Fired FBI Director James Comey's new book, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership," will hit stores on April 17. Comey and his publishers have a big rollout planned, beginning with a sit-down, prime-time exclusive interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on April 15. Comey will also appear with Stephen Colbert on CBS's "The Late Show," join "The View," and record an hour-long interview with New Yorker editor David Remnick before a live audience on April 18 (ticket prices $57 to $97.)

On Friday, Axios reported that Comey plans to "come out hot" on his book tour. "He has heard a lot of lies and misstatements about the FBI that he intends to correct," Axios' Mike Allen wrote. (Allen will interview Comey at the Washington, D.C., stop on Comey's tour; ticket price not yet announced.)

But while Comey might indeed "come out hot" on the tour, it is also possible that things might get hot for him on Capitol Hill with the expected release, in roughly mid-April, of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report on Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. At various times in the Clinton affair, Comey's judgment angered Republicans, Democrats, and people generally concerned about upholding standards of law enforcement. Some Republicans expect the Horowitz report to be damaging to the Justice Department, the FBI, and to Comey himself.

In addition, Comey's book promotion campaign comes as another Horowitz investigation, this one into the FBI's and Justice Department's handling of the Trump-Russia affair, gets under way. As it does, a key congressional overseer has asked the IG specifically to look into the accuracy of some of Comey's statements to Congress.

The Clinton report will have a lot to cover. Some lawmakers want to know the story behind Comey's extraordinary July 5, 2016, public statement announcing that Clinton would not be charged. But more importantly, they want to know why Comey began drafting an exoneration statement for Clinton in either late April or early May — not only before Clinton was interviewed, but also before 16 other witnesses, including key aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, were questioned.

"It is unclear whether the FBI agents actually investigating the case were aware that Mr. Comey had already decided on the investigation's outcome while their work was ongoing," wrote Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley and subcommittee Chairman Lindsey Graham in a letter to the FBI last year.

Lawmakers also hope the IG will also look into what Grassley and others called the FBI's "inexplicable" agreement to destroy the laptop computers of some key Clinton email figures, "knowing that the contents were the subject of congressional subpoenas and preservation latters." And then there was the Justice Department's decision to give immunity to a large number of people in the case. And then there was Comey's stunning Oct. 28, 2016, announcement that he was re-opening the case, followed by his announcement just before the presidential election that he was closing it again.

If the IG report is public by the time Comey kicks off his book tour, journalists might have a lot of new — and some old — questions to ask.

At the same time, Horowitz is thought to be gearing up for a new IG investigation, this one into the Justice Department's, FBI's, and Comey's handling of the Trump-Russia investigation. On Feb. 28, Grassley and Graham sent a letter to Horowitz outlining 31 questions they would like to see answered by an IG Trump-Russia probe. (Horowitz is not obligated to follow their directions, but he also knows that he will face questions from the same senators later.)

The 31 questions cover the FBI's handling of the Trump dossier; the decision to begin a Trump-Russia counterintelligence investigation; the Strzok-Page texts; the Carter Page wiretap; leaks of classified information, including the Flynn-Kislyak phone calls; "apparent material discrepancies between information [Comey] provided in a closed briefing and information contained in classified documents"; and more.

Some of the questions suggest real distrust of Comey. Like this one, on the decision by the nation's intelligence chiefs, including Comey, to have Comey brief President-elect Trump one-on-one on Jan. 6, 2017, on the contents of the dossier:



In congressional testimony, Mr. Comey claimed that the FBI briefed then President-elect Trump about the Steele dossier because the FBI had received word that the media was about to report on the dossier. However, subsequent media reporting made clear that the media generally had found the dossier's unverified allegations unreportable, and CNN only broke the story on the dossier because Mr. Comey briefed the President-elect about it. Thus, there is a question as to whether the FBI included the dossier in the briefing, and possibly leaked that it had done so, in order to provide the media a pretext to report on the dossier….Did anyone from the FBI or the Department of Justice leak to the media the fact that officials briefed the President-elect about the contents of the dossier? Did anyone from the FBI or the Department of Justice inform Mr. Steele or anyone associated with Fusion GPS that they briefed the President-elect about the contents of the dossier? Did the FBI use the briefing to develop a counterintelligence assessment of its attendees?



Beyond that, there are the Comey memos, the seven memos Comey wrote to outline his conversations with the president. Comey told the Senate that he leaked some of the memos to a friend for the purpose of being leaked to the New York Times. Now, the Justice Department is treating the memos as super-duper-state-secret. (Only a few lawmakers have been allowed to see them, and only in the presence of an FBI minder, with no copies or note-taking allowed.) Even what little is known about the memos raises plenty of questions about Comey's interactions with the president.

Of course, many of those questions don't have to wait for the various investigating authorities to finish their work. They can be asked of Comey himself, soon, as he hits the road to sell "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership."

