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President Trump Fires FBI Director James Comey

May 9, 20175:56 PM ET
Jessica Taylor

The White House has fired FBI Director James Comey, who was overseeing an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections and possible ties to the Trump campaign and top aides.

"Today, President Donald J. Trump informed FBI Director James Comey that he has been terminated and removed from office. President Trump acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions," White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement.

"The FBI is one of our Nation's most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement," the president said in the statement.

Copies of the documents related to Director Comey's dismissal are at the link. Now we just wait for the other shoe to drop.

You know, the great irony of all this is that, from everything I've read and seen, it's likely enough that Trump DIDN'T do anything wrong in regards to Russia. But he's such a tone-deaf, narcissistic douchebag that the new suggestion that someone might think he'd done wrong was enough to cause him to launch a screaming temper tantrum, and be damned to the optics of it all.

Comey's an ass-covering bureaucrat who twice broke FBI policy because he was scared of the big mean Republicans in Congress. The first time by editorializing on someone being cleared of charges, and the second time commenting on an ongoing investigation. He was skirting pretty close to breaking the guidelines again with the whole Trump-Russia investigation as well. Probably because he accidentally wound up looking too Republican and now wanted to tack back to centre. Well you know Jim, that wouldn't have be a problem if you just followed the goddamed rules and kept your mouth shut. It's not too much to ask that the Director of the FBI actually stick to the FBI guidelines with respect to commenting on investigations, and i hope that the next person with the job has the balls to do just that. Don't give a shit if they literally catch Trump and Putin giving each other handjobs, either press charges or shut it. It's not the FBI's place to editorialize.

General Havoc wrote:You know, the great irony of all this is that, from everything I've read and seen, it's likely enough that Trump DIDN'T do anything wrong in regards to Russia. But he's such a tone-deaf, narcissistic douchebag that the new suggestion that someone might think he'd done wrong was enough to cause him to launch a screaming temper tantrum, and be damned to the optics of it all.

As they said about Watergate, "it's not the crime, it's the cover up."

I'm not even sure I'd call this a cover up. It's like trying to conceal your thefts by publishing pictures of yourself in the new York times with an Uzi and promising to murder anyone who calls you a thief.

Thus far there has been damn little the Trump administration has done that doesn't look like either a self-aggrandizing gesture, an effort to further enrich the rich, or a screaming temper tantrum by an overgrown child. As Havoc says, this one seems to be the last one. There's not so much a cover-up as just Trump yelling from the rooftops that he's not a crook and he'll fuck-up anyone who says otherwise. One thing i will give Comey, word is that when Trump called him up to the White House and demanded his loyalty, he demurred and promised only his honesty. That is exactly what the FBI director should do in those circumstances. It concerns me that his replacement will not have that integrity.

On the note of which, i'm heavily in favour of simply appointing the Acting Director. The guy has a stellar record, and it doesn't look like he takes shit from anybody. Admittedly the last time we had a career man heading the Bureau we got some large abuses of power, but i think part of the problem was the sheer length of time (48 years) that Hoover was in charge. Now the FBI director has a term of 10 years, and i think Andrew McCabe would do a great job. Unfortunately he's almost certainly not getting that job, precisely because he doesn't take shit from anybody, and he's already publicly contradicted the White House with respect to Comey.