Poor timing, judgment in Comey firing
President Donald Trump took office with half of Americans expecting greatness and the other half gravely suspicious of the presidency that would unfold. Generously feeding that suspicion: an FBI investigation of Trump’s moot presidential campaign. That probe is ongoing, but James Comey will not be the FBI director who completes it. And whatever its conclusions, droves of citizens will see them as dubious. All because on Tuesday the president fired Comey — a drastic, legal but highly problematic action.
No matter the justification from the White House, this looks like a politically motivated hatchet job, designed to purge the investigation of the official who ran it and owned it. The Trump administration will name Comey’s successor. To continue a thorough investigation of ... Trump’s associates? That’s what we mean by “problematic.” Skeptics and critics will go much further. They’ll say Trump has dipped his wide brush in a brimming bucket of whitewash . ...
Trump’s judgment and timing are both poor here: Neither congressional nor FBI exploration of Russian contacts with Trump campaign associates has produced public evidence of wrongdoing. If Trump’s critics have exaggerated the import of those contacts, his smart move would have been to let Comey finish his probe and report his small-potatoes findings. Instead all of us are left with what smacks of a disingenuous excuse for defenestrating Comey.
The genesis of Trump’s decision, as the White House frames it, is an FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. A probe of Clinton and her camp focused on her mishandling of sensitive State Department emails, and resulted in Comey announcing last July that no criminal charges were warranted. But when new emails came to light as Election Day approached, Comey reopened the case and went public with the FBI’s need to sift through more evidence. Nothing new was found but to Democrats the damage was done: Comey had derailed Clinton’s momentum.
Republicans, meanwhile, were more worried about the FBI’s ongoing look into Russian meddling intended to hurt Clinton’s candidacy. Had Trump associates colluded with Russians? Comey said nothing about that.
We shared Comey’s view that there was a clear distinction between the two investigations: The Clinton probe was concluded in July, until new information was discovered that Comey felt compelled to share with Congress. The Trump campaign investigation, though, was (and remains) very much open; having reached no conclusions, the FBI had nothing to say . ...
How all this led Trump to fire Comey is, at this writing, beyond us. Trump’s justification is grounded in Justice officials saying they “cannot defend” Comey’s handling of the Clinton case. Specifically, it faults Comey’s decision to announce the decision not to prosecute. However deep the criticism runs at Justice, it’s bizarre to see Trump lambaste Comey for his investigation of Trump’s defeated opponent.
Comey’s handling of the Clinton investigation is certainly open to second-guessing, something Democrats may never tire of doing because Comey may have cost their candidate the election. But this instead looks like Justice or the White House using the Clinton case as a pretext for dumping Comey in the middle of his investigation of Trump associates . ...
With the firing still fresh and more details to come, we’re less concerned with protocols than with the mission: Americans who’ve demanded a full accounting of Russia’s meddling have to double down on that insistence.
President Trump showed poor judgment in firing FBI Director James Comey.
Trump should have let Comey conclude his probe of Russian election meddling.