I have mixed feelings about the surprise firing
of FBI director James Comey. On the one hand, Comey always struck me as an
honorable man, trying to do what he thought was right—whether that meant
deciding not to pursue charges against Hillary Clinton with regard to the email
investigation, reopening that investigation days before the general election, or
pursuing a separate investigation of Russian election tampering. On the other,
however, there is little question that his decision not to indict Clinton was
politically motivated, a favor he would not have granted to any person not
named Hillary Clinton who had handled classified information in an identical
way, and his continued tenure at the FBI only served to deepen the
politicization of the department.
That being said, Trump’s true mistake in
handling the Comey affair was not the decision he reached—to remove Comey from
office—but the way he implemented that decision. When news broke, it apparently
caught everyone off guard, even staffers at the FBI and in the White House.
Comey himself was speaking at an FBI office in California, and learned about his
firing from watching TV.
There was no advance notice, or even a hint that this was coming. How would you
like to be let go from your job in such a way?
Maybe the firing was deserved; maybe
not. I’ll leave that to others to debate, although in personnel matters like
this one, I’m inclined to give the president some benefit of the doubt. But the
manner in which the decision was executed was stupid, ill-advised, and
unnecessary, and Trump will likely pay a political price for it.
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