Democrats once blamed Comey; now they’re defending him

Comey, who was leading Trump-Russia investigation.

Clinton has partially blamed her loss on Comey’s disclosure to Congress less than two weeks before Election Day that the email investigation would be revisited.

The memo, submitted to President Donald Trump on Tuesday, strongly suggests that officials at the Justice Department felt Comey improperly assumed prerogatives that rightly belong to career prosecutors at DOJ, instigating a bureaucratic turf war that left department officials displeased.

The Trump administration, critics say, is trying to undermine the FBI’s investigation into allegations of collusion between Russian Federation and the Trump campaign, just as Nixon tried to stop lawmakers from learning the truth about his role in the Watergate scandal. Comey said that for a counterintelligence probe, “that’s a fairly short period of time”. “The first question the administration has to answer is, ‘Why now?'” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. “Were these investigations getting too close to home for the President?”

Senator Edward J. Markey, of MA said in a statement: “This episode is disturbingly reminiscent of the Saturday Night Massacre during the Watergate scandal and the national turmoil that it caused”. Many Democrats called for a special prosecutor and questioned whether the president was attempting to influence the investigation into possible collusion between his presidential campaign and Russian officials.

The former director for Nixon’s presidential library told the New York Times he would stop short at drawing parallels to the Watergate firing spree. If anything, Trump’s views go the other way: Comey didn’t go far enough in besmirching Clinton’s reputation. Interestingly, many of these are evident in Trump’s responses to questions about Russia’s covert involvement in US politics.

Comey’s firing was the latest and most significant White House-driven distraction from the Russian Federation investigations, which Trump has ridiculed and dismissed as a “hoax”.

Since Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the bureau’s Trump-Russia probe, Rosenstein has been in charge.

Comey acknowledged publicly in March that the FBI was looking into possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, and he said the investigation had begun in late July.

“You are hereby terminated and removed from the office, effective immediately”, Mr. Trump said in the letter.

“The FBI is one of our Nation’s most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement”, the president said in the statement. Warner said a pattern appears to be developing in the Trump administration.

He called Comey’s dismissal “shocking” and “deeply troubling”. The FBI in the interim will be led by Comey’s top deputy, Andrew McCabe. The only exception was President Bill Clinton, who fired William Sessions in 1993 after ethical issues were raised against him, and was accused of acting politically.

In one of his final acts as Federal Bureau of Investigation director, James Comey gave the keynote address Tuesday at a Jacksonville conference for law enforcement personnel.

Members of the Senate judiciary committee, including Graham, pressed Comey last week on his handling of the case surrounding Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

November 6: Trump criticizes Comey’s second letter to Congress, saying Clinton was being protected by a “rigged system” and pronouncing her “guilty”, despite the FBI’s conclusion that criminal charges were unwarranted.

Why did Trump wait 18 days before removing his national security adviser after urgent advice that Flynn could be “blackmailed”?

“Twilight zone”, Clinton’s campaign manager Robby Mook wrote on Twitter. “But this terrifies me”.