Comey made the revelation during his first major interview following his ouster last year.
Comey sat down with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos for a one-hour interview that aired Sunday night. It came ahead of the widely anticipated release of Comey’s book, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.”
“You write that President Trump is unethical, untethered to the truth,” Stephanopoulos said. “Is Donald Trump unfit to be president?”
“Yes,” Comey replied. “But not in the way — I often hear people talk about it. I don’t buy this stuff about him being mentally incompetent or early stages of dementia. He strikes me as a person of above average intelligence whose tracking conversations and knows what’s going on.”
He added: “I don’t think he’s medically unfit to be president. I think he’s morally unfit to be president.”
Comey cited Trump’s response to the white-nationalist riots in Charlottesville, his treatment of women, and his tendency to make misleading and exaggerated statements as reasons behind his assessment of the president.
“There’s something more important than that that should unite all of us, and that is our president must embody respect and adhere to the values that are at the core of this country,” Comey said. “The most important being truth. This president is not able to do that. He is morally unfit to be president.”
Comey declined to answer when asked whether he believed Trump should be impeached, calling it a “question of law and fact and politics.”
After Stephanopoulos pressed him for his judgment, Comey said, “I hope not because I think impeaching and removing Donald Trump from office would let the American people off the hook and have something happen indirectly that I believe they’re duty bound to do directly.”