WASHINGTON: President Trump sharply attacked James B. Comey in a fusillade of tweets Sunday morning, suggesting that the former FBI director deserves to be imprisoned and serving up several of his favorite theories and unsubstantiated allegations of misdeeds.
Trump’s tweets are part of a wider effort by the White House and the Republican National Committee to discredit Comey, who has written a damaging tell-all book, titled “A Higher Loyalty,” to be released Tuesday. A Sunday night interview on ABC News will kick off his national book tour.
Comey’s book is a scathing depiction of his interactions with Trump, in which he likens the president to an “unethical” mob boss, and casts his inner circle in largely unflattering terms, saying it was more focused on politics than national security.
“I honestly never thought these words would ever come out of my mouth, but I don’t know whether the current President of the United States was with prostitutes, peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013,” Comey said, according to an excerpt released by ABC News. “It’s possible, but I don’t know.”
Those allegations about Trump were made in a disputed opposition-research dossier compiled by a former British spy — and have not been proven.
An array of surrogates, including presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, blanketed the airwaves this weekend to undermine Comey, as Trump unleashed a torrent of tweets that were often personal and fact-challenged. Trump allies have often reminded the public of the many Democrats who excoriated Comey in 2016 and frequently labeled him a “liar and a leaker” over his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server issues.
