Turning point: Comey said no to preview of testimony
Washington, May 11: The anger behind Donald Trump’s firing of Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey had been building for months, but a turning point came when Comey refused to preview for top Trump aides his planned testimony to a Senate panel, White House officials said.
Trump, attorney general Jeff Sessions and his deputy Rod Rosenstein had wanted a heads-up from Comey about what he would say at a May 3 hearing about his handling of an investigation into former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
When Comey refused, Trump and his aides considered that an act of insubordination and it was one of the catalysts to Trump’s decision this week to fire the FBI director, the officials said. “It gave the impression that he was no longer capable of carrying out his duties,” one official said.
Previews of congressional testimony to superiors are generally considered courteous.
A former Trump adviser said that the President was also angry because Comey had never offered a public exoneration of Trump in the FBI probe into contacts between the US ambassador to Russia Sergei Kislyak and Trump campaign advisers last year. According to this former adviser, Comey’s Senate testimony on the Clinton emails likely reinforced in Trump’s mind “Comey was against him”.
“He regretted what he did to Hillary but not what he did to Trump.” Clinton has said that the Comey decision to announce the renewed inquiry days before the elections was a likely factor in her loss to Trump.