The Wall Street Journal editorial board, right-leaning but frequently critical of Donald Trump, said the president was right to terminate FBI Director James Comey.
The paper had called for Comey to resign before Trump was sworn into office and the Journal said Tuesday night, after the White House announced it had fired him, that he has become too political.
“The reality is that Mr. Comey has always been most concerned with the politics of his own reputation,” said the Journal. “He styles himself as the last honest man in Washington as he has dangled insinuations across his career about the George W. Bush White House and surveillance, then Mrs. Clinton and emails, and now Mr. Trump and Russia. He is political in precisely the way we don’t want a leader of America’s premier law-enforcement agency to behave.”
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was officially the one to first recommend Comey’s termination on Tuesday, citing Comey’s public statements and actions on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email controversy and alleged ties between Trump associates and Russia.
Since last summer, Comey has been under scrutiny from both Democrats and Republicans for taking unusual steps in public acknowledging investigations into Clinton and then Trump.
Congressional Republican and Democrats now, however, are criticizing the White House for firing Comey after he said he was investigating Trump associates.
