James Comey is no stranger to the subtweet. The former FBI director has been known to fire off historical quotes seemingly directed at President Donald Trump, and Saturday was no exception.
Comey, who has a contentious relationship with the man who fired him, to say the least, appeared to respond to Trump’s Saturday-morning tweet storm calling Comey a “total sleaze” and a “crooked cop.”
“I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made,” Comey tweeted, quoting former President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The message made no references to Trump’s half-dozen angry tweets.
The president’s rant touched on everything from special counsel Robert Mueller to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. Trump was responding to a New York Times report Friday night that said the FBI opened up an inquiry into the president’s possible loyalties to Russia after he fired Comey in May 2017.
Although Trump claimed at the time he fired Comey over his handling of the Clinton email investigation in 2016, the president’s later statements suggested it had to do with Comey’s oversight of the investigation into Russian meddling in the election.
Trump didn’t deny the new report’s accuracy and instead took issue with the FBI and Comey.
Since he was fired, Comey has become a vocal critic of Trump both on Twitter and in print, with his 2018 memoir A Higher Loyalty questioning the president’s decisions surrounding Russia.