President Donald Trump has fired FBI Director James Comey. This was not a case of “I want your resignation on my desk in the morning” but rather Celebrity Apprentice style, “You’re fired!” Comey found out just as he was about to give a speech in California. He had to undergo the added humiliation of heading for the airport as a news helicopter followed him.
The firing touched off a firestorm in Washington as Democrats made Watergate comparisons. Clearly, they said, Trump was trying to derail the ongoing investigation into contacts his staff and Russian agents may have had during the presidential campaign.
The accusations are silly. The investigation is continuing apace. The real reason for the firing was the one that the same Democrats pointing a finger as the president had cited for wanting Comey fired themselves.
The problem started when Comey conducted the press conference last July in which he publically justified why he would not recommend an indictment of then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for her email server, thus alienating Republicans. But he also detailed how she had exposed government secrets by maintaining the server, which in the view of most people deserved an indictment, thus alienating Democrats.
The problem was that he should have conducted this conversation with then Attorney General Loretta Lynch in private.
To be sure, Lynch had compromised herself by having a private meeting with former President Bill Clinton on that private plane while waiting on the tarmac. But Comey still appeared to usurp Lynch’s prerogative to prosecute or not.
Things were not helped when Comey sent a letter to Congress October 28, 2016 that he had reopened the investigation into the email server and then another letter on November 6, 2016 announcing that he had closed the investigation again having found no more evidence.
The letters have provided Clinton and her followers an excuse for losing the election. The letters and the Vast Russian Conspiracy. Clinton is in denial about her own shortcomings as a candidate and a human being as factors in her defeat.
The last straw of Comey spinning the story of Huma Abedin sending classified material to Anthony Weiner to print out likely caused the attorney general and deputy attorney general to recommend Comey’s termination.
Trump fired Comey in his characteristic decisive style, not rolling the thing out gradually Washington-style.
Thus, the same Democrats who yelled for Comey’s head back in November are not calling him a martyr. Working themselves up to a lather, making Watergate Saturday Night Massacre comparisons. As a spectacle of brazen hypocrisy it is almost unprecedented in American political history. Had Hillary Clinton become president, she would also have fired Comey and woild have been cheered for it.
The final question arises, will the next FBI Director reopen the investigation into Clinton’s email server?
