Trump fires FBI chief
Reaction: Dismissal of Comey concerns Dems and some Republicans
President Trump’s decision Tuesday to abruptly fire FBI Director James Comey comes off as another example of the political clumsiness that continues to plague the young administration.
The late afternoon dismissal instantly hijacked the nation’s airwaves, completely eclipsing any bump Trump received from successfully pushing his health care plan through the House last week.
The letter from Trump told Comey he was “not able to effectively lead the bureau,” and was “hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately.” That instantly swept away
the man charged with leading the ongoing FBI investigation into possible Russian influence on the president’s election campaign, a probe Trump called “a taxpayer-funded charade” just last week.
“Once again, it’s one step forward and two steps back for a White House that’s shown itself to be completely tone deaf,” said David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University. “This puts the whole Russian question on the front burner and turns up the heat.”
The dismissal came without notice. According to reports, Comey first learned he was fired when he saw it on television as he was talking with FBI agents in Los Angeles, where he was due to give a speech.
“It was done in such a coldblooded fashion,” Oakland Rep. Barbara Lee said in an interview. “They didn’t even have the decency to sit down with the man and fire him to his face. They’re living in a different reality.”
There was no indication Comey was given an opportunity to take a less public way out, with a Trump staffer quietly suggesting he should resign for the good of the bureau.
Instead, the dismissal resembled Trump’s signature, “You’re fired!” line on his longrunning reality TV show, “The Apprentice.”
“In tough situations, politicians go with what worked before,” said Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College. “That line helped make him a success and get him elected.”
But Trump is being shown that running a campaign and running a country are very different jobs. And while he keeps returning to campaignstyle events for the instant boost of excitement and support they bring, government is a day-to-day grind of hard decisions, often with no good choices. “It’s the management of the White House that’s the real problem, which left (the Trump administration) with something that doesn’t look right, doesn’t smell right and wasn’t handled correctly,” McCuan said. Trump’s White House team “needs to move up their political game and not keep stumbling over their own feet.”
Democrats were quick to tie Trump’s decision to ax Comey to former President Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre,” on Oct. 20, 1973, when Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus both resigned rather than obey the president’s order to fire Archibald Cox, the Watergate special prosecutor.
New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader, said he told Trump, “you are making a big mistake,” when the president called to inform him Comey was fired.
“Were these (Russian) investigations getting too close to home for the president?” Schumer asked in a statement. Trump “fired Director Comey, the very man leading the investigation . ... This does not seem to be a coincidence.”
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner was more direct.
“The president’s actions today are shocking,” he said in a statement. “It is deeply troubling that the president has fired the FBI director during an active counterintelligence investigation into improper contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.”
California’s two Democratic senators were restrained in their early responses. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who as the leading Democrat on the Judiciary Committee received a personal call about the firing from Trump, would only say that, “The next FBI director must be strong and independent and will receive a fair hearing in the Judiciary Committee.” For her part, Sen. Kamala Harris joined numerous other Democrats in calling for appointment of an outside counselor to take over the Russia probe.
“I’ve said it before and will again,” she tweeted. “We must have a special prosecutor to oversee the FBI’s Russia investigation. This cannot wait.”
It wasn’t only Democrats who were concerned about the president’s action, however. North Carolina Republican Richard Burr, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Comey’s “dismissal confuses an already difficult investigation by the committee.”
There’s no question Trump had the right to fire Comey, even though the FBI director is only three years into his 10-year term.
President Bill Clinton fired William Sessions in 1993, 51⁄2 years after Sessions was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, after a Justice Department investigation questioned Sessions’ personal use of government resources.
Michael McConnell, director of Stanford’s Constitutional Law Center and a former federal appeals court judge appointed by President George W. Bush, called Comey’s dismissal “a foolish decision” that “will simply multiply the president’s problems. At this point, he’s created what likely will be a complete circus in the confirmation hearings of a replacement.”
Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor, said the choice of a replacement will be a test for both Trump and the Senate. Now people will see whether the president is willing to select someone with a reputation for independence and judgment, and whether the Senate insists on such a selection, he added.
But it was the reason given for Comey’s firing that stunned political types across the nation, with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein arguing that Comey had unfairly maligned Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign by releasing information about the FBI investigation into her handling of emails she wrote while secretary of state.
In a memo released by the White House, Rosenstein wrote that Comey had to go because of the way he handled the investigation. Comey was “wrong to usurp the attorney general’s authority on July 5, 2016, and announce his conclusion that the case should be closed without prosecution.”
Rosenstein also slammed Comey’s decision to send a letter to Congress on Oct. 28, days before the election, to say that the investigation into the emails would be reopened.
The deputy attorney general, a Justice Department veteran confirmed to his post just two weeks ago, also faulted Comey for not admitting his mistakes.
“Almost everyone agrees that the director made serious mistakes,” Rosenstein wrote. “It is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives.”
Just days ago, Clinton argued that Comey’s public comments about the email investigation, especially the ones just before the election, cost her the election.
“If the election had been held Oct. 27, I would be your president,” she said at a New York City event earlier this month.
And Trump, who attacked Comey in July for not filing charges against Clinton, previously had nothing but praise when the FBI director reopened the investigation.
Trump, speaking at a Michigan campaign event days after the Oct. 28 announcement, said it took “a lot of guts” for Comey to announce that he was reviewing new evidence against Clinton.
“I was not his fan, but I’ll tell you what,” Trump said then. “What he did, he brought back his reputation.”
That rationale infuriated Democrats, who argued that if Trump had been that upset about the FBI director’s actions during the campaign, he could have fired Comey on Inauguration Day.
“No one should accept President Trump’s absurd justification that he is concerned that FBI Director Comey treated Secretary Clinton unfairly,” Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy said in a statement.