That’s right, Jim Comey — reviled by Hillary Clinton for a lack of loyalty to her and fired by Donald Trump for a lack of loyalty to him — has written a book in which, I would imagine, he attempts to explain just exactly what he’s loyal to. Which is good because, honestly, it’s pretty hard to tell most of the time and it seems to change from month to month.
Looking forward to my exclusive interview with James Comey for the launch of his book “A Higher Loyalty” — pub date April 17 pic.twitter.com/siYV4bsG1v
— GeorgeStephanopoulos (@GStephanopoulos) February 16, 2018
Stephanopoulos is set to interview Comey before the book’s release in April — an interview that is said to have been coveted by many a journalist in the Acela corridor. According to Buzzfeed, their talk should be juicy.
Comey, who was fired by President Donald Trump in May, will sit down with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in mid-April ahead of the release of his forthcoming book, according to people familiar with the matter.
The book and interview both promise to cover some of the most controversial topics of the past two years, like his exit from the FBI and the decision to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails days before the 2016 election.
Comey’s account, titled A Higher Loyalty, has become one of the most hotly anticipated political books in recent memory. The publisher, Flatiron Books, this month announced it was moving up the publication date from May 1 to April 17 as media attention on the FBI intensified. The market for accounts of the 2016 election has been strong, and Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury proved that there is an intense appetite for books dishing about the Trump administration.
Comey’s loyalty is something of an ephemeral creature, flitting back and forth as it has between Hillary Clinton and the incoming Trump administration (and just what role did the former FBI director play in that Steele dossier getting before the FISA court judge anyway?).
But his memoir’s title is very likely meant as something of a jab to the man who fired him since he has testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee last summer that Trump explicitly expected loyalty.
In seven remarkable pages of prepared testimony, Comey describes a president obsessed with loyalty and publicly clearing his name amid an FBI investigation of his associates, and the FBI director’s growing unease with the nature of the demands being made of him in their private conversations.
Since firing Comey last month, the president has denied reports that he sought a pledge of loyalty from the FBI director amid a Justice Department probe into possible coordination between Trump associates and Russian operatives. Comey’s written remarks do support another Trump claim — that the FBI director repeatedly assured the president that he was not personally under investigation.
Well, Trump didn’t get it. Nor did Hillary, who definitely blamed her loss in the 2016 election (when she could tear her finger away from the Russians) on Comey reopening the investigation into her private email server.
Should be interesting to see just exactly what Comey considers worthy of his loyalty (again, what was his role in the promotion of the Steele dossier, again?)
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