Washington, Apr 13 (EFE).- The president of the United States on Friday fired back at a former FBI director who accused him of running the White House like a mafia don.
Donald Trump made the remarks in one of his habitual early-morning tweets.
“James Comey is a proven LEAKER & LIAR. Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the terrible job he did-until he was, in fact, fired,” Trump wrote.
“He leaked CLASSIFIED information, for which he should be prosecuted. He lied to Congress under OATH. He is a weak and untruthful slime ball who was, as time has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI,” the president added.
“It was my great honor to fire James Comey!” Trump concluded.
Some US media outlets on Thursday published excerpts from Comey’s forthcoming tell-all memoir, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies & Leadership,” which is due to be released on Tuesday.
The book’s title alludes to one of its key assertions – that Trump, before firing Comey nearly a year ago, demanded the loyalty of his then-FBI director.
“I stared at the soft white pouches under his expressionless blue eyes,” he writes. “I remember thinking in that moment that the president doesn’t understand the FBI’s role in American life.”
Comey writes that his dealings with Trump gave him “flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the Mob.”
“The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and above the truth,” Comey writes.
Comey also states that the president was obsessed with unverified claims in a dossier compiled by a former British spy Christopher Steele, who had been hired by Trump’s political enemies to look into the Republican candidate’s ties to Russia and help derail his bid for the White House.
Among the salacious allegations contained in the dossier is an assertion that Trump cavorted with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel in 2013.
Trump’s decision to fire Comey in May 2017 was highly controversial because the then-FBI director was leading the investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to politically damage his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, and influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
After leaving his post, Comey said he had taken notes of all of his conversations with the president.