Trump Fires FBI Director James Comey, Then Tells NBC It Was About 'This Russia Thing,' Resolving Long-Standing Concern That The Official Investigating The President Remained Employed By The Federal Government
WASHINGTON. President Donald J. Trump moved decisively Tuesday to address a persistent staffing irregularity at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, terminating Director James Comey and thereby resolving the long-standing problem of the bureau being led by the same official overseeing an active investigation into the President's campaign.
The White House initially attributed the dismissal to Comey's 2016 handling of the Hillary Clinton email inquiry, an explanation officials supported with a freshly drafted memorandum from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and a straight face. Comey, who was addressing bureau employees in Los Angeles at the moment of his removal, reportedly learned of the decision from television screens behind him, a notification method the administration characterized as efficient.
Two days later, in an interview with NBC's Lester Holt, the President clarified the official rationale by discarding it. "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," Trump told Holt, adding that he had planned to fire Comey "regardless of recommendation." Administration officials praised the remarks as a rare instance of a President personally fact-checking his own press office.
The following morning, Trump welcomed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak into the Oval Office for a closed-press meeting, a scheduling decision one official described as "the calendar simply working out." Sources within the administration emphasized that the timing carried no significance whatsoever, and that any sitting president might host the foreign government accused of interfering in his election on the day after dismissing the man investigating that interference.
Comey had confirmed in March congressional testimony that the FBI was investigating Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and possible coordination with Trump associates, a disclosure that constitutional scholars now identify as the precise category of information a President is best positioned to make disappear by firing the person disclosing it. Eight days after the dismissal, the Justice Department appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to continue the inquiry, an outcome the President reportedly received as deeply unfair.
At press time, Trump was expressing genuine astonishment that removing the one man investigating him had resulted in the appointment of a second man to investigate him.