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.
He sensationally reveals how the president wanted him to investigate the notorious claims he ordered ‘golden showers’ at a Moscow hotel because ‘it bothered him if there was “even a one per cent chance” his wife, Melania, thought it was true’, the New York Post reported.
Comey says Trump called the tape the ‘golden showers thing’, and that he wondered about the state of the president’s marriage as there was ‘zero chance’ his own wife would believe such a claim against him.
And he reveals new details 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 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 the president’s integrity. It also includes strikingly personal jabs at Trump that appear likely to irritate the president.
Bombshell: James Comey’s book reveals how Trump used a private dinner to ask him to prove the notorious ‘golden showers’ dossier was a lie – to please Melania
Sizing up: The 6-foot-8 Comey describes Trump as shorter than he expected with a ‘too long’ tie and ‘bright white half-moons’ under his eyes that he suggests came from tanning goggles.
Prove it for Melania: Comey says Trump used a private dinner to ask him to use the FBI to disprove the claims in the notorious dossier
He reveals the conversation with Trump about the notorious tape happened over a private dinner – one which he previously said the president had used to ask him for personal loyalty.
The dinner, on January 27, was only days into Trump’s time in office and the details of the dossier had just been revealed.
‘He just rolled on, unprompted, explaining why it couldn’t possibly be true, ending by saying he was thinking of asking me to investigate the allegation to prove it was a lie. I said it was up to him,’ the New York Post reported that the book said.
Comey recounts telling the president that looking into the claims of a tape showing the ‘golden showers’ may make people thing that he was under investigation himself – but that did not put the president off and he replied that the FBI director ‘might be right’.
‘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 writes, according to the NY Post.
The book seems calculated to offend Trump. The 6-foot-8 Comey describes the president – described by the White House doctor as 6 foot 3 – as shorter than he expected with a ‘too long’ tie and ‘bright white half-moons’ under his eyes that he suggests came from tanning goggles.
He also says he made a conscious effort to check the president’s hand size, saying it was ‘smaller than mine, but did not seem unusually so.’
The book, ‘A Higher Loyalty,’ is to be released next week. The Associated Press purchased a copy this week.
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.’
Comey’s account lands at a particularly sensitive moment for Trump and the White House. Officials there describe Trump as enraged over a recent FBI raid of his personal lawyer’s home and office, raising the prospect that he could fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, or try to shut down the probe on his own.
The Republican National Committee is poised to lead the pushback effort against Comey, who is set to do a series of interviews to promote the book, by launching a website and supplying surrogates with talking points that question the former director’s credibility.
Trump has said he fired Comey because of his handling of the FBI’s investigation into his 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.
The Internet domain LyinComey.com was registered 15 days ago as the GOP’s plan to counter Comey’s coming book tour took shape
The ad also features tweets from former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, who said Comey had aligned himself with Vladimir Putin and may have permanently damaged the FBI’s credibility
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 for the first time that the U.S. 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.
Comey’s book will be heavily scrutinized by the president’s legal team looking for any inconsistencies between it and his public testimony, under oath, before Congress.
They will be looking to impeach Comey’s credibility as a key witness in Mueller’s obstruction investigation, which the president has cast as a political motivated witch hunt.
He provides new details of his firing. He writes that then-Homeland Security secretary John Kelly – now Trump’s chief of staff – offered to quit out of a sense of disgust as to how Comey was dismissed, as well as his first encounter with Trump, a January 2017 briefing at Trump Tower in New York City.
Kelly has been increasingly marginalized in the White House and the president has mused to confidantes about firing the chief of staff.
Comey also writes extensively about his first meeting with Trump after his election. Others in the meeting included Vice President Mike Pence, Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, Michael Flynn, who would become national security adviser, and incoming press secretary, Sean Spicer. Comey was also joined by NSA Director Mike Rogers, CIA Director John Brennan and DNI Director James Clapper.
After Clapper briefed the team on the intelligence community’s findings of Russian election interference, Comey said he was taken aback by what the Trump 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,’ Comey writes.
Instead, he writes, they launched into a strategy session about how to ‘spin what we’d just told them’ for the public.