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President Trump Dismisses FBI Director Comey

washingtonpost.com

151–160 of 329 posts

Re: President Trump Dismisses FBI Director Comey

#151
Everyone should read the letter that the Deputy Attorney General wrote to the Attorney General in recommending that Comey be fired. It's brutal: http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/politics/fbi-dire...

This and Comey's recent misstatements to Congress about Huma Abedin forwarding sensitive emails to Anthony Weiner are alone grounds for Trump to fire Comey. Whether Trump had other motives... I mean, who knows? It's all speculation.

Re: President Trump Dismisses FBI Director Comey

#152

Can someone clarify if comey is pro trump or not?

Comey is a boy scout. He is righteous man for better or worse, has conservative leanings, but he is considered an honorable man especially for his actions during Ashcroft's hospitalization

That is a good way of putting it. I believe he felt required by the obligations of the office to say something about the discovery of the email on Weiner's computer, and I tend to agree, even though I am not in any way a Trump supporter. It was my opinion from the time Clinton's clandestine email server was revealed that she was not viable as a candidate on account of it, and if Comey's statement was as instrumental as many of her supporters claim, then that hunch proved correct (though I am not sure, myself, whether the statement was decisive.)

Re: President Trump Dismisses FBI Director Comey

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point Trump is looking more and more like Nixon on fast-forward.

And I'm guessing he's going to freely get away with much more than anything Nixon did. Thanks to the GOP who doesn't care about any abuses coming out of the White House because they want to get tax cuts for their millionaire friends they are allowing the integrity of our systems to erode.

At some point you simply make too many enemies.

Dems already hate him and this removal continues his conflict with the traditional GOP.

He's either gonna cross the wrong person or be so unpopular that he's gone in a few more years and nobody will care.

Re: President Trump Dismisses FBI Director Comey

#154
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence, told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Monday that he still has not seen any evidence of any kind of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian foreign nationals. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-N.C., asked if Clapper's prior statement was correct, when he said on NBC that there was "no evidence' of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials.…

Why does he use language like "We did not include any evidence in our report"? Does this imply that there was evidence and he did not include it?

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Re: President Trump Dismisses FBI Director Comey

#155
post #63

This is going to make an amazing movie in a decade or two.

Oh it'll spawn a whole genre. Having written several scripts myself I've naturally been fascinated by the political machinations going on over the last couple of years, but the #1 difficulty (besides the constant flow of new events that Change Everything) is the sheer outlandishness of it all. I guarantee you that if I had a time machine and went back two or three years into the past with a hot script, virtually everyone in Hollywood would shake their heads and say 'too many unlikely plot twists, nobody would buy this, go take more writing classes until you understand causality, pacing, motivation, character arcs, and real life, kiddo.'

A common refrain among both my movie biz friends and political scientist friends these days is 'I'm living in a fucking cartoon.' Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. At this point Rick and Morty comes off as a bit unimaginative.

Re: President Trump Dismisses FBI Director Comey

#156

I'm pretty sure the customary reply from the MAGA camp will be that these are all political appointees, and serve at the President's pleasure. All that is formally true. But it doesn't make it any less uncanny that such a person would be fired at the very moment he ramps up an investigation into Trump's business activities.

[deleted]

Re: President Trump Dismisses FBI Director Comey

#157
post #4

"Trump just fired the man leading a counterintelligence investigation into his campaign, on the same day that the Senate Intelligence commitee requested financial documents relating to Trump's business dealings from the treasury department that handles money laundering." -Comment from reddit that sums up how strange this is.

The man at the FBI leading the investigation into the Trump / Russia connection was fired upon recommendation from Sessions who said he was recusing himself from all Russia / Trump investigations. Looking corrupt as hell? Most certainly.

To be clear, Sessions said he concurred in the recommendation of his deputy Rothstein, who is a life-long prosecutor. Plus, virtually every former Attorney General agreed that Comey made a terrible mistake in announcing the results of the Clinton investigation.

Re: President Trump Dismisses FBI Director Comey

#158
post #16
post #4

"Trump just fired the man leading a counterintelligence investigation into his campaign, on the same day that the Senate Intelligence commitee requested financial documents relating to Trump's business dealings from the treasury department that handles money laundering." -Comment from reddit that sums up how strange this is.

Yeah, that was one of my first thoughts about this. I have no love lost for Comey but there's a huge conflict of interest here with Trump and I think the reasons for Trump firing Comey are not the reasons I would want him fired. Comey was doing a balancing act, playing one constituency against another. It seems like Trump is purging everyone who might provide any level of oversight whatsoever.

Had you or I or virtually anyone else done what Hillary did, we'd be in jail.

Re: President Trump Dismisses FBI Director Comey

#159
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As civil service, he can only be fired for cause. I'm not clear on what "for cause" means for an acting director of the FBI. Wasn't the justification for firing Comey that he mishandled the Clinton email investigation? It looks blown out of proportion to me, but that might count as cause.

The political heads can be fired by the president at-will. I believe the parent is incorrect in that if he becomes the head, he can be fired for-cause. I also believe this is only if it he is appointed head, not if he is just acting-head.

Trump has asked Congress for the authority to arbitrarily fire civil service employees, but Congress hasn't given it to him.[1] There's a formal process, with appeals, for Federal employees. The FBI's process is unusual, in that they're not under the Merit System Protection Board, but it's a formal process with hearings and warnings.

[1] http://www.latimes.com/nation/na-la-fbi-deputy-director-2016...

Re: President Trump Dismisses FBI Director Comey

#160
post #103

Flashbacks to Nixon's downfall.

None of the safety guards that caused Nixon to get knocked down after the Saturday Night Massacre are functioning right now. The AG is a loyalist, the House and Senate are in his pocket (and appear to be intentionally sandbagging their own investigations).

Title 28 (CFR), Chapter VI, Part 600

Specific allegations of criminal behavior by the President require a special prosecutor, or they require a finding of no merit. As Sessions has already recused himself, the deputy AG makes the finding. All very publicly.

The only thing missing here, as compared to Nixon or Clinton, is specific allegations. Its been under investigation since July 2016 without any specific allegations against the President.

Not to say associated may not be indicted. I suspect Flynn is going to serve jail time.

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