Given the hullabaloo over President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, perhaps it’s best to start this post with a silly joke.
I’ll let Scott Adams of Dilbert fame provide it. After all, he’s a professional:
What do Bernie Sanders’ hair and CNN have in common today? They are both saying, “Comey” every time you look at them.
I feel better already!
Both Republicans and Democrats hated Comey, albeit for different reasons. Republicans were appalled when Comey publicly cleared Hillary Clinton, on dubious legal grounds and inconsistently with DoJ/FBI procedures, of charges that she obstructed justice when the FBI investigated her using a personal server for her State Department email. Democrats called for Comey’s head after he re-opened that investigation weeks before the general election, only to close it days for before it.
In fact, Lifezette reports that a reporter reminded Senator Chuck Schumer of his earlier call for Comey to be fired at a press conference yesterday:
“Sen. Schumer, you told me last year before the election that you lost confidence in Jim Comey because of how he handled the email scandal,” one reporter said. “Do you think that the president’s explanation … has credibility?”
“I never called on the president to fire Director Comey,” said Schumer.
Schumer then said Trump should have fired Comey earlier in his young presidency if he had some of the same concerns as Democrats.
It was a clever ploy. But it cannot hide the fact that Democrats have hated Comey for months. Many blame Comey for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s losing the election. Comey famously released a letter to Congress just before the Nov. 8 election indicating that he was reopening an investigation into how Clinton handled classified emails.
Comey, being Comey, closed the new investigation in record time, ending the investigation two days before Election Day and enraging Republicans by publicly declaring he still would not recommend charges against Clinton.
Schumer indicated Comey’s handling of the matter was a deal-breaker.
“I do not have confidence in him any longer,” Schumer said of Comey on Nov. 2.
However, because the wrong president fired Comey, we are now in the midst of a constitutional crisis. Or something like that.
As Reason’s Jacob Sullum reports:
“We are in a full-fledged constitutional crisis,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) declared on Twitter last night after hearing that Donald Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey. New York Times columnist David Leonhardt agreed. So did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), although Blumenthal described the crisis as “looming” rather than “full-fledged.”
Yet Sullum points out the obvious; the president has clear authority to fire the FBI Director for whatever reason:
“Under the Constitution,” notes South Texas College of Law professor Josh Blackman, “the president has the absolute power to fire principal officers, such as Director Comey, at will. In that sense, Trump’s actions were entirely constitutional.”
(By the way, I love it that Democrats were silent when Obama attacked Libya without congressional authorization, thus creating the current refugee crisis in Europe, or don’t see an issue with the TSA routinely violating American’s fourth amendment rights who happen to fly, but become butthurt when a non-Democratic president fires someone.)
Meanwhile, Stephen Colbert found it necessary last night to reeducate the sheep known as the Democratic electorate on how to react to the firing:
Tuesday during the taping of CBS’s “The Late Show,” host Stephen Colbert announced the news that FBI Director James Comey had been fired by President Donald Trump.
Colbert’s left-leaning audience cheered.
Colbert reacted by saying, “Huge, huge Donald Trump fans here tonight.”
However, we now come to the core question, why did Trump fire Comey?
While Scott Adams argues that this was a strong move on Trump’s part that exhibits “some ballsy Presidenting”, such a move only works when we know what Trump is trying to achieve. And if there’s anything that Trump has demonstrated since becoming president (**cough** Syria **cough**), he can change his mind in an instant in terms of what he wants to do.
Sure, folks like Susan Rice, Loretta Lynch, and even Hillary Clinton should be feeling more nervous today than they did yesterday. But is Trump really focusing on sending them to jail? Who the hell knows? Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, thinks that Trump most likely fired Comey because he neither liked nor trusted him. Given what we know, that’s as good as an explanation as any other.
While the political world explodes in morally indignant outrage, I’m going to wait to see what Trump actually does before reacting.
In the meantime, I’m going to find some more silly jokes.
UPDATE: Roger Stone gives Alex Jones his take on Trump firing Comey.
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