Comey made it easy for Trump
Aaron Blake, The Wash
ington Post: “President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday. And while the termination happened rather quickly — mere hours after Comey’s faulty testimony to Congress was revealed — it wasn’t altogether a shock. ... If there was any time to fire Comey, Comey gift-wrapped it to Trump. ... Comey’s foul-up ... looked like he was overselling that case against Hillary Clinton, not Trump.”
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.: “The president fired the one independent person who was doing the most to investigate President Trump and his campaign over allegations of coordination with Russia. It is mind-boggling that Attorney General Jeff Sessions — who claimed to have recused himself — was directly involved in the decision. ... There is now a crisis of confidence at the Justice Department, and President Trump is not being held accountable because House Republicans refuse to work with us. ... Congress must ... finally pass legislation to create a truly independent commission.”
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine: “Any suggestion that this is somehow going to stop the FBI’s investigation of the attempts by the Russians to influence the elections last fall is really patently absurd. This is just one person, it’s the director; the investigation is going forward both at the FBI and in the Senate Intelligence Committee in a bipartisan way.”
Bill Kristol, The Weekly Standard, on Twitter: “Rod Rosenstein has been deputy attorney general two weeks. That’s a pretty short time for him to have done the work to make so serious a ‘ recommendation.’ ... The Rosenstein memo is dated Tuesday. So there was no real recommendation from DOJ. Trump wanted to do it, and they created a paper trail.” David Frum, The Atlantic, on Twitter: “Anybody who believes that these thugs fired Comey to do justice to Clinton is a sucker and a fool.” Kyle Wingfield, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “It’ll be one more log on the bonfire built by those convinced they can undermine the credibility of the Trump presidency and possibly even force him out of the White House — even though just hours earlier, many of those same people were complaining that Comey had once again betrayed the bias or hostility toward Clinton.”