The media and the Democrats want you to think President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey because Comey's just about to nail Trump on ties to Russia. Predictably, the New York Times this morning went right for the Watergate comparison, claiming this is no different from Richard Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre" of special prosecutor Archibald Cox, which also brought about the resignations of Attorney General Eliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus when both refused Nixon's order to fire Cox, leaving Robert Bork (yes, that Robert Bork) to heed the president's order and do the deed.
But the two cases have nothing in common. Nixon wanted Cox fired because Cox had issued subpoenas for White House tapes, which would have implicated Nixon in the Watergate coverup. Richardson and Ruckelshaus fell on their swords rather than allow the president to run roughshod over a legitimate investigation of criminal wrongdoing.
The left wants you to believe Russia is Watergate, Comey is Cox and Trump is Nixon. None of this is true. As Rob told you as recently as Monday, even the Democrats aren't claiming there's any evidence of wrongdoing in the Russia thing, which leads to legitimate questions of why "the Russia thing" is a thing at all.
But regardless, none of that is why Comey was fired, and the left/media/Democrats know it. That's because Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein laid out the rationale in an extraordinary memo to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who presented it to the president with his corresponding recommendation that Comey be terminated. And contrary to what you're hearing in the media, the sole rationale was Comey's mishandling of the Hillary e-mail case. Not only that, but if anything Rosenstein seems most concerned with Comey's actions being an inappropriate way to treat a person who was not being charged.
In other words, Trump fired Comey for being unfair to Hillary:
As you and I have discussed, however, I cannot defend the Director’s handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Almost everyone agrees that the Director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives. The Director was wrong to usurp the Attorney General’s authority on July 5, 2016, and announce his conclusion that the case should be closed without prosecution. It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement. At most, the Director should have said the FBI had completed its investigation and presented its findings to federal prosecutors.
The Director now defends his decision by asserting that he believed Attorney General Loretta had a conflict. But the FBI Director is never empowered to supplant federal prosecutors and assume command of the Justice Department. There is a well-established process for other officials to step in when a conflict requires the recusal of the Attorney General. On July 5, however, the Director announced his own conclusions about the nation’s most sensitive criminal investigation, without the authorization of duly appointed Justice Department leaders. Compounding the error, the Director ignored another longstanding principle: we do not hold press conferences to release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation. Derogatory information sometimes is disclosed in the course of criminal investigations and prosecutions, but we never release it gratuitously. The Director laid out his version of the facts for the news media as if it were a closing argument, but without a trial. It is a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do.
In response to sceptical questions at a congressional hearing, the Director defended his remarks by saying that his goal was to say what is true. What did we do, what did we find, what do we think about it. But the goal of a federal criminal investigation is not to announce our thoughts at a press conference. The goal is to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to justify a federal criminal prosecution, then allow a federal prosecutor who exercises authority delegated by the Attorney General to make a prosecutorial decision, and then if prosecution is warranted - let the judge and jury determine the facts. We sometimes release information about closed investigations in appropriate ways, but the FBI does not do it sua sponte.
Now this is not to say that Rosenstein believes it was correct to let Hillary off the hook. He doesn't take a position on that apart to say that it wasn't Comey's call, nor was it Comey's call to simply take the decision in-house at the FBI because he perceived then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch to have a conflict. There are protocols to follow in situations like that, and Comey didn't follow them.
The FBI does investigations. It gathers evidence and presents that evidence to prosecutors, who then decide what to do or not do with it.
Now, as you'll recall, we were very critical here of Comey's actions at the time. I suspected then, and still do, that Comey knew his bosses at the Justice Department wanted Hillary let off the hook, and that he outlined the evidence against her as a backdoor way of making it clear just how corrupt a decision this was.
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But Rosenstein is certainly correct that Comey violated every established protocol in doing so. Maybe Comey thought he would earn some appreciation from his new bosses in the Trump Administration because he was so forthcoming about the investigation of Hillary, even though the DOJ found an excuse to punt on the prosecution decision and Comey did what was expected of him and let her skate.
The problem is that Rosenstein is correct when he says this has caused mistrust of the FBI on a bipartisan basis. Democrats are angry that Comey talked about the nature of the investigation, which is understandable since you simply don't reveal that level of detail while an investigation is ongoing, and certainly not when a subject isn't charged. And Republicans are angry because Comey recommended that Hillary not be charged after he himself laid out the clear evidence that she had violated at least one felony statute.
By most accounts, Comey was a pretty good FBI director apart from this matter
By most accounts, Comey was a pretty good FBI director apart from this matter, so one might conclude that he became the latest victim of the sheer doom that awaits anyone and anything the Clintons touch.
Now, the left/Democrats/media want you to think the Hillary business was not the real reason, and that it was merely a cooked-up rationale for a president who really wanted Comey gone in order to slow down the Russia investigation. But that makes no sense. For one thing, the FBI agents conducting that investigation aren't going to stop their work because the director got fired. Jim Comey wasn't personally working the case. For another thing, many of the very people now decrying Comey's firing were calling for it not long ago, and Rosenstein did an excellent job of laying out how former Justice officials from both parties shared his assessment of Comey's actions in the Hillary case.
So if the rationale was merely concocted to conceal the real reason, it was about the most rock-solid concoction of all time. And if this really has to do with Trump fearing what's going to come out about Russia, how does that jibe with the admission even Democrats are making that the whole thing is so far shaping up to be a bunch of nothing?
I actually have a small degree of sympathy for Comey. I do think he's more political than he tries to appear, but he seems to want to do the right thing for the country and for the FBI whenever he can. Doing the right thing becomes very difficult whenever the Clintons get involved, and I don't think his bosses in the Obama Administration allowed him to do it, even if he wanted to.
At least he didn't end up dead. By the standards of people unfortunate enough to have the Clintons run across their paths, Comey got off easy.
