Donald Trump Rages at Former FBI Director James Comey

“He is a weak and untruthful slime ball.”

Gage Skidmore/Flickr

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On Thursday night, the first details of James Comey’s new book, which comes out next week, rolled in. In A Higher Loyalty, the former FBI director is unsparing in his portrait of Donald Trump, whom he likens to a crime boss and blasts as “unethical and untethered to truth.” On Friday morning, Trump took to Twitter to assail Comey as a “leaker and a liar” and to suggest, once again, that the ex-FBI chief should face prosecution. 

Comey oversaw the FBI’s investigation into whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 election. The president abruptly fired him last May, a move Trump acknowledged was related to the cloud he was under from the Russia probe and which raised questions about whether Trump was obstructing justice.

“It was my great honor to fire James Comey!” Trump tweeted on Friday. And he contended that “virtually everyone in Washington” thought Comey should be fired—a claim that, as Comey would say, is “untethered to the truth.” 

If Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury is any indication, Trump’s attack on Comey and his book may mean the ex-FBI director has a huge bestseller on his hands.


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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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