WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on former FBI Director James Comey (all times local):
5:20 p.m.
Three House Republican committee chairmen want the Justice Department to provide them with copies of memos written by former FBI Director James Comey about his conversations with President Donald Trump.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes asked that unredacted copies of the memos be made available by Monday.
The request came in a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Friday.
The three chairmen wrote that there is “no legal basis for withholding these materials from Congress.”
House Republicans have repeatedly threatened to hold Justice Department officials in contempt as they have sought more than a million pages in documents related to Democrat Hillary Clinton and the beginning of the department’s Russia investigation.
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3:25 p.m.
The White House has unleashed a blistering critique of former FBI Director James Comey as he begins promoting his memoir.
Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says Comey will “be forever known as a disgraced partisan hack” after the publication of his book, “A Higher Loyalty.” She adds that Comey’s loyalty is “only to himself.”
Sanders is accusing Comey of leaking classified information and breaking his “sacred trust with the president of the United States, the dedicated agents of the FBI, and the American people.”
She adds: “I think it’s very clear that Comey has a credibility problem.”
In the book, Comey compares Trump to a mob boss and mocks the president’s appearance.
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8:40 a.m.
Top White House aides are pushing back on a new book from former FBI director James Comey that depicts President Donald Trump as unethical and “untethered to the truth.”
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Twitter Friday: “One of the few areas of true bipartisan consensus in Washington is Comey has no credibility.”
And White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Comey “has a revisionist view of history and seems like a disgruntled ex-employee.” She also took issue with some of Comey’s personal commentary in the book, saying it was “no way to comport oneself after you’re trying to prove that you have this quote, ‘higher loyalty.'”
Trump fired Comey last May. In the book, Comey compares Trump to a mob boss who demands loyalty from all those around him, even if it means twisting the truth.
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8:30 a.m.
President Donald Trump says former FBI Director James Comey is an “untruthful slime ball” who should be prosecuted for leaking classified information. Trump tweets: “It was my great honor to fire him.”
Trump is reacting to Comey’s new book, which compares the president to an unethical mob boss who demands loyalty and twists facts to serve his purpose.
Trump wrote on Twitter Friday: “He is a weak and unethical slimeball who was, as time has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI. His handling of the Crooked Hillary Clinton case, and the events surrounding it, will go down as one of the worst “botch jobs” of history. It was my great honor to fire James Comey!”
The White House has denied that Trump ever encouraged Comey to end an investigation into former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn, an encounter that the fired FBI director memorialized in private notes that he later described to Congress. Trump has also accused Comey of leaking information by authorizing a friend to share with journalists details of the discussion about Flynn.
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12:40 p.m.
Former FBI Director James Comey blasts President Donald Trump as unethical and “untethered to truth” in a sharply critical new book. He describes Trump as fixated in the early days of his administration on having the FBI debunk salacious rumors he insisted were untrue but could distress his wife.
In the forthcoming book, Comey compares Trump to a mafia don and calls his leadership of the country “ego driven and about personal loyalty.”
He also reveals new details about his interactions with Trump and his own decision-making in handling the Hillary Clinton email investigation before the 2016 election.
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