NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tuesday, May 9th, 2017

You’re fired: Donald Trump has ousted FBI Director James Comey, effective immediately

James Comey is out as the Direc­tor of the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion after being sacked by Don­ald Trump in a sur­prise dis­missal, the regime said today in a bomb­shell announce­ment that instant­ly became top news.

In a let­ter addressed to Comey, Trump wrote: “I have received the attached let­ters from the Attor­ney Gen­er­al and the Deputy Attor­ney Gen­er­al of the Unit­ed States rec­om­mend­ing your dis­missal as the Direc­tor of the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion. I have accept­ed their rec­om­men­da­tion and you are here­by ter­mi­nat­ed and removed from office, effec­tive immediately.”

The let­ter went on to say:

“While I great­ly appre­ci­ate you inform­ing me, on three sep­a­rate occa­sions, that I am not under inves­ti­ga­tion, I nev­er­the­less con­cur with the judg­ment of the Depart­ment of Jus­tice that you are not able to effec­tive­ly lead the Bureau.”

Only a few ago, Trump told a friend­ly inter­view­er at Fox Busi­ness that Comey was still in his good graces. “It’s not too late, but, you know, I have con­fi­dence in him. We’ll see what hap­pens. You know, it’s going to be inter­est­ing,” Trump said.

Offi­cial­ly, the rea­son giv­en for Comey’s fir­ing is that he mis­han­dled the inves­ti­ga­tion into Hillary Clin­ton’s use of a pri­vate email serv­er while Sec­re­tary of State (which is very con­ve­nient). Unof­fi­cial­ly, the regime want­ed Comey gone because he was not a loy­al sol­dier for Trump. Comey’s replace­ment will be some­one who won’t be inde­pen­dent and thus unable to inves­ti­gate wrong­do­ing by the regime.

Comey was quite help­ful to Trump’s cam­paign last year when he was repeat­ed­ly under­min­ing Hillary Clin­ton’s cam­paign. But now that Trump has tak­en pow­er, the noto­ri­ous­ly inde­pen­dent Comey has ceased to be an asset. Keep­ing him around does­n’t serve Trump’s inter­ests. So he’s been dismissed.

Actu­al­ly, uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly dumped would be more accu­rate. Trump did not even extend Comey the cour­tesy of a phone call, let alone an advance noti­fi­ca­tion:

Comey heard the news while giving a speech

Mr. Comey stopped address­ing the group. He pro­ceed­ed to shake hands with the employ­ees he had been speak­ing to. Then he stepped into a side office, where he con­firmed that he had been fired. At that point, he had not heard from the White House.

Short­ly there­after, a let­ter from Mr. Trump was deliv­ered to the F.B.I.’s head­quar­ters, just sev­en blocks from the White House.

Mr. Comey’s day had begun in Flori­da, where he spoke to a group of police offi­cers. He then flew to Los Ange­les, where he was also sched­uled to speak at a diver­si­ty meeting.

Michael S. Schmidt

It is NPI’s view that Comey should have been fired by Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma months ago. Comey dam­aged the rep­u­ta­tion and cred­i­bil­i­ty of the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion with his pub­lic state­ments and let­ters to the Repub­li­can-con­trolled Con­gress about the botched inves­ti­ga­tion into Clin­ton’s emails — state­ments and let­ters which ben­e­fit­ed Trump’s campaign.

And more recent­ly, Comey hand­ed Trump, Ses­sions, and Rosen­stein anoth­er gift when he pro­vid­ed a pre­text for his own ouster —  mak­ing state­ments to Con­gress about that same inves­ti­ga­tion that were not accu­rate:

On Tues­day, the FBI sent a let­ter to Con­gress cor­rect­ing inac­cu­rate con­gres­sion­al tes­ti­mo­ny by Direc­tor James Comey, six days after he mis­char­ac­ter­ized what the FBI dis­cov­ered on Antho­ny Weiner’s lap­top. The bureau addressed the mat­ter in a two-page let­ter to the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee from its con­gres­sion­al liai­son, explain­ing that it was “intend­ed to sup­ple­ment” Comey’s tes­ti­mo­ny, by pro­vid­ing “the full con­text of what was reviewed and found on the laptop.”

In it, the FBI acknowl­edged that only a “small num­ber” of more than 49,000 “poten­tial rel­e­vant” emails found on Weiner’s lap­top had been for­ward­ed from Clin­ton deputy Huma Abe­din to Wein­er, her hus­band, not hun­dreds or thou­sands as Comey had stat­ed. The FBI said just two of those mes­sages con­tained clas­si­fied information.

Comey was also over­see­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into whether the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion inter­fered in the 2016 elec­tion and whether the Trump cam­paign inap­pro­pri­ate­ly col­lud­ed with the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment to gain a polit­i­cal advantage.

We agree with Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Chuck Schumer that we need a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor — imme­di­ate­ly — to take over that investigation.

“The only way the Amer­i­can peo­ple can have faith in this inves­ti­ga­tion is for it to be led by a fear­less inde­pen­dent spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor,” Schumer told reporters fol­low­ing Comey’s fir­ing at a press con­fer­ence at the Capi­tol. “If Deputy Attor­ney Gen­er­al Rosen­stein does not appoint an inde­pen­dent spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor, every Amer­i­can will right­ly sus­pect that the deci­sion to fire Direc­tor Comey was part of a cover-up.”

“Peo­ple are sit­ting at home, know­ing that the Rus­sians have inter­fered with our elec­tions and now they see that this is the third per­son that’s been fired by this admin­is­tra­tion,” said Sen­a­tor Maria Cantwell in a state­ment sent to NPI.

“Peo­ple want to know, was this because some­one was clos­ing in on infor­ma­tion about that inves­ti­ga­tion that might have incrim­i­nat­ed peo­ple with­in the admin­is­tra­tion? My con­stituents want answers about who knew about the Russ­ian inter­fer­ence. My col­leagues in the Sen­ate and House Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tees are going to con­tin­ue to inves­ti­gate, but we need a spe­cial inde­pen­dent pros­e­cu­tor to get the answers for the Amer­i­can peo­ple and demand accountability.”

If Con­gress was being faith­ful to the Con­sti­tu­tion and the prin­ci­ples on which this coun­try was found­ed, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives would be com­menc­ing impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings against Don­ald Trump right now. Sad­ly, that’s not hap­pen­ing. Every branch of our fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is under the con­trol of peo­ple who would rather prop up the regime than save our democracy.

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