President Donald Trump fired James Comey just as the FBI director moved to expand and intensify the bureau’s counterintelligence investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and the possible collusion of Trump advisers in those efforts.

That development alone ought to give pause to Republicans inclined to go to the barricades for the president. But there’s more. The White House’s after-the-fact explanations of the Comey firing were inconsistent and internally contradictory—and even, at times, demonstrably untrue.