WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey late Tuesday on the recommendation of the attorney general and his top aide, who cited the bureau’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails last year.
“Today, President Donald J. Trump informed FBI Director James Comey that he has been terminated and removed from office,” according to a White House statement. “President Trump acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.”
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Comey, who has led an investigation into Russia’s meddling during the 2016 election and possible links to Trump aides and associates, is only the second FBI chief to have been fired. Then-President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno dismissed William Sessions in 1993.
The White House made no mention of the Russia probe in announcing Trump’s decision. Instead, it focused on Comey’s handling of the Clinton investigation last year.
Comey, 56, was vilified by Republicans last summer when he initially closed the investigation into Clinton’s email use, saying that she and her aides were “extremely careless” in their handling of classified information but that no prosecutor would be able to bring charges.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, in a separate memo circulated by the White House on Tuesday, faulted Comey for his move, saying he “was wrong to usurp the Attorney General’s authority on July 5, 2016, and announce his conclusion that the case should be closed without prosecution,” Rosenstein said. “It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement.”
The startling move came less than a week after the FBI chief defended his decision to reveal that the agency was restarting its probe into Clinton’s email use just days before last year’s election. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee May 3 that the decision was difficult and that it “makes me mildly nauseous to think we might have had some impact on the election.”
Yet, he added, he’d do it all again.
