Trump bashes Comey as 'slippery' ahead of book release

Some of this has become remarkably vituperative, assuming the tone of Trump's own attacks on Twitter. "No one is above that rule of law system".

James Comey described US President Donald Trump as: "his face appeared slightly orange, with bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assumed he placed small tanning goggles".

Trump fired Comey in May 2017 in an act that has been under scrutiny by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Trump has denied any collusion, but the Russian Federation probe has been an open sore on his presidency.

Comey testified in June that he gave some of his memos of conversations he had with Trump to a Columbia University professor and that he had written the memos specifically to avoid including classified information. Democrats, on the other hand, have accused Comey of politicizing the investigation.

But House Speaker Paul Ryan said Sunday that Comey was a man of integrity "as far as I know", while adding that "I don't know the guy".

Comey's book, "A Higher Loyalty, " will be released Tuesday, and he is now amid a media blitz to promote it - including a Sunday prime-time interview on ABC.

Comey's book will be released next week. Reuters has obtained a copy.

Comey acknowledged in congressional testimony a year ago that after he was sacked he helped leak his personal, but unclassified, memos of his conversations with Trump to a reporter. Trump has denied any collusion. In previous testimony, however, he said he never authorized an FBI subordinate to leak information about investigations of Trump or Clinton.

Trump also railed again about last week's Federal Bureau of Investigation raid on the NY office and home of his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, in search of documents related to hefty hush money payoffs shortly before the election to two women who claim to have had affairs with Trump a decade before he ran for the presidency.

"I don't remember consciously thinking about that", Comey said, "but it must have been".

"Maybe it was a contrarian streak", Mr. Comey wrote, "or maybe it was something more complicated that explained his constant equivocation and apologies for Vladimir Putin". "Really weird. It was nearly an out of body experience for me". Sanders was responding to a video excerpt from Comey's exclusive interview with Stephanopoulos that will air tonight at 10 p.m. ET. "(Obama) looked directly at me", Comey recalled, according to The Washington Post. "I was floating above myself looking down saying 'you're sitting here briefing the incoming president of the United States about prostitutes in Moscow'".

"As far as I know", the outgoing Republican leader answered.

Comey might be better seen in the light of Washington Under Trump, where other top officials expected to fade into the background have instead become powerfully vocal anti-Trump forces: Clapper (a Comey pal) and former Central Intelligence Agency directors Michael Hayden and John Brennan.