Trump's dismissal of Comey echoes Richard Nixon's infamous actions of 1973 — and it could lead to his downfall
Salon
As Mr. Rogers might have asked, “Can you spell coverup?”
FBI Director James Comey was leading the most important investigation into the Trump administration’s Russian connections. Now he’s been fired. Historians may come to call President Donald Trump’s move the “Tuesday Afternoon Massacre,” similar in many ways to Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre” in October 1973, which eventually led to his resignation.
Trump will get to handpick Comey’s replacement, who will surely ignore the Trump administration’s corruption, conflicts of interest and misuse of the White House to enrich the president and his family.
We now face a constitutional crisis. Will Trump get away with it? The growing demand for Congress to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Trump’s Russian ties, independent of his Department of Justice and next FBI director, suggests that the American people aren’t as stupid or gullible as he thinks.
It may have to wait until after November 2018. But if the Democrats take back the House — with the power to undertake an honest investigation of Trump’s Russian connections and conduct impeachment proceedings — Trump might wind up being the second president, after Nixon, to be forced from office.
Trump wants us to believe that he fired Comey for his handling (or mishandling) of Hillary Clinton’s emails. That is preposterous. Trump owes his election to Comey, whose comments during the campaign cast a shadow over Clinton. Until recently, Trump had praised Comey. What changed? Trump clearly sacked Comey because of his aggressive investigation of Trump’s Russian ties.
Mainstream media outlets may be obligated to let Trump provide his own justification for firing Comey, but so far they haven’t found any ordinary American willing to be quoted saying that he or she believes Trump’s explanation.
Trump’s official justification for telling Comey, “You’re fired” is the FBI director’s handling of the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails. On Tuesday the White House issued the following statement: “President Trump acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.”
Trump made public his letter to Comey stating that he “concur[s] with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau.” In the letter, Trump insisted that the firing was not related to the FBI’s current investigation of the ties to Russia of Trump’s campaign operatives and his White House advisers.
This is an obvious and blatant falsehood, but no major newspaper so far has used the word “lie” in a headline or story to describe Trump’s statement. The media’s failure to call his lie a lie is particularly troublesome because since Trump’s inauguration, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other major papers have, for the first time in modern memory, used that word to describe the president’s comments about the size of the inauguration crowd, the way “voter fraud” deprived him of a popular-vote majority and how Obama wiretapped Trump Tower.
Every political analyst who has sought to explain Trump’s victory has given considerable weight to Comey’s role in undermining Clinton’s presidential campaign by raising the specter that she had mishandled her private emails while she served as secretary of State, leading to a potential national security risk. Wittingly or unwittingly, Comey helped Trump defeat Clinton last November.
On July 5 in the middle of the presidential campaign, Comey took the unprecedented step of publicly announcing that Clinton had been “extremely careless” in using a private email address and server.
As The New York Times then reported, Comey “raised questions about her judgment, contradicted statements she has made about her email practices, said it was possible that hostile foreign governments had gained access to her account, and declared that a person still employed by the government — Mrs. Clinton left the State Department in 2013 — could have faced disciplinary action for doing what she did.”
Although Comey declined to recommend criminal charges against Clinton, his comments threw the Clinton campaign for a loop and gave Trump a powerful talking point to undermine Clinton’s credibility. From then on, his call to “lock her up” became a central theme of his campaign rallies.
Then on Oct. 28, just a week before the presidential election, Comey wrote a letter to Congress announcing that he was reopening the investigation of Clinton’s emails after investigators discovered additional emails on a computer belonging to former Rep. Anthony D. Weiner, the estranged husband of Clinton’s closest aide, Huma Abedin. In his letter, Comey said the FBI would review the emails to determine if they improperly contained classified information. Even though his FBI staff hadn’t even examined those emails, Comey nevertheless claimed that they “appear to be pertinent.”
At the time, Clinton was still leading Trump in most polls and most predictions of the Electoral College count, but Comey’s letter was the nail in the Clinton campaign’s coffin. It put Clinton on the defensive, allowed Trump to attack her with what appeared to be the FBI’s seal of approval and contributed to Trump’s victory.
On Nov. 6, two days before the election, Comey dropped another bombshell. He did an about-face, telling Congress that a review of the additional emails on Clinton’s server found no evidence of illegal activity and that Clinton should not face criminal charges.
But by then it was too late. The tide had irrevocably turned against Clinton.
Trump cast doubt on the FBI’s handling of the matter. At a rally that day in Michigan, he said, “You can’t review 650,000 new emails in eight days. You can’t do it, folks.” He added, “Hillary Clinton is guilty. She knows it, the FBI knows it, the people know it, and now it’s up to the American people to deliver justice at the ballot box on Nov. 8.”
The media reported and broadcast Trump’s bombastic comments, providing an echo chamber that diverted attention away from Clinton’s efforts to regain her momentum.
Almost every journalist, political scientist and political operative who has done an autopsy of the presidential contest has concluded that Comey’s Oct. 28 letter was the major turning point that doomed Clinton’s campaign. Clinton herself echoed that conclusion in a speech a week after the election. “There are lots of reasons why an election like this is not successful,” she said, adding that “our analysis is that Comey’s letter raising doubts that were groundless, baseless, proven to be, stopped our momentum.” Comey too has acknowledged his role. Last week he testified before Congress that he was “mildly nauseous” about influencing the outcome of the presidential election, although he stood by his actions.
