President Donald Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James B. Comey is huge news.
It came without warning, and it happened amid the FBI’s investigation of Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election, of which Comey was in charge.
This feels like uncharted territory, and the White House has a lot of explaining to do.
It would behoove the press, then, to tread lightly; to speak carefully and to make sure all the facts are in before commenting. With a story this big, there’s no room for mucking things up with bogus information and hyperbole.
In other words, it’d be wise to avoid the sort of hyperventilating, over-the-top reaction that the New York Times editorial board had this week to news of Comey’s abrupt firing.
“The country has reached an even more perilous moment than what it saw during Watergate,” the Times declared this week on social media, an idea it spelled out in an editorial.
That seems like a stretch, but let’s hear the Times out:
The obvious historical parallel to Mr. Trump’s action was the so-called Saturday Night Massacre in October 1973, when President Richard Nixon ordered the firing of the special prosecutor investigating Watergate, prompting the principled resignations of the attorney general and his deputy. But now, there is no special prosecutor in place to determine whether the public trust has been violated, and whether the presidency was effectively stolen by a hostile foreign power. For that reason, the country has reached an even more perilous moment.
Even allowing the paper room to make that weighty comparison, there is another problem with the editorial. Namely, that the paper claimed without any proof that Comey was let go because he was heading the investigation into Russia’s election-year interference.
“Mr. Comey was fired because he was leading an active investigation that could bring down a president,” the editorial board said. All that’s missing from the piece is any evidence to back this very serious claim.
The only explanation provided thus far for Comey’s firing comes from the White House, which maintained this week the former director was let go because of how he had mishandled the case against Hillary Clinton for her use of an unauthorized email server when she served as secretary of state. This seems somewhat unbelievable considering all the praise the Trump people heaped on Comey in October of that same year.
Whether the White House’s stated rationale for his firing is true or not is yet to be determined. The point is this: The Times has no evidence of the real motivation behind the Comey pink slip, and its editorial board is getting ahead of itself by making unfounded assertions regarding this very big, and likely very consequential, story.
The best and surest way to get answers on what the hell is going on in the White House is to stick to the facts. Offering conjecture and theory as fact does no one any favors. While we’re at it, let’s dial back the hyperbole just a bit, too.
