Comey saga reverberates through DC
WASHINGTON — Days before he was fired, James Comey, the former FBI director, asked the Justice Department for a significant increase in resources for the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s interference in
the presidential election, according to four congressional officials, including Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois.
Comey made his appeal to Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who also wrote the Justice Department’s memo that was used to justify the firing of Comey on Tuesday, the officials said.
‘‘I’m told that as soon as Rosenstein arrived, there was a request for additional resources for the investigation and that a few days afterwards, he was sacked,’’ said Durbin, a Democrat. ‘‘I think the Comey operation was breathing down the neck of the Trump campaign and their operatives, and this was an effort to slow down the investigation.’’
Later Wednesday, in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s own accelerating investigation into Russia’s election interference, Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, was ordered to hand over records of any emails, phone calls, meetings and financial dealings with Russians.
The demand, which came in the first subpoena issued by the committee in its investigation, represented an aggressive new tack for what had been a slowly unfolding inquiry. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the Republican chairman of the Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the Democratic vice chairman, said in a statement that they had issued the subpoena after Flynn declined to voluntarily comply with a request to hand over the information.
Late last month, the committee asked a number of high-profile Trump campaign associates to hand over emails and other records of dealings with Russians.
In the Justice Department’s investigation, Comey had briefed members of Congress in recent days about his meeting with Rosenstein, who is the most senior law enforcement official supervising that inquiry. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself because of his close ties to the Trump campaign and his undisclosed meetings with the Russian ambassador.
The timing of Comey’s request is not clear-cut evidence that his firing was related to the Russia investigation, and Sarah Isgur Flores, the Justice Department spokeswoman, said, ‘‘the idea that he (Comey) asked for more funding’’ was ‘‘totally false.’’
But the timing is certain to fuel bipartisan criticism that Trump appeared to be meddling in an investigation that had the potential to damage his presidency.
In his briefing with members of Congress, Comey said he had been frustrated with the amount of resources being dedicated to the Russia investigation, according to two of the officials. Until two weeks ago, when Rosenstein took over as deputy attorney general, the investigation was being overseen by Dana Boente, now the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Comey has said he was hoping that he would find a supportive boss in Rosenstein and, according to the officials, pressed for more resources so he could accelerate the investigation, which is also examining possible collusion between Trump associates and the Russian interference campaign. It was unclear how Rosenstein reacted to the request, or whether the White House was informed of it.
Comey represented a fiercely independent official who made his career standing up to members of the George W. Bush administration on matters of surveillance. His advisers have cast his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as evidence that he was equally willing to criticize the Democratic nominee for president.
Comey’s handling of the Clinton investigation was the stated reason for his termination, and the White House has insisted it had nothing to do with the Russia inquiry.
“He wasn’t doing a good job. Very simply,” Trump said in the Oval Office, where he met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
“Frankly, he’d been considering letting Director Comey go since the day he was elected,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, a sharply different explanation from the day before.
The president kept a low profile Wednesday, relying largely on Twitter to defend his actions. In a series of morning tweets, he said both Democrats and Republicans “will be thanking me.”
Officials acknowledged, however, that Trump was surprised by the intense reaction to Comey’s dismissal.
The Democratic barrage began Wednesday morning with Senate Minority Leader Charles 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?” Schumer 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.
“Our Democratic colleagues (are) complaining about the removal of the FBI director that they themselves repeatedly criticized,” McConnell said.
An independent investigatory commission, which some Democrats have called for, “would only impede” the Senate Intelligence Committee’s current inquiry, he said.
At the White House, officials said that the final decision to fire Comey came together quickly on 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.
When Comey testified, Trump bristled at his remarks, according to a White House official, 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, New Jersey, and when he met with Sessions and Rosenstein, he remained incensed.
White House officials said Rosenstein had independently decided to undertake a review of Comey’s status when he was confirmed to the No. 2 position at Justice two weeks ago. But Rosenstein’s concerns about Comey were very 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.
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.
Sanders said “the rank-and-file of the FBI had lost confidence in their director,” but 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, speaking on condition of anonymity, said. “He’s a nice, charming, considerate guy; most employees like him for his people skills, but his judgment was seriously skewed,” the former agent said.
Trump, meanwhile, in his letter to Comey dated Tuesday, contended that the director had told him “three times” that he was not personally under investigation. Former FBI agents said such a statement by the director would be all but unthinkable.
Comey had been scheduled to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee today, but his position will now be taken by the FBI’s acting director, Andrew McCabe. But Comey is expected to make an appearance