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Former FBI director James Comey has blasted US 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.
Key points:
- The book includes strikingly personal jibes about Donald Trump
- James Comey says he regrets part of press conference on Hillary Clinton email investigation
- Book set to be released next week
Mr Comey also reveals new details about his interactions with Mr Trump and his own decision-making in handling the Hillary Clinton email investigation before the 2016 election.
He casts Mr 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 Mr 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 Mr Trump's integrity.
It also includes strikingly personal jabs at Mr Trump that appear likely to irritate the President.
The 203-centimetre Comey describes Mr 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.
The book A Higher Loyalty is to be released next week.
Mr Trump fired Mr 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.
Mr Mueller's probe has expanded to include whether Mr Trump obstructed justice by firing Mr Comey, something the President denies.
Mr Trump has said he fired Mr Comey because of his handling of the FBI's investigation into Mrs Clinton's email scandal.
Democrats, on the other hand, have accused Mr Comey of politicising the investigation, and Mrs Clinton herself has said it hurt her election prospects.
Kelly threatened to quit over Comey firing
Mr Comey's book, which provides new details of his firing, will be heavily scrutinised by the President's legal team.
He writes that then-homeland security secretary John Kelly — now Mr Trump's chief of staff — offered to quit out of a sense of disgust as to how Mr Comey was dismissed.
He claims that Mr Kelly called him after hearing of his sacking and "said he didn't want to work for dishonourable people" and that he "intended to quit" as a means of protest.
Mr Comey also writes extensively about his first meeting with Mr Trump after his election.
Others in the meeting included Vice-President Mike Pence, Mr Trump's first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, Michael Flynn, who would briefly become national security adviser, and incoming press secretary, Sean Spicer.
"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," Mr Comey writes.
Instead, he writes, they launched into a strategy session about how to "spin what we'd just told them" for the public.
Trump the germaphobe: no peeing around me, 'no way'
Mr Comey then describes talking to Mr Trump one-on-one after the broader meeting, where he says he described the allegations about Russian prostitutes and the "pee tape".
He writes that he told Mr Trump about the dossier because it was the FBI's responsibility to protect the presidency from coercion related to harmful allegations, whether supported or not.
Mr Comey said he left out one detail involving an allegation that the prostitutes had urinated on a bed once used by the Obamas.
Mr Trump raised the subject again a week later, after the dossier had been made public.
He then told Mr Comey, the former director writes, that he had not stayed in the hotel and that the most salacious charge could not have been true because, Mr Trump said, "I'm a germaphobe".
"There's no way I would let people pee on each other around me. No way," said Mr Trump, according to Mr Comey.
The former FBI director writes that Mr Trump raised the issue again, unprompted, during their one-on-one dinner at the White House and it bothered the President that there might be even "a 1 per cent chance" his wife might think it was true.
Mr Comey then registers surprise, writing that he thought to himself, "Why his wife would think there was any chance, even a small one, that he had been with prostitutes urinating on each other in a Moscow hotel room".
Comey regrets wording in Clinton press conference
Mr 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 Mrs 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.
He also reveals for the first time that the US Government had unverified classified information that he believes could have been used to cast doubt on former attorney-general Loretta Lynch's independence in the Clinton probe.
While Mr Comey does not outline the details of the information — and says he didn't see indications of Ms 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.
AP/ABC
Topics: world-politics, government-and-politics, us-elections, donald-trump, defence-and-national-security, security-intelligence, law-crime-and-justice, books-literature, united-states
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