Firing Comey was a big mistake

Nearly a year after sacking the FBI director, Trump is in no better position in several of the hot-button cases that surround his presidency

As more details emerge about United States President Donald Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, the whole issue may seem inevitable: Lie down with dogs and you wake up with fleas, as Poor Richard’s Almanac memorably put it. But that’s wrong. Trump could have avoided a full-on criminal investigation of the lawyer who paid off Stormy Daniels and did who knows what else that seems likely to create further serious legal problems for the president.

We are where we are because of something very concrete Trump did himself a year ago this week: The president had fired James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). With that decision, whether impulsive or considered, Trump sent America down a path of inquiries that is not merely sordid, but seriously jeopardising to his presidency. And he didn’t have to do it.

Ask yourself the classic counterfactual question of what would have happened if Comey had remained in office. Some things would have almost certainly happened anyway: The FBI would have continued to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election. The Department of Justice would have indicted the Russians involved in the troll farm that manipulated US social media. The Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal would have come to light and been the topic of national conversation. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg would have testified before Congress about it.

Then there are the maybes. It’s possible that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates would have been swept up in the Russia investigation. On the one hand, they had Russia ties via their Ukrainian escapades, and even a cursory investigation of those ties by the FBI would’ve revealed the felonies they are now charged with. That’s reason to think they would’ve been arrested without the special counsel investigation that was sparked by Comey’s firing.

The same is just not true of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. By firing Comey, then attempting to assassinate his character, Trump made it blatantly clear that he considered any investigation a personal matter, and would treat any investigator as his enemy. As a result, when Mueller stepped into his role, he had to be aware from Day One that Trump would see him as the enemy, would try to pressure him and might well fire him. That gave Mueller every reason to insulate himself against the possibility of being fired and to build up whatever leverage he could to stop that from happening. That meant genuinely investigating not only possible coordination with Russia, but also all crimes that might be discovered during that investigation — as his letter of appointment expressly authorises him to do.

And Mueller’s incentives go beyond protecting himself and his investigation. The firing of Comey created a whole new potential crime: Obstruction of justice by the president.

As a result of the Comey firing, we face the possibility that the Russia investigation will end up looking more like Whitewater than Watergate. That is, even if it turns out that there’s no meaningful evidence of coordination to affect the election — the original investigative subject — the process of investigation may well reveal legal violations unconnected to the original subject. Former US president Bill Clinton really did lie under oath, albeit about Monica Lewinsky, not Whitewater. And Cohen really did engage in behaviour on behalf of Trump that seems likely to have violated federal law in connection with Daniels.

If the Cohen investigation ends up implicating Trump in crimes, he will have no one to blame but himself.