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Washington abuzz after FBI chief’s ouster
Fierce reaction from Comey’s ouster surprises Trump, allies
James Comey’s firing culminates the erosion of confidence between the FBI and President Trump, White House officials say. Trump was surprised by the intense reaction to the firing.
WASHINGTON — The White House sought to portray President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey as an act of decisiveness Wednesday, as administration allies fought back against calls for a special counsel to oversee the investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election.
Although the ouster took the White House staff by surprise, officials who described the timeline of events said it marked the culmination of a long-running erosion of confidence between the FBI chief and the president.
“He wasn’t doing a good job. Very simply,” Trump said in the Oval Office, where he met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Officials acknowledged, however, that Trump was surprised by the intense reaction to Comey’s dismissal.
Asked Wednesday whether Trump had anticipated the fierce Democratic response, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded, “How could he have?”
The Democratic barrage began Wednesday morning with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who asked all Democratic senators to be in their seats when the chamber convened.
Schumer called for an all-senators briefing with the attorney general and deputy attorney general — separately — so lawmakers could question their rationale and timing for recommending the firing.
“The question is, why did it happen last night?” he said. “Were those investigations getting too close to home for the president?
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, however, declined to criticize Trump and rejected calls for an independent investigation into Russia’s actions and any links to the Trump campaign.
An independent investigatory commission, which some Democrats have called for, “would only impede” the Senate intelligence committee’s inquiry, he said.
At the White House, officials said that the final decision to fire Comey came together Monday.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions was at the White House for a regular weekly lunch with White House Counsel Donald McGahn. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein joined them.
When Trump heard the two were there, he invited them into the Oval Office and said he wanted to talk about Comey, whose conduct he had been angry about for days.
Trump’s frustration over the FBI investigation of contacts between his associates and Russian agents had flared dramatically last week, as Comey was set to make a routine appearance before a congressional panel.
The president wrote on Twitter that Comey had been “the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton,” Trump’s 2016 rival, because he “gave her a free pass for many bad deeds!”
When Comey testified, Trump bristled at his remarks, according to a White House official familiar with the president’s thinking, especially Comey’s comment that he was “mildly nauseous” about the possibility that he had influenced the outcome of the election.
The president’s anger did not abate over a long weekend at his resort in Bedminster, N.J., and when he met with Sessions and Rosenstein, he remained incensed.
White House officials said that Rosenstein had independently decided to undertake a review of Comey’s status when he was confirmed to the No. 2 position at the Justice Department two weeks ago. To ignore the case he laid out would be “malpractice,” one White House spokesman said.
But Rosenstein’s concerns about Comey were different than Trump’s. He thought Comey had mishandled the investigation into Clinton’s emails last year, largely in ways that were unfair to her.
He objected to Comey’s initial news conference in July as well as his decision in October to reveal that the FBI had reopened its examination of the emails.
Both Trump and Sessions had praised Comey for his actions in October. But now, they seized on Rosenstein’s concerns as a justification for what Trump wanted to do — fire the FBI chief.
Trump told Rosenstein to write up his concerns, Sanders told reporters. Rosenstein did so the next day, and within hours, Trump had ordered the dismissal.
Trump had lost confidence in Comey — and had been considering dismissing Comey from the day he was elected, Sanders said.
“Most importantly, the rank-and-file of the FBI had lost confidence in their director,” she said.
That was at least partially contradicted by a former FBI supervisor with more than two decades in the bureau, who said the reaction among FBI agents was one of shock.
“It was public humiliation of the guy that was wrong; they shouldn’t have done that,” the former agent said.