Why did President Trump fire James Comey? The initial explanation offered by the administration on Tuesday night was that the FBI director had mishandled the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server, dating back to a public appearance by Comey back in July 2016—10 months ago. It had nothing to do, the hastily assembled spokespeople for the White House said, with the FBI’s ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the election. And on Wednesday, Trump himself gave reporters a more straightforward reason. “He wasn’t doing a good job,” the president said. “Very simple. He wasn’t doing a good job.”
Reporting by the New York Times and the Washington Post suggests another story. Trump’s displeasure with Comey, who was first appointed to the job in 2013 by President Obama, had grown over the last weeks and months, reaching a tipping point last weekend. It began, the Times reports, after Comey told a congressional hearing in March that he had “no information” to show the Obama administration had ordered a wiretap of Trump or his associates during the campaign, something President Trump had earlier that month claimed.
And according to the Post, Trump’s frustration with Comey grew as the president perceived the FBI to be spending too much time investigating Russian interference with the 2016 election and not enough time on leaks to the media within the administration.
But the Wall Street Journal raises yet another explanation. The Journal reports that Comey and the FBI were digging deeper into the Russia investigation because what they were learning was concerning to the director:
Multiple news outlets reported Wednesday that last week Comey had requested additional funding and resources for the Russia investigation from his direct superior at the Department of Justice, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for the DOJ, described that reporting as “totally false.”
But it’s not simply the FBI’s investigation that’s heating up. On Wednesday, the Senate Intelligence committee issued a subpoena to former national security advisor Mike Flynn, ordering him to hand over documents to aid the committee’s own investigation into Russian interference in the election. Flynn was fired from his position in February for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of Flynn’s talks with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the transition. Meanwhile, federal prosecutors also issued subpoenas earlier this week to business associates of Flynn in relation to the Russia investigation.
This movement in the investigations into Russian interference—and the possibility that Trump associates were somehow involved—suggests there are more questions to be answered, more learning to be done. That’s the exact opposite of what Trump and his White House have been saying about the Russia story since the beginning of the week.
“The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax,” Trump said Monday on Twitter. “[W]hen will this taxpayer funded charade end?”
“It’s time to move on,” exhorted deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on cable news Tuesday night.
Perhaps the truth is that Trump believed Comey had been insufficiently carrying out the duties of his office and needed to be relieved—it’s certainly within the president’s right and the law to fire the FBI director at will. And perhaps, as a source close to the president suggests, Trump had an extensive and growing list of reasons to fire Comey.
But the president and his aides defending the firing of Comey in one breath and insisting the FBI end its investigation into Russian interference in the next doesn’t inspire confidence in the administration’s word on this matter. Perhaps the simplest explanation for the firing—that Comey’s ramped-up investigation was causing Trump too much headache—is the best one.
