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.
Comey told lawmakers he had given copies of his memo memorialising his talks with Trump to people outside the Justice Department and asked a friend to share its contents with a journalist.
The former FBI director is doing a series of media interviews before the release of his book, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership," which news organisations have said paints a deeply unflattering picture of the president.
The interviews are Comey's first public comments since he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last June, when he accused Trump of firing him to undermine the FBI's Russia investigation.
Comey said at the time the Trump administration had lied and defamed him and the Federal Bureau of Investigation after the president dismissed him on May 9.
'REALLY WEIRD'
In an interview broadcast on Friday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Comey discussed his initial encounters last year with the new president. He described Trump as volatile, defensive and concerned more about how his own image than about alleged Russian meddling in the presidential election.
Comey said he cautioned Trump against ordering an investigation into a salacious intelligence dossier alleging an 2013 encounter with prostitutes in Moscow.
In the book, Comey wrote that Trump raised the intelligence dossier with him at least four times during meetings after Trump took office in January, according to the Washington Post, which obtained a copy.
The dossier was compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele about Trump’s ties to Russia and included an allegation that involved prostitutes.
Trump denied the allegations and said he might want the FBI to investigate allegations in the dossier to prove they were not true, Comey told ABC.
"I said to him, 'Sir that's up to you but you want to be careful about that because it might create a narrative that we're investigating you personally and, second, it's very difficult to prove something didn't happen," Comey said.
Trump was worried there was a chance his wife, Melania Trump, would believe the allegations.
Comey said he told the president the FBI had not proved or disproved the allegations but thought it was important Trump knew about them.
Comey said the allegations in the dossier had not been verified at the time he left the FBI. He said he did not know whether the events described in the dossier were true.
Asked how bizarre that meeting with Trump was, Comey said: "Very weird. "Really weird. It was almost an out of body experience for me. I was floating above myself looking down saying 'you're sitting here briefing the incoming president of the United States about prostitutes in Moscow.'"
In January 2017, US intelligence chiefs briefed Trump and his advisers on Russia's election meddling.
What struck him most, Comey told ABC, was that the conversation moved straight into a public relations mode, what they could say and how they would position Trump.
"No one, to my recollection, asked so what's coming next from the Russians, how might we stop it, what's the future look like," Comey said.
Moscow has repeatedly denied that it interfered in the 2016 campaign in hopes of tilting the election in Trump's favor.
|
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE BOOK - During a private dinner with Trump at the White House, Comey writes: 'Unprompted, and in another zag in the conversation, (Trump) 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 per cent 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.' - Comey writes that Trump said he was thinking about asking the FBI to investigate the allegation to prove it was a lie. Comey expressed concern about creating a narrative that the president was being investigated personally and that it was difficult to prove something never happened. Trump said he would think about it and asked Comey to consider it too. 'He then returned to the issue of loyalty, saying again, "I need loyalty." I paused, again. "You will always get honesty from me," I said. He paused. "That is what I want, honest loyalty," he said. This appeared to satisfy him as some sort of "deal" in which we were both winners.' - Comey described an intelligence briefing for the president-elect at Trump Tower, where Trump and his team were told about Russia's interference in the election: 'I recall Trump listening without interrupting, and asking only one question, which was really more of a statement: "But you found there was no impact on the result, right?" The intelligence team said they had done no such analysis. 'What I found telling was what Trump and his team didn't ask. They were about to lead a country that had been attacked by a foreign adversary, yet they had no questions about what the future Russian threat might be.' Instead, Trump and his team immediately started discussing how they would "spin" the information on Russia as if the intelligence officers were not in the room. 'They were keen to emphasize that there was no impact on the vote, meaning that the Russians hadn't elected Trump.' - Comey writes that during the meeting he kept thinking of the New York mafia from his experience as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, and how the Trump team's behavior was aimed at making the intelligence community part of his group – his Cosa Nostra. - During the Trump Tower intelligence briefing, Comey writes, he asked to talk privately to the president-elect about the allegations in a dossier that Trump had been with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel in 2013 and that the Russians had filmed the episode. 'Before I finished, Trump interrupted sharply with a dismissive tone. He was eager to protest that the allegations weren't true.' Comey writes that he explained that the issue was not whether the FBI believed the allegations but that it thought it was important that Trump knew about them, especially since the press was about to report on it. 'He again strongly denied the allegations, asking – rhetorically, I assumed – whether he seemed like a guy who needed the services of prostitutes. He then began discussing cases where women had accused him of sexual assault, a subject I had not raised. He mentioned a number of women, and seemed to have memorised their allegations. As he began to grow more defensive and the conversation teetered towards disaster, on instinct, I pulled the tool from my bag: "We are not investigating you, sir." That seemed to quiet him.' |