James Comey trolls Trump in his book’s title

Any thought that former FBI Director James Comey was going to fade away into a quiet retirement after being publicly disparaged and fired by President Trump has officially gone out the window.

On Thursday, Axios revealed the title of Comey’s forthcoming (and much-anticipated) memoir — and it’s an explicit, defiant jab at the president.

The book is titled A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership. It’s a direct reference to the now-infamous private dinner meeting between Comey and Trump at the White House in January in which the president demanded that Comey swear an oath of loyalty to him.

Comey refused, promising Trump only that “You will always get honesty from me.”

Trump fired Comey four months later, in part because of his frustration over Comey’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

In his prepared testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in June, Comey wrote that he’d found the president’s demand for loyalty deeply troubling “given the FBI’s traditionally independent status in the executive branch.”

The release of the book’s confrontational title seems to be part of Comey’s calculated return to the public eye. On October 23, Comey confirmed that a Twitter account previously reported to be his secret personal account did in fact belong to him —tweeting a picture of himself while on a trip to Iowa and teasing that he had to “get back to writing” his book.

The tweet — and the fact that Comey was in Iowa, one of the most important states for presidential hopefuls looking to gin up early support — prompted speculation that Comey might even be considering running for president in 2020.

The clearly in-your-face book title is yet another sign that while he might not necessarily be considering a run for president, James Comey is not going away anytime soon.

You can see the book cover below:

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