Yet, the manner of the firing was ham-handed: The president’s bodyguard was dispatched to deliver the termination documents to what turned out to be an empty office, the White House having failed to check on the director’s whereabouts (he was on FBI business in California). And, as has become ever clearer over the last few days, the justifications for the action from the White House have been deceptive.
.. In a nutshell, Trump wanted to be rid of Comey but deflect responsibility for removing an FBI director less than four years into a ten-year term. So he directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Rosenstein to prepare a memo explaining the grounds of termination. Then, his team spun the firing as if it were the Justice Department’s idea, occurring now only because Rosenstein just started on the job. (Sessions has recused himself from aspects of the Russia inquiry, though the scope of the recusal is uncertain.) The White House tried to make it appear as if the president were merely concurring in the decision. Only when Rosenstein reportedly protested did Trump own up.
.. He also, disturbingly, said that he was thinking of Russia when he made the decision, contradicting everyone in the White House who said that had nothing to do with it.
.. It is understandable that Democrats are screaming bloody murder about events of the last few days — certainly Republicans would be doing the same if a Democrat were in the White House and axed an FBI director the way Trump has. But the analogies to Watergate — ubiquitous in the media — are overwrought
.. The objective of a foreign counterintelligence investigation is not to gather evidence of a specific violation of law in order to build a prosecutable criminal case against a suspect. It is to determine the actions and intentions of foreign powers to the extent they bear on American interests.
.. There have been reports that the FBI has been scrutinizing business dealings former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had with Kremlin-connected Ukrainian politicians between 2005 and 2014, and business conducted in Russia by Carter Page, whose connection to the Trump campaign — which listed him as an adviser — appears remote. Trump’s shady longtime crony Roger Stone has boasted of a relationship with WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange, and there are suspicions he may have had prior knowledge that WikiLeaks would publish e-mails hacked from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta
.. In short, it may be that this investigation really does have nothing to do with Donald Trump directly. That makes his petulant and self-destructive response to it all the more mystifying — except against the backdrop of his entire adult life, which has involved bullying and blustering his way to fame and fortune.
.. The more he complains and lashes out, the more the opposition turns up the heat. The race to the bottom may have just begun.
Trump Warning to Comey Prompts Questions on ‘Tapes’
No president in the past 40 years has been known to regularly tape his phone calls or meetings because, among other reasons, they could be subpoenaed by investigators as they were during the Watergate investigation that ultimately forced President Richard M. Nixon to resign.
.. “For a president who baselessly accused his predecessor of illegally wiretapping him, that Mr. Trump would suggest that he, himself, may have engaged in such conduct is staggering,”
.. He denied that the president was threatening the former F.B.I. director. “That’s not a threat,” Mr. Spicer said. “He simply stated a fact. The tweet speaks for itself. I’m moving on.”
.. Mr. Trump suggested he was seriously thinking about canceling the briefings. “Unless I have them every two weeks and I do them myself, we don’t have them,” he said. “I think it’s a good idea.”
.. Every president in modern times has been frustrated with the news media at points, but they all preserved the tradition of the daily briefing, if for no other reason than to get their message out. Mr. Trump, with Twitter as his own trumpet, may feel less need for that.
.. Mr. Trump has long been said by allies and former employees to have taped some of his own phone calls
.. But the implicit threat to Mr. Comey was ripped from a familiar playbook that Mr. Trump relied on during the campaign to silence critics or dissent.
- he read aloud the mobile telephone number of one rival, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, from the stage at a rally and encouraged people to flood his phone with calls.
- he threatened on Twitter to tell stories about Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, the co-hosts of the MSNBC show “Morning Joe,” after they criticized him.
- He also railed against the wealthy Ricketts family as it was funding anti-Trump efforts, threatening to air some unspecified dirty laundry.
while competing with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas for the Republican presidential nomination, he threatened to expose something unflattering about his opponent’s wife. “Be careful, Lyin’ Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!” he said.
.. Mr. Trump’s warning on Twitter to quiet Mr. Comey could be viewed as an effort to intimidate a witness for any current or future investigation into whether the firing of the F.B.I. director amounted to obstruction of justice.
“If this were an actual criminal investigation — in other words, if there were a prosecutor and a defense lawyer in the picture — this would draw a severe phone call to counsel warning that the defendant is at serious risk of indictment if he continues to speak to witnesses,” Mr. Buell said. “Thus, this is also definitive evidence that Trump is not listening to counsel and perhaps not even talking to counsel. Unprecedented in the modern presidency.”
.. This is not the first time an administration has challenged Mr. Comey’s version of a prominent conversation. During President George W. Bush’s administration, White House officials disputed Mr. Comey’s account of a hospital room standoff in which Mr. Bush’s top aides tried to pressure John D. Ashcroft, the ailing attorney general, to reauthorize a controversial surveillance program.
Mr. Comey, then the deputy attorney general, was eventually vindicated because the F.B.I. director at the time, Robert S. Mueller III, kept his notes from the encounter — a reminder that note-taking is steeped in the F.B.I. culture.
.. A couple of Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Schiff and Representative Eric Swalwell of California, have said there is at least some evidence of collusion, but when Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, a Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, was asked last week if there was, she said, “Not at this time.”
Trump said he was thinking of Russia controversy when he decided to fire Comey
Recounting his decision to dismiss Comey, Trump told NBC News, “In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.’”
.. But Trump made clear in Thursday’s interview that Russia indeed was on his mind. And he said Sessions and Rosenstein’s recommendations did not prompt his decision.
“I was going to fire Comey,” Trump told Holt. “Oh, I was going to fire regardless of recommendation.”
.. The exchange as described by the president is remarkable since he said the FBI director was discussing an ongoing investigation with the president — something Justice Department policy generally prohibits — at the same time Comey was seeking assurances he would remain in his job... “Look, he’s a showboat, he’s a grandstander,” the president said. “The FBI has been in turmoil. You know that. I know that. Everybody knows that.
When Will Republicans Stand Up to Trump?
In office less than four months, Mr. Trump has already undermined the rule of law in myriad small ways.
He allowed his daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House in arguable violation of an anti-nepotism statute.
- He did not divest himself of his business holdings and
- did not release his tax returns.
- His sons have continued pursuing deals with jillionaires closely linked to unsavory foreign regimes.
- He and his daughter have accepted valuable trademark protections from China.
- His son-in-law’s family sought to trade on their connections to sell American citizenship to rich Chinese.
.. The president made clear his intent to shut down the investigation on Monday when he tweeted, “The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?”
.. Mr. Trump himself now links his decision to fire Mr. Comey to his conviction that “this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story.”