James Comey book tops Amazon best-seller list after ominous tweet
The anticipation machine for James Comey’s upcoming book A Higher Loyalty revved up over the weekend, after the former FBI director ominously tweeted at Donald Trump that it might contain some less-than-flattering information about our current president.
“Mr. President, the American people will hear my story very soon,” Comey wrote, in the wake of deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe’s firing on Friday and Trump’s subsequent allegation that Comey lied under oath. “And they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not.”
Mr. President, the American people will hear my story very soon. And they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not.
— James Comey (@Comey) March 17, 2018
The tweet, which has more than 120,000 retweets, led to a surge in pre-orders. By Sunday, the book had soared to the top of Amazon’s best-seller list after previously being nowhere near the top 10. The sudden bump occurred in a fashion not unlike Michael Wolff’s Fire & Fury, the salacious Trump Administration exposé, which has been the New York Times‘ No. 1 best-seller for hardcover nonfiction for 10 consecutive weeks. That book, too, generated mass preorders after an online tease — juicy details about Steve Bannon published by the Guardian.
(A Higher Loyalty shifted to second position on Amazon’s best-seller list early Monday morning, yielding the spot to John Oliver’s picture book, A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo, which was announced Sunday evening.)
Publisher Flatiron Books has remained extremely secretive when it comes to the contents of A Higher Loyalty, whose release date moved forward a month to April 17. (It was previously slated to publish right around the one-year anniversary of Trump firing Comey as FBI Director.) What is known is that Comey aims to share his experiences from some of the highest-stakes situations of his career in the past two decades of American government, exploring what good, ethical leadership looks like, and how it drives sound decisions, providing “an unprecedented entry into the corridors of power.”
Comey has emerged as a central figure in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and the Trump Administration’s potential involvement in it. After he was fired, it was discovered that Comey had kept contemporaneous memos regarding his interactions with Trump; in one leaked memo, Comey wrote that Trump asked him to “let go” of potential charges against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. The news sparked allegations of obstruction of justice — one reason why the book has sparked such widespread interest.
A Higher Loyalty will be published on April 17, and Comey will officially break his silence two days earlier in a Sunday interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. You can pre-order the book here.
