Comey: ‘Trump fired me so he could alter the Russia inquiry’
● Former FBI director accuses president of lying about him
FBI director James Comey has asserted that President Donald Trump fired him in order to interfere with his investigation of Russia’s role in the 2016 election and its ties to the Trump campaign.
“It’s my judgment that I was fired because of the Russia investigation,” Comey told the Senate intelligence committee in explosive testimony that threatened to undermine Trump’s presidency.
“I was fired in some way to change, or the endeavour was to change, the way the Russia investigation was being conducted,” Comey testified under oath.
“That is a very big deal, and not just because it involves me.”
Comey also accused the Trump administration of spreading “lies, plain and simple” about him and the FBI in the aftermath of his abrupt firing last month, declaring that the administration then “chose to defame me and, more importantly, the FBI” by claiming the bureau was in disorder under his leadership.
And in testimony that exposed deep distrust between the president and the veteran lawman, Comey described intense discomfort about their one-on-one conversations, saying he decided he immediately needed to document the discussions in memos.
“I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting, so I thought it really important to document,” Comey said. “I knew there might come a day when I might need a record of what happened not only to defend myself but to protect the FBI.”
The revelations came as Comey delivered his much anticipated first public telling of his relationship with Trump, speaking at a packed Senate intelligence committee hearing that brought Washington and parts of the counformer try to a standstill as all eyes were glued to screens showing the testimony.
The former director immediately dove into the heart of the fraught political controversy around his firing and whether Trump interfered in the bureau’s Russia investigation, as he elaborated on written testimony delivered on Wednesday. In that testimony he had already disclosed that Trump demanded his “loyalty” and directly pushed him to “lift the cloud” of investigation by declaring publicly the president was not the target of the FBI probe into his campaign’s Russia ties.
Comey said that he declined to do so in large part because of the “duty to correct” that would be created if that situation changed. Comey also said in his written testimony that Trump pushed him to end his investigation into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia asked Comey the key question: “Do you believe this rises to obstruction of justice?”
“I don’t know. That’s Bob Mueller’s job to sort that out,” Comey responded, referring to the newly appointed special counsel who has taken over the justice department’s Russia investigation.
In a startling disclosure, Comey revealed that after his firing he actually tried to spur the special counsel’ s appointmentby giving one of his me mos about Trump to a friend of his to release to the press.
“My judgment was I need to get that out into the public square,” Comey said.
Trump’s private attorney, Marc Kasowitz, seized on Comey’s affirmation that he told Trump he was not personally under investigation.
Though Comey said he interpreted Trump’s comments as a directive to shut down the Flynn investigation, Kasowitz also maintained in his written statement that Comey’s testimony showed that the president “never, in form or substance, directed or suggested that Mr Comey stop investigating anyone, including suggesting that Mr Comey ‘let Flynn go’.”
Democracy isn’t possible without the rule of law – the idea that consistent principles, rather than a ruler’s whims, govern society.
You can read Aristotle, Montesquieu, John Locke or the Declaration of Independence on this point. You can also look at decades of American history. Even amid bitter fights over what the law should say, both Democrats and Republicans have generally accepted the rule of law.
President Donald Trump does not. His rejection of it distinguishes him from any other modern US leader. He has instead flirted with Louis XVI’S notion of “L’etat, c’est moi”: The state is me – and I’ll decide which laws to follow.
This attitude returned to the fore this week, with James Comey testifing yesterday about Trump’s attempts to stifle an FBI investigation. I realise that many people are exhausted by Trump outrages, some of which resemble mere buffoonery. But I think it’s important to step back and connect the dots among his many rejections of the rule of law.
They are a pattern of his presidency, one that the judicial system, Congress, civic institutions and principled members of Trump’s own administration need to resist. Trump’s view of the law, quite simply, violates American traditions. Let’s walk through the major themes: Law enforcement, politicised. People in federal law enforcement take pride in trying to remain apart from politics. I’ve been talking lately with past Justice Department appointees, from both parties, and they speak in almost identical terms.
They view the Justice Department as more independent than, say, the State or Treasury Departments. The Justice Department works with the rest of the administration on policy matters, but keeps its distance on law enforcement. That’s why White House officials aren’t supposed to pick up the phone and call whomever they want at the department. There is a careful process. Trump has erased this distinction. He pressured Comey to drop the investigation of Trump’s campaign and fired Comey when he refused. Trump has called for specific prosecutions, first of Hillary Clinton and more recently of leakers.
The attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is part of the problem. He is supposed to be the nation’s head law-enforcement official, but acts as a Trump loyalist. He recently held a briefing in the White House press room – “a jaw-dropping violation of norms,” as Slate’s Leon Neyfakh wrote. Sessions has proclaimed: “This is the Trump era.”
Like Trump, he sees little distinction between the enforcement of the law and the interests of the president.
Courts, undermined. Past administrations have respected the judiciary as having the final word on the law. Trump has tried to delegitimise almost any judge who disagrees with him.
His latest Twitter tantrum, on Monday, took a swipe at “the courts” over his stymied travel ban. It joined a long list of his judge insults: “this so-called judge”; “a single, unelected district judge”; “ridiculous”; “so political”; “terrible”; “a hater of Donald Trump”; “essentially takes lawenforcement away from our country”; “THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!”
“What’s unusual is he’s essentially challenging the legitimacy of the court’s role,” the legal scholar Charles Geyh told The Washington Post. Trump’s message, Geyh said, was: “I should be able to do what I choose.”
Team Trump, above the law. Foreign governments speed up trademark applications from Trump businesses. Foreign officials curry favor by staying at his hotel. A senior administration official urges people to buy Ivanka Trump’s clothing. The president violates bipartisan tradition by refusing to release his tax returns, thus shrouding his conflicts.
The behaviour has no precedent. “Trump and his administration are flagrantly violating ethics laws,” the former top ethics advisers to George W Bush and Barack Obama have written.
Again, the problems extend beyond the Trump family. Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, has used political office to enrich himself. Sessions failed to disclose previous meetings with Russian officials.
Their attitude is clear: If we’re doing it, it’s okay.
Citizens, unequal. Trump and his circle treat themselves as having a privileged status under the law. And not everyone else is equal, either.
In a frightening echo of despots, Trump has signaled that he accepts democracy only when it suits him. Remember when he said, “I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election – if I win”?
The larger message is that people who support him are fully American, and people who don’t are something less. He tells elaborate lies about voter fraud by those who oppose him, especially African-americans and Latinos. Then he uses those lies to justify measures that restrict their voting. (Alas, much of the Republican Party is guilty on this score.)
The efforts may not yet have swung major elections, but that should not comfort anyone. They betray the most fundamental democratic right, what Locke called “the consent of the governed”. They conjure a system in which the benefits of citizenship depend on loyalty to the ruler.
Trump frequently nods toward that idea in other ways, too. He still largely ignores the victims of terrorism committed by white nationalists.
Truth, monopolised. The consistent application of laws requires a consistent set of facts on which a society can agree. The Trump administration is trying to undermine the very idea of facts.
It has harshly criticised one independent source of information after another. The Congressional Budget Office. The Bureau of Labor Statistics. The CIA. Scientists. And, of course, the news media.
The one encouraging part of the rule-oflaw emergency is the response from many other parts of society. Although congressional Republicans have largely lain down for Trump, judges – both Republican and Democratic appointees – have not. Neither have Comey, the FBI, the CBO, the media or others. As a result, the United States remains a long way from authoritarianism.
Unfortunately, Trump shows no signs of letting up. Don’t assume he will fail just because his actions are so far outside the American mainstream. The rule of law depends on a society’s willingness to stand up for it when it’s under threat. This is our time of testing. © 2017 New York Times News Service
Attitude from the White House is that ‘the state is me - and I’ll decide which laws to follow’ writes
David Leonhardt