There are so many insane aspects to the White House’s handling of Comey’s dismissal, a listicle is required.
“It’s insane. The whole thing is just insane.” — Anonymous White House official .
By now, you are probably aware that President Trump fired the director of the FBI Tuesday afternoon — and that his decision and the way it was executed were both bonkers, for a variety of reasons.
But there are so many insane aspects to the events of the last 24 hours, it can be hard to wrap one’s mind around all of them at once. Fortunately, news days like this are precisely why God gave us listicles.
Here is a comprehensive rundown of all the reasons why Trump’s firing of James Comey is an extraordinary shit show, even by our president’s formidable standards.
1. The president just fired the man tasked with overseeing the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The president has the authority to fire the director of the FBI. But before Tuesday, that authority had only been exercised once — and in that case, Bill Clinton only fired William S. Sessions after a Justice Department investigation found him guilty of flagrant ethical violations.
Historically, presidents have avoided firing the head of the FBI out of respect for federal law enforcement’s independence. After all, FBI directors serve ten-year terms precisely to ensure a measure of distance from the Oval Office’s occupant.
Thus, firing an FBI director before any internal investigation produced a report of wrongdoing would be precedent-breaking and extraordinary — doing so at a time when the FBI director was investigating the president’s campaign is astounding, and an affront to the rule of law.
2. The White House’s official explanation for the firing insults the intelligence of the American people.
Last October, Jeff Sessions applauded James Comey’s handling of the Clinton email investigation. The then-senator told Fox Business that the FBI director had an “absolute duty” to release his infamous October letter — and to make his controversial announcement explicating his rationale for not charging Clinton last July.
On Tuesday, Sessions advised the president that those two actions were so flagrantly inappropriate they were grounds for firing Comey.
3. The president (reportedly) decided to fire Comey, then asked his attorney general to generate a rationale.
In truth, the president had grown personally frustrated with Comey, and decided he wanted to pick his own FBI director, according to CNN. But the president “did not necessarily have the rationale” to fire the FBI director, and so “asked the attorney general and the deputy attorney general to look for that rationale and that explanation.”
4. Trump was (reportedly) furious at Comey for refusing to corroborate his baseless felony accusation against his predecessor.
One Saturday in early March, the president misread a couple of news reports, and then publicly announced that Barack Obama had illegally wiretapped him during the 2016 election. He later admitted that he had no basis for making that allegation, beyond a series of newspaper articles that did not substantiate his claim in any way. Nonetheless, one reason the president wanted to fire Comey, according to Politico, was that the “FBI director wouldn’ t support his claims that President Barack Obama had tapped his phones in Trump Tower.”
5. He also, reportedly, believed it was the FBI director’s job to declare him innocent of all wrongdoing — and focus the bureau’s resources on tracking down leakers — if the president ordered him to do so.
As The Wall Street Journal reports:
Meanwhile, the White House was fuming about Comey’s failure to prosecute leakers, according to the Washington Post:
6. The president began the second paragraph of his letter to Comey with the phrase, “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation…”
7. Comey (reportedly) requested additional resources for the Russia investigation days before he was dismissed.
Surely, this is a coincidence:
8. Hours before Comey’s firing, CNN learned that federal prosecutors had issued grand jury subpoenas to associates of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Such crazy timing:
9. Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation — and then advised the president to fire the man leading the Russia investigation.
In early March, the attorney general announced, “I have now decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matter relating in any way to the campaigns for president of the United States.”
10. The president sent his personal bodyguard to fire the director of the FBI.
In addition to the security force provided to the president by taxpayers, Trump retains a guard loyal only to him.
11. Most of the White House staff learned of the decision by seeing it reported on television.
The administration approached the task of firing the FBI director with less care and forethought than schoolchildren tend to display when organizing pickup games of kickball. As Axios reports:
This level of disorganization testifies either to the administration’s astounding incompetence or else to the urgency with which it needed to dispatch the FBI director. And it is hard to think of a benign explanation for why the White House would have felt such an urgency.
12. Comey also learned of his firing from television — in the middle of a speech to FBI employees in Los Angeles.
According to the paper of record:
13. The White House press secretary was so uncomfortable defending the firing he hid from reporters in the bushes, only emerging once they agreed to turn off the lights so they couldn’ t film him.
Per the Washington Post:
14. Trump’s other top surrogate directly contradicted the White House’s official rationale for the firing.
“This has nothing to do with the campaign from six months ago, ” Kellyanne Conway told Anderson Cooper Tuesday night. “This has everything to do with the performance of the FBI director since the president has been in the White House.”
Deputy Attorney General Ron Rosenstein’s memo explaining the rationale for the firing insisted that it had everything to do with the campaign from six months ago.
15. The White House (reportedly) believed that firing the guy leading an investigation into the Trump campaign would inspire accolades from elected Democrats and yawns from the media.
As Politico reports:
The president ostensibly believed that a good way to defuse media speculation about his Russia ties would be to fire the man tasked with investigating them, the night before his meeting with Russia’s foreign minister.
