Trump’s simmering anger at Comey led to firing
FBI chief ’s testimony to Congress last week likely was last straw.
WASHINGTON — The countdown to President Donald Trump’s di smissal of FBI Director James Comey began last weekend, which the president spent stewing over Comey’s testimony to Congress last week in which he provided a few new details about the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s efforts to sway the 2016 election.
Trump, according to people close to the president, had been openly talking about firing Comey for at least a week. Despite the objections from some of his aides about the optics and the lack of an obvious successor, the grumbling evolved into a tentative plan as he angrily watched the Sunday news shows at his Bedminster, N.J., golf resort.
By Monday, capping off months of festering grievances, Trump told people around him that he wanted C omey gone, repeatedly quest i oni ng C omey ’s f i t - ness for the job and telling aides there was “something wrong” with him, several people familiar with the discussions said.
A White House spokesman Wednesday offered a different account of how t h e d e c i s i o n w a s ma d e to dismiss Comey. Justice Department officials Monday urged Trump to fire Comey for “atrocities” committed d ur i ng t he i nve s t i g a t i o n into Hillary Clinton’s emails, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White House press secretary, told reporters at a briefing Wednesday. The president merely endorsed that decision, she said.
At the same time, Sanders conceded that Trump “had considered letting Direc - tor Comey go from the day he was inaugurated.” That statement was more consistent with the account given by people around the president, who portrayed Trump as having returned to Washington from New Jersey on Monday determined to act after months of growing frustration with the FBI director.
At first, Trump, who is fond of vetting his decisions with a wide circle of staff members, advisers and friends, kept his thinking to a small circle, venting his anger to Vice President Mike Pence, White House Counsel Donald McGahn and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who all told him they generally backed dismissing Comey.
Two senior aides — the chief strategist Stephen Bannon and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, who have both been critical of the FBI — questioned whether the time was right to dismiss Comey, arguing that doing it later would reduce the backlash, according to two people familiar with their thinking.
But Trump was adamant, denouncing Comey’s conduct in both the Clinton and Russia investigations, and left aides Monday with the impression that he planned to take action the next day.
Early Tuesday, he made his final decision, keeping many aides, including the president’s communications team and network of surrogates, in the dark until news of the firing leaked out late in the afternoon.
Trump explained the firing by citing Comey’s handling of the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server — a justification that was rich in irony, White House officials acknowledged, considering that as recently as two weeks ago, the president appeared at a rally where he was serenaded with chants of “Lock her up!”
On Wednesday, the president and his staff had widened their criticism of Comey’s conduct on the Clinton inquiry to include a wider denunciation of his performance.
“He wasn’t doing a good job,” Trump said. “Very simply, he was not doing a good job.”
Yet even in his letter to Comey, the president mentioned the Russia inquiry, writing that “I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation.” And that reflected, White House aides said, what they conceded had been his obsession over the investigation Trump believes is threatening his larger agenda.