Comey Firing and the Continuing Saga

Yes, this is the worst yet.

The Firing

Trump fired FBI director James Comey on 5/9/2017. This is fine, he is well within rights to do that. The real question is “Why now?”. FBI is current conducting an investigation into Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, so there is obvious comparison to Nixon here.

The Memos

Based on the memos released by the White House, the firing was based on a recommendation from Deputy AG over Comey’s handling Clinton Email Investigation. What’s curious about these memos. They are all dated the same day. So the Deputy AG sent a memo on ⁵⁄₉, the Attorney General sent a memo on ⁵⁄₉ and then the President wrote a memo on ⁵⁄₉. Does anyone even believe this is a deliberate process? Is it not more likely that these memos are just a sham to cover for Trump?

Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein

Deputy AG Rosenstein is supposedly a well regarded prosecutor. Why would he cooperate with Trump in providing a sham cover for what Trump wanted?

When the news broke out, WH started to push the idea that Rosenstein is the primary factor that lead to this firing. This was reportedly disputed by Rosenstein and even he supposedly threatened to resign. Watch Trump for the past few months, it’s hard to imagine that Rosenstein will come out of this unscathed. While Trump demands loyalty, there hasn’t been well documented instances of Trump rewarding loyalty.

Comey’s dinner with Trump

Since Comey’s firing, it has come out that there have been 1 or 2 dinners between Trump and Comey. This is already a strange event. For someone like Comey, this invitation to dine with the President is troubling. (Remember AG Lynch had to recuse after meeting Bill Clinton)

In Comey’s version, as related by a source who heard it, Trump asked Comey for loyalty, but Comey didn’t affirm that. Instead Comey promised only “honesty”.

What’s even more unbelievable, Trump claims that James Comey requested the dinner to seek job security! And it’s one of the 3 occasions where Comey claimed that Trump is NOT under investigation.

Look at Comey’s behavior for the last year, is it believable he will do something like this?

Trump’s interview with NBC

After WH spend all that energy to push the idea that Rosenstein’s recommendation is the driver for Comey firing. Trump decided to reveal in a NBC interview

DONALD TRUMP: Oh I was gonna fire regardless of recommendation

…

And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.

This isn’t an interview. This is a confession. It complete destroyed the talking points about the recommendation and then it plainly put out the case that Comey firing is to stop the Russian investigation.

Trump’s “tapes” tweet

Oh and Trumps says,

James Comey better hope that there are no “tapes” of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

Seriously? He actually think his dinner time conversation is worse for Comey than for him?

Next steps

At this point, Comey has so much information that he can use. We will have to see how he will be a piece in the congressional investigation. As for Rosenstein, his best course of action is to recommend a special prosecutor and then resign from this circus. Anyone still left holding the fort when this thing crashes will be have a good time.