Trump fires head of FBI
Move brings renewed calls for independent Trump-Russia probe.
President Donald WASHINGTON — Trump on Tuesday fired FBI Director James Comey, abruptly terminating the leader of a wide-ranging criminal investigation into whether Trump’s advisers colluded with the Russian government to steer the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
The stunning development in Trump’s nascent presidency drew comparisons to President Richard M. Nixon’s infamous “Saturday Night Massacre,” in which Nixon purged the Justice Department in the middle of the Watergate investigation. Trump’s move immediately ignited Democratic calls for an independent prosecutor to lead the Russia probe.
Trump explained the firing by citing Comey’s controversial handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, even though the president was widely seen to have benefited from that inquiry. Trump had also once praised Comey for being “gutsy” in pursuit of Clinton during the campaign.
“While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau,” Trump said in a letter to Comey dated Tuesday.
Comey, who is three years into a 10-year term at the helm of the FBI, learned from news reports that he had been fired while addressing bureau employees in Los Angeles. While Comey spoke, television screens in the background began flashing the news. Shortly after, a letter was delivered to FBI headquarters in Washington.
The abrupt firing raised questions over whether Trump was trying to influence the Russia
investigation. But the president said he was following recommendations from the Justice Department, which criticized how Comey concluded the investigation into Clinton.
“It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission,” Trump wrote.
Comey’s firing came hours after the FBI corrected his testimony last week about how classified information ended up on the laptop of the disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner.
Comey had told the Senate Judiciary Committee that during the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state, officers uncovered evidence that her aide, Huma Abedin, had “forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, some of which contain classified information” to Weiner, her husband.
But the FBI told Congress that only a few of the emails had been forwarded and that the vast majority were simply backed up to Weiner’s laptop.
Comey broke with long-standing tradition and policies by publicly discussing the Clinton case last July and chastising her “careless” handling of classified information. Then, in the campaign’s final days, Comey announced that the FBI was reopening the investigation, a move that earned him widespread criticism.
Yet many of the facts cited as evidence for Comey’s dismissal were well known when Trump kept him on the job. And both Trump and his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had praised Comey back then as “gutsy.”
The president has the authority to fire the FBI director for any reason. Officials at the FBI said they learned through news reports of Comey’s dismissal, which Trump described as effective immediately.
Under the FBI’s normal rules of succession, Comey’s deputy, Andrew G. McCabe, a career FBI officer, becomes acting director. The White House said the search for a new director will begin immediately.
The firing puts Democrats in a difficult position. Many had hoped that Clinton would fire Comey soon after taking office, and blamed him as costing her the election. But under Trump, the outspoken and independent-minded Comey was seen as an important check on the new administration.
“Any attempt to stop or undermine this FBI investigation would raise grave constitutional issues,” said Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill. “We await clarification by the White House as soon as possible as to whether this investigation will continue and whether it will have a credible lead so that we know that it’ll have a just outcome.”
Trump’s decision to fire Comey marks the second time since taking office that the president has fired a top law enforcement official. In early February, Trump fired Sally Yates, who had worked in the Obama administration but was serving as acting attorney general.
But the president’s firing of Comey was far more consequential. Yates was a holdover, and would only have served in the Trump administration for a matter of days or weeks. By contrast, Comey was in the midst of his term as director of the bureau.
The White House said Sessions and the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, pushed for Comey’s dismissal.
“I cannot defend the director’s handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton’s emails,” Rosenstein wrote in another letter that was released by the White House, “and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken.”
A longtime prosecutor who served as the deputy attorney general during the George W. Bush administration, Comey came into office in 2013 with widespread bipartisan support. He has essentially been in a public feud with Trump since long before the presidential election.
In a Twitter message this week, Trump accused Comey of being “the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton,” accusing him of giving her “a free pass for many bad deeds.”
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a post on Twitter that Comey “should be immediately called to testify in an open hearing about the status of Russia/Trump investigation at the time he was fired.”
The president’s decision to fire Comey appeared to be the culmination of the bad will between the men that intensified in early March, when the president posted Twitter messages accusing former President Barack Obama of wiretapping his office.
The next morning, word spread quickly that Comey wanted the Justice Department to issue a statement saying that he had no evidence to support the president’s accusation. The department did not issue such a statement.
For weeks after, Trump insisted that his accusation was correct. In dramatic testimony later in March, Comey said that he had no information to back up the president’s allegations.
That set up a remarkable dynamic: an FBI director directly contradicting a sitting president at the same time that the bureau was pursuing a possible criminal investigation into the president’s aides.
The president has the authority to fire the FBI director for any reason.