President Donald Trump is again calling former FBI Director James Comey a "slimeball" ahead of the publication of his new book.
Trump's morning tweets come ahead of Comey's interview with ABC to be broadcast in full on Sunday evening.
The interview will be shown Sunday night on ABC at 10 p.m. EST.
In an excerpt shown Saturday, Comey said his belief that Clinton would beat Trump in the 2016 presidential election was a factor in his decision to disclose the investigation into her emails. Trump seized on that, saying Comey "was making decisions based on the fact that he thought she was going to win, and he wanted a job. Slimeball!"
Comey's disclosure shortly before the election that the FBI had reopened its investigation into her email use enraged Democrats. After Clinton's loss, many Democrats blamed Comey and Clinton herself has said it hurt her election prospects.
Trump on Sunday pushed back again against the former FBI director's claims that Trump sought his loyalty, saying it was "Just another of his many lies." He questioned Comey's intelligence and place in history, writing, "Slippery James Comey, a man who always ends up badly and out of whack (he is not smart!), will go down as the WORST FBI Director in history, by far!"
He also suggested Comey should be imprisoned, saying, "how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail)." There is no indication Comey is under investigation for doing either.
Asked if the president wanted the Justice Department to investigate Comey, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that she was not aware of a specific request, but "if they feel there was any wrongdoing, they should certainly look into that just as they do on a number of other topics."
Comey came in for a mix of both criticism and praise on Sunday morning news talk shows.
House Speaker Paul Ryan suggested that he believes former FBI Director James Comey to be a man of integrity — a view that runs counter to that of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Sunday that if his and Comey’s roles had been reversed in the 2016 election, Comey would have fired him.
“When I worked for Jim, if I had said to him 11 days before an election that I was going to release information that could potentially affect the election, and one of the things that influenced me was polling, he would have fired me. He would have fired me on the spot,” Christie said on ABC's "This Week."
“And it is really disconcerting to me as a guy who worked with him in form and have defended him on this air and other places over the years to see this interview and what he was saying,” Christie said.
Comey is embarking on a public rollout of his book, "A Higher Loyalty," which comes out Tuesday. In the book, Comey compares Trump to a mafia don and calls his leadership of the country "ego driven and about personal loyalty."
Trump fired 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. Mueller's probe has expanded to include whether Trump obstructed justice by firing Comey, a claim the president denies.
Trump has said he fired Comey because of his handling of the FBI's investigation into Clinton's email practices. Trump used the investigation as a cudgel in the campaign and repeatedly said Clinton should be jailed for using a personal email system while serving as secretary of state. Democrats, on the other hand, have accused Comey of politicizing the investigation.
In the interview excerpt released Saturday, Comey said he did not remember "consciously thinking" about the election results as he decided to disclose that the FBI had reopened its investigation into candidate Clinton's email use, but he said, "I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump, and so I'm sure that it was a factor."
He added: "I don't remember spelling it out, but it had to have been that she's going to be elected president and if I hide this from the American people, she'll be illegitimate the moment she's elected, the moment this comes out."
The Republican National Committee has helped with the pushback effort against Comey for his book by launching a website and supplying surrogates with talking points that question his credibility.
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