Trump Fires FBI Director Investigating His Campaign, Tells NBC Two Days Later It Was Over The Russia Thing, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That The Country's Top Law Enforcement Officer Was Still Permitted To Investigate The President

The Filing

WASHINGTON. President Donald Trump on Tuesday abruptly dismissed FBI Director James Comey, ending the tenure of the federal law enforcement official then overseeing a counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and contacts between Russian operatives and members of the Trump campaign.

The White House attributed the firing to a memorandum from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein critical of Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton email matter, a position the President himself had spent the previous year praising as one of the central reasons for his electoral victory. Aides described the timing, which fell during an active federal investigation of the President's campaign, as coincidental.

Two days later, in a televised interview with NBC's Lester Holt, the President revised the explanation in real time. "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," the President told the network, identifying as the actual basis for the firing the very investigation his official rationale had been crafted to avoid mentioning.

Sources within the administration noted that the new explanation, while logistically inconvenient for the prepared statement issued by the White House press office, did have the advantage of being closer to the truth. The President was said to view the on-camera revision as an act of personal honesty, a quality he indicated other Presidents had failed to bring to the firing of FBI directors investigating their campaigns.

The decision triggered the appointment, eight days later, of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to oversee an investigation now substantially broader than the one Comey had been leading at the time of his dismissal.

At press time, the President was reportedly puzzled that the act of firing the man investigating him had failed to conclude the investigation.

Who Benefits

§President Donald J. Trump, who removed from his oversight the federal official then directly investigating his campaign's Russia contacts.
§The Russian Federation, whose ongoing interference operation gained the political and operational benefits of a publicly destabilized U.S. counterintelligence apparatus.
§Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and other Trump campaign figures then under FBI scrutiny, who briefly enjoyed the prospect of an investigation conducted under replaced leadership.
§Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General whose memo was elevated overnight to a foundational document of the American constitutional order before being walked back within forty-eight hours.
§Andrew McCabe, briefly elevated to Acting FBI Director, a posting that would within a year produce his own termination on grounds the Justice Department also discovered to be unrelated to Russia.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment