Trump Sacks FBI Director Comey. Nixon Move?
This evening President Trump unceremoniously sacked FBI Director James Comey. First-hand accounts indicate that Comey found out the same way the rest of us did- by reading or hearing about the press release in the evening news. Wow, classy move, Mr. President.
The president and his spokespeople such as Kellyanne Conway have taken great pains to explain that Comey was fired for "interfering" in the 2016 presidential election. Anyone's who been paying attention to US politics will recall that Comey testified to Congress on July 5, 2016 about then-candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server for classified government emails. In explaining the FBI's decision to close the investigation on Ms. Clinton without criminal charges he went well beyond the standard of "Just the facts, ma'am" and offered a scathing personal editorialization of Clinton's behavior. Then on October 28, mere days before the election, he sent a letter to Congress stating that he was reopening the investigation on evidence- flimsy evidence, it turned out- that Clinton's classified emails had been forwarded to an unauthorized third person. (Anthony Weiner. Remember that dick?)
Now, I'm not fan of James Comey. I think the two things he did outlined above were unprofessional and dangerously broke protocol in a high stakes environment. I think he should have been sacked for that. But Trump's citing of that rationale now is transparently absurd. Consider the following:
1) Trump commended Comey numerous times for his testimony and warnings about Secretary Clinton.
2) Why is Comey being fired for these things now, when they happened several months ago? (And after Trump repeatedly prasied them?) Why not sack him in January, shortly after Trump took office?
3) Is it really not about the widening probe into the Trump administration's entanglements with Russia and its interference in the recent election?
Point #3 deserves elaboration, obviously. Here I'd like to recall an observation about Trump's media strategy I've offered in the past: If you want to understand why Donald Trump is doing something sudden, abrupt, and/or unexpected, you need only look at what's on the opposite page. President Trump, and candidate Trump before that, has repeatedly created his own headlines to either scramble the narrative on a story unfavorable to himself or crowd it out of the headlines entirely.
What's on the proverbial facing page right now? The widening investigation into how Russian state intelligence interfered in the election to benefit Trump and how members of his administration possibly colluded with the Russian government. It was summarized by Gen. James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, in Senate testimony yesterday:
"The Intelligence Community Assessment concluded first that President Putin directed and influenced campaign to erode the faith and confidence of the American people in our presidential election process. Second, that he did so to demean Secretary Clinton, and third, that he sought to advantage Mr. Trump. These conclusions were reached based on the richness of the information gathered and analyzed and were thoroughly vetted and then approved by the directors of the three agencies and me."
Trump fired a Twitter salvo in return. His attack? That these allegations are "old news" and "unproven". But who would be leading the investigation into them, looking for proof?
The FBI Director. James Comey. The person Trump just fired for reasons "totally not" having anything to do with this.
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
People who've studied modern American history, and those old enough to remember it first hand, are asking if this is Trump's "Nixon moment". They're recalling the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre" (Wikipedia link) of October 1972 when President Richard Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox to stave off investigation into the Watergate Scandal that forced his resignation ten months later.
The Nixon Library, for its part, is pushing back against politicians and pundits comparing this evening's events to Nixon's actions in the Saturday Night Massacre. Its rebuttal is awfully weak, though. They remind us that Nixon never fired his FBI director.
That's right, these situation are not equal. This one's worse.
The president and his spokespeople such as Kellyanne Conway have taken great pains to explain that Comey was fired for "interfering" in the 2016 presidential election. Anyone's who been paying attention to US politics will recall that Comey testified to Congress on July 5, 2016 about then-candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server for classified government emails. In explaining the FBI's decision to close the investigation on Ms. Clinton without criminal charges he went well beyond the standard of "Just the facts, ma'am" and offered a scathing personal editorialization of Clinton's behavior. Then on October 28, mere days before the election, he sent a letter to Congress stating that he was reopening the investigation on evidence- flimsy evidence, it turned out- that Clinton's classified emails had been forwarded to an unauthorized third person. (Anthony Weiner. Remember that dick?)
Now, I'm not fan of James Comey. I think the two things he did outlined above were unprofessional and dangerously broke protocol in a high stakes environment. I think he should have been sacked for that. But Trump's citing of that rationale now is transparently absurd. Consider the following:
1) Trump commended Comey numerous times for his testimony and warnings about Secretary Clinton.
2) Why is Comey being fired for these things now, when they happened several months ago? (And after Trump repeatedly prasied them?) Why not sack him in January, shortly after Trump took office?
3) Is it really not about the widening probe into the Trump administration's entanglements with Russia and its interference in the recent election?
Point #3 deserves elaboration, obviously. Here I'd like to recall an observation about Trump's media strategy I've offered in the past: If you want to understand why Donald Trump is doing something sudden, abrupt, and/or unexpected, you need only look at what's on the opposite page. President Trump, and candidate Trump before that, has repeatedly created his own headlines to either scramble the narrative on a story unfavorable to himself or crowd it out of the headlines entirely.
What's on the proverbial facing page right now? The widening investigation into how Russian state intelligence interfered in the election to benefit Trump and how members of his administration possibly colluded with the Russian government. It was summarized by Gen. James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, in Senate testimony yesterday:
"The Intelligence Community Assessment concluded first that President Putin directed and influenced campaign to erode the faith and confidence of the American people in our presidential election process. Second, that he did so to demean Secretary Clinton, and third, that he sought to advantage Mr. Trump. These conclusions were reached based on the richness of the information gathered and analyzed and were thoroughly vetted and then approved by the directors of the three agencies and me."
Trump fired a Twitter salvo in return. His attack? That these allegations are "old news" and "unproven". But who would be leading the investigation into them, looking for proof?
The FBI Director. James Comey. The person Trump just fired for reasons "totally not" having anything to do with this.
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
People who've studied modern American history, and those old enough to remember it first hand, are asking if this is Trump's "Nixon moment". They're recalling the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre" (Wikipedia link) of October 1972 when President Richard Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox to stave off investigation into the Watergate Scandal that forced his resignation ten months later.
The Nixon Library, for its part, is pushing back against politicians and pundits comparing this evening's events to Nixon's actions in the Saturday Night Massacre. Its rebuttal is awfully weak, though. They remind us that Nixon never fired his FBI director.
That's right, these situation are not equal. This one's worse.