Trump unloads on Comey ahead of ex-FBI director's interview

This isn't news to anyone who's paid attention to Donald Trump's presidency, presidential campaign, professional career, personal life, or anything he's ever said, but Comey is going for the role of the principled truth-teller.

The sense that the clash between a disruptive President who marches to his own tune and traditional establishment values is becoming serious heightened over the weekend after Comey, who was sacked by Trump, purportedly for not professing loyalty to the President, attacked him for moral turpitude and suggested he may be compromised because of this. On Monday, he returned to Twitter to accuse Comey and "others" of committing "many crimes".

The FBI chief was sacked while the agency was probing possible collusion between Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and Russia's meddling in the U.S. election.

But you can not have, as president of the United States, someone who does not reflect the values that I believe Republicans treasure and Democrats treasure and Independents treasure...

Comey made the remark after ABC's George Stephanopoulos in their interview Sunday night said his forthcoming book had a "sense of alarm" about it.

Trump has not tweeted since the airing of the interview. The media appearance kicks off a publicity tour to promote the release of Comey's new book "A Higher Loyalty", which paints a scathing portrait of the President. Comey announced in July 2016 that he would not recommend charges against Clinton, but stated publicly that Clinton and her aides had been "extremely careless" in handling classified information.

Comey said that he would not favour impeaching Trump, because that "would let the American people off the hook" and the public was "duty bound" to vote Trump out of office in the next election. But that's not what campaign officials were told to say, which is that he had no impact on the election and that Trump won because he was an incredible candidate.

Trump again accused Comey of lying to Congress. For his part, Comey has said that nine or 10 months into the Clinton probe, he had a "clear picture" where it was going and it's common to draft statements before an investigation is complete.

Trump fired Comey in May, an action that helped lead to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Comey also testified past year that he gave some of his memos of conversations he had with Trump to a Columbia University professor, but that he had written the memos specifically to avoid including classified information.

Comey responded to the tweets with a message of his own, saying his book was "about ethical leadership & draws on stories from my life & lessons I learned from others". Comey said Trump talked about that allegation at least four times, and stressed that it couldn't be true because Trump told Comey he was a germophobe.

Trump cited Comey's handling of the Clinton e-mail probe in firing the Federal Bureau of Investigation chief in April 2017 - a decision that led to the appointment of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller to investigate allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russian officials during the campaign.

Asked, "was President Trump obstructing justice?" The retired general pleaded guilty in December and is now cooperating with Mueller's investigation. Trump has called the special counsel probe a "witch hunt" and repeatedly insisted there was no collusion between his campaign and Russian Federation.