President Trump denounces James Comey as 'untruthful slime ball' in response to book

Show Caption Hide Caption White House calls James Comey a known 'liar' Hours after President Trump called former FBI director James Comey a "LEAKER & LIAR" on Twitter, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders enumerated the ways they say he has lied.

WASHINGTON — President Trump went to rhetorical war with James Comey on Friday, calling him "a proven LEAKER & LIAR" and a "untruthful slime ball" in the wake of the former FBI director's book that likens the president to a dishonest mob boss.

"Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the terrible job he did-until he was, in fact, fired," Trump said of Comey in a pair of remarkably critical and personal tweets.

"He is a weak and untruthful slime ball who was, as time has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI," Trump said.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders let loose with another barrage of insults hours later, calling Comey "a disgraced partisan hack" and saying his book belongs "in the bargain bin of the fiction section."

President Trump calls James Comey an 'untruthful slime ball' An untruthful slime ball...President Trump ramping up the attacks on former FBI Director James Comey.

She said Trump's decision to fire Comey last year would go down as "one of the president's greatest acheivements."

Lawmakers from both parties criticized Trump for his dismissal of Comey. It is the subject of an investigation into whether he sought to obstruct justice in the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Details of Comey's book — A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership — are leaking out as he prepares for a full-scale media tour next week.

The former FBI director said Trump appeared to lean on him to go easy on former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who was indicted on charges of lying to the FBI about his post-election contact with a Russian ambassador.

Offering an overall assessment of Trump, Comey writes that "this president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values," according to news reports about the book. “His leadership is transactional, ego driven and about personal loyalty.”

James Comey compares President Trump to a mob boss Former FBI director, James Comey does not hold back in his new book, 'A Higher Loyalty.' He attacks President Trump, calling him 'unethical' and 'untethered to truth.'

In an interview broadcast Friday on ABC's Good Morning America, Comey said Trump also seemed obsessed with an unverified claim that during a trip to Moscow he watched two prostitutes engage in an unusual sexual act. Comey said Trump asked him to "prove that it didn't happen" and said it would be "terrible" if his wife Melania Trump believed the claim.

“I honestly never thought this words would come out of my mouth, but I don't know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013,” Comey told ABC. “It's possible, but I don't know.”

Comey's firing in May led to the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel in charge of investigating possible links between Trump's campaign and Russians who sought to influence the 2016 election with email hacks and fake news. Mueller is also conducting the obstruction of justice investigation, including the circumstances behind Comey's firing.

With Comey's book to be published Tuesday, the Republican National Committee and Trump allies are lining up media appearances of their own in an attempt to discredit both the book and its author.

Speaking with reporters at the White House, presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway said Comey "seems like a disgruntled ex-employee; after all, he was fired."

As Trump and Comey prepare to go at each other in coming, public opinion seems more with the ex-FBI director.

According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, Comey is seen as more believable than Trump, by a margin of 48%-32%.

In his morning tweets, Trump accused Comey of leaking classified intelligence and of mishandling the 2016 investigation of the private emails of former secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his election opponent.

"It was my great honor to fire James Comey," Trump tweeted.