James Comey warns the country will be torn apart if Congress removes Trump from office

In a Thursday op-ed, former FBI Director James Comey admitted he's not supportive of impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump.

Despite being fired by Trump, and trashed for two years, Comey warned in the New York Times, "I hope that Mr. Trump is not impeached and removed from office before the end of his term."

He explained that he doesn't think Congress should cease all of their efforts at accountability, but he wants Congress to wait until "the provable facts are there."

"I just hope it doesn’t" try to impeach Trump, he confessed. "Because if Mr. Trump were removed from office by Congress, a significant portion of this country would see this as a coup, and it would drive those people farther from the common center of American life, more deeply fracturing our country."

He said that Trump's critics should hope for something "much harder to distort, or to nurse as a grievance, than an impeachment," and suggested Trump should be voted out of office instead.

"We need a resounding election result in 2020, where Americans of all stripes, divided as they may be about important policy issues — immigration, guns, abortion, climate change, regulation, taxes — take a moment from their busy lives to show that they are united by something even more important: the belief that the president of the United States cannot be a chronic liar who repeatedly attacks the rule of law. Then we can get back to policy disagreements," Comey closed.

He said that he hopes the country is up to something like that.