White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told fired James Comey that President Donald Trump was a ‘dishonorable’ leader after the FBI director found himself out of a job, according to a leaked detail from Comey’s forthcoming book.
An ’emotional’ Kelly, in Comey’s telling, called him within minutes of his sudden dismissal and said he was ‘sick’ about the way Trump swung the ax.
Comey found out he had been let go while he was delivering a speech to FBI agents in California – and audience members told him his ouster was being flashed across TV news screens.
Kelly, Comey claims, said he ‘intended to quit’ in response and ‘said he didn’t want to work for dishonorable people,’ referring directly to the president.
LORDY: Former FBI director James Comey is reportedly set to claim in a new book that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly fumed about a ‘dishonorable’ President Trump after Comey’s firing last year
An upset Kelly called him after he got the ax, Comey will claim in a book due out Tuesday
President Trump fired Comey in May 2017 so suddenly that the dismissed lawman found out while he was delivering a speech in California and the news flashed across TV screens
The Daily Beast first published the bombshell detail on Thursday.
Comey’s book, which goes on sale Tuesday, is expected to excoriate President Trump and is likely to be a best-seller
At the time Comey got his unexpected pink-slip, the West Wing was roiled over what Trump saw as a nonstop drumbeat of FBI digging into unproven allegations that his presidential campaign colluded with Russians to impact the result of the election.
Comey’s book, ‘A Higher Loyalty,’ is set to go on sale Tuesday and promises to be a scorching indictment of Trump.
A senior White House official told the Daily Beast that the phone call Comey describes never happened.
Kelly, the official said, has described the call to other senior West Wing aides as lasting only a minute and summarized it as ‘I don’t know why you got fired, [and] best of luck to you.’ His version does not include calling President Trump ‘dishonorable.’
The Republican Party has been gearing up for weeks to combat the accompanying PR blitz with a website,www.LyinComey.com. It lays out a set of talking points claiming Comey lacks credibility and is out for revenge.
Comey is already the target of a new Republican Party campaign designed to tar and feather him
The Internet domain LyinComey.com was registered 15 days ago as the GOP’s plan to counter Comey’s coming book tour took shape
In one video clip on the website, Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer blasts Comey has having ‘no integrity’
CNN reported on Thursday that the White House approved the website, whose domain name was registered 15 days ago.
It features a digital ad showing a parade of Democrats questioning Comey’s suitability to be the nation’s top cop before he was sent packing.
Those assessments mostly came following his 11th-hour move to revive an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s unsecured private email server just days before the 2016 presidential election.
Clinton has blamed Comey’s decision, along with dozens of other factors, for her devastating loss to Donald Trump. Her server, which she used exclusively while secretary of state, contained classified information and was vulnerable to hacking.
The new GOP website is particularly critical of one episode in the Comey saga, involving his admission during a congressional hearing that he leaked information from a privileged meeting with Trump to reporters – using a friend as a middle-man.
President Trump has blasted Comey as ‘a leaker’ and disputes ever asking him to back off the FBI’s probe into his former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn’s Russia ties
Comey admitted last year that he leaked parts of his private conversations with the president to the press, using a lawyer-friend as a middle-man, in the hope that it would result in the appointment of a special counsel. Pictured is Special Counsel Robert Mueller
In a second video, the Republican Party assembled a newsreel recounting how the shocking development played out among television analysts.
Comey, several concluded, orchestrated the leak in order to put pressure on the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate the president. The result was the probe led by Robert Mueller.
Mueller now appears to be focused more on financial crimes than on unproven claims that Trump obstructed justice by pushing his FBI chief to back off an investigation into Russian election meddling, and then fired him when he demurred.
‘No matter what his grandstanding book says, Comey has already confirmed multiple times under oath that neither President Trump nor his staff asked him to stop the Russia investigation,’ the website says, citing answers in his June 2017 Senate testimony.