President Donald Trump says he fired James Comey this week because of the unfair and unprofessional way the FBI director handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
How rich!
This would be believable if Clinton had been elected instead of Trump. There were plenty of Democrats who wanted Comey’s head last year after he criticized Clinton for potentially compromising classified information when she was secretary of state. and then again, less than two weeks before the election, when he announced that the investigation had been reopened.
But Trump, the person who benefitted the most from Comey’s controversial actions and praised him both before the Republican’s upset win and afterward, being upset about this? Not a chance.
Trump may have had a memo from one of Comey’s bosses, newly appointed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, supporting the firing. He may have had the backing of his toady of an attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for it, too.
But the Clinton excuse is such a thin smokescreen that it’s laughable.
What’s more likely is that Trump got rid of Comey because the career prosecutor wasn’t a “team player.” He showed up the president in March when he testified before Congress that there was no factual basis for Trump’s cockamamie allegation that Barack Obama had ordered the wiretapping of Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign. The president, who puts an extremely high value on loyalty, has been reportedly stewing about Comey’s testimony ever since.
What’s also possible — what Democrats are widely alleging and even some Republicans have doubts about — is that the firing of Comey is designed to slow down the investigation into whether there was any collusion between associates of the Trump campaign and the Russian government, which allegedly sought to tilt last year’s election in Trump’s favor.
It’s that possibility which has led to comparisons of Trump’s action this week and the “Saturday Night Massacre” orchestrated almost a half-century ago. That’s when then-President Richard Nixon, as the Watergate noose was tightening around him, went through two underlings in the Justice Department before he could get one to carry out his wishes and fire the special prosecutor who was investigating Nixon.
There is only one way for the Trump administration to prove that the firing of Comey was not similarly designed to impede justice: Appoint a special prosecutor to continue the Russian investigation.
No matter who takes Comey’s place as FBI director, there is going to be little public faith that the Trump appointee will pursue this matter as vigorously as Comey was supposedly doing. Since Sessions has recused himself from being involved in the Russian investigation because of his own conflicts of interest, it falls on Rosenstein to pull the trigger and name a special prosecutor.
He should feel compelled to do so.
Rosenstein, to this point, has been considered by both Democrats and Republicans as a highly competent and principled member of the Justice Department. That reputation has given Rosenstein’s critical evaluation of Comey more credence than it might otherwise have had coming from someone else, such as Sessions.
Rosenstein has to realize that the only way now to isolate the Russian investigation from the reality or the appearance of White House interference is to curb the president’s power over the chief prober.
The case for a special prosecutor was strong before Comey’s firing. Now it is overwhelming.
