THE COMEY FIRING DAY FOUR: THE BEAT GOES ON.

Donald Trump walks across the South Lawn at the White House. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Is Trump taping conversations at the White House?

Friday morning, President Trump took to Twitter to launch a series of bizarre complaints — beginning with the allegation that the entire Russia issue was fabricated, veering into threats to cancel the White House press briefing, and culminating with a claim that he had secret “tapes” of his conversations with fired FBI Director James Comey.

All in all, it was a worrying series of statements from the president at a time of national crisis.

The White House later refused to say whether the president tapes his visitors.

• Comey, for one, probably does hope there are tapes, a source close to him told NBC. [Katy Turner / Twitter]

In White House Press Briefings, No Degree of Accuracy Required

By JIM RUTENBERG

President Trump has given his press team a “say anything” hall pass, leaving many to wonder what happens to a nation once a president drops even the pretense of accuracy.

WASHINGTON POST




-- Irate about the wall-to-wall coverage of the contradictions and inconsistencies in his and his staff’s evolving statements, the president also threatened this morning to cancel the daily press briefings: 



The biggest news out of Donald Trump’s Thursday interview with NBC was his confession that the Russia investigation was on his mind when he fired FBI director James Comey. Undercutting 48 hours of denials by his aides, the president said: “In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.’”

 Legal experts and DOJ veterans, meanwhile, express doubts about Trump’s account of his conversation with Comey, Devlin Barrett and Philip Rucker report on the front page of The Post. “I just can’t even begin to think about that comment being true,” said Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland who previously worked in the Justice Department. “It defies belief in general because of the practices of not commenting on investigations, and it would especially defy belief in the case of Comey, who prides himself on strict observance of propriety.” Greenberger noted....

...a senior FBI official also said Comey would never have told the president he was not under investigation. "He tried to stay away from it [the Russian-ties investigation]," the official, who worked closely with Comey and keeps in touch with him, per Ken Dilanian and Pete Williams. "He would say, 'Look sir, I really can't get into it, and you don't want me to.'"


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Trump’s tweets this morning will dramatically ratchet up the pressure on Comey to testify before Congress so that he can sort all this out, as well as clear his name. If he does not rebut the president’s version of events, Comey’s legacy will suffer. Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) have invited Comey to address the Senate Intelligence Committee next Tuesday, but he still has not responded.  [ P.S.: Comey will not appear in a closed session before the Senate Intelligence Committee... Warner announced that Comey would not be appearing before his panel in an interview on MSNBC Friday--Politico

-- Even if Comey said what Trump claims, Eugene Robinson notes that typical investigative procedure is to start at the bottom of an organization and work your way up: “‘You are not under investigation’ does not mean ‘you will never be under investigation.’”

-- There’s another question also worth considering: If the focus of an investigation asks an FBI agent whether he or she is under investigation, does the agent have to tell the truth? “I was a criminal investigator for years, and if someone had asked me if they were under investigation and they were under investigation, I would have said no,” Dana Ridenour, who spent 21 years with the FBI as a special agent, told Philip Bump. The reason was simple: She wouldn’t want to tip off the target of the investigation. “As a criminal investigator,” she said, “I don’t know of any reason I would have to disclose to somebody that they were under investigation.”

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Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe prepares to testify during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats on Thursday.

Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images

 ...testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday, acting FBI director Andrew McCabe directly rejected the White House’s characterization of the Russian probe as a low priority and delivered a passionate defense of Comey. From Matt Zapotosky and Karoun Demirjian: “McCabe, who had been the No. 2 official in the FBI until President Trump fired Comey this week, said that the bureau considered the probe of possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump team during the 2016 election campaign a ‘highly significant investigation’

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-- This story is likely to dominate the news at least through next week.

• ... Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — whose pre-Comey reputation as an apolitical straight shooter has been seriously tarnished, at the very least, since he wrote the memo initially used to justify the FBI director’s firing — is going to brief the full Senate next week. It may not surprise you that Senate Democrats have a lot of questions for him. [Washington Post / Ed O’Keefe and Paul Kane]

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-- Trump’s admission that the Russia investigation weighed heavily on his deliberations about firing Comey will also create new headaches for Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions, who admittedly consulted with the president as he made the decision, recused himself from the Russia probe and all matters relating to the 2016 campaign, including the investigation into Clinton’s server.

“Refusing to recuse oneself from a conflict or breaking the promise to recuse from a conflict is a serious breach of legal ethics,” conservative Post blogger Jennifer Rubin writes.

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Michael Gerson, a former top speechwriter for George W. Bush, writes in his column that “all of this is consistent with — even mandated by — Trump’s contempt for institutions”: “This was always the main question: Would President Trump go beyond mere Twitter abuse and move against institutions that limit his power? By any reasonable standard, we now have an answer. … He has called the FBI investigation process ‘rigged.’ If the system is dirty, only a fool would not play by the same rules. This is the logic of conspiratorial disdain for government. An independent, nonpolitical FBI? What a joke. It is all political. And politics is power. And power is making people do what you want, or destroying those who get in your way. The gospel according to Nixon…

“It is dangerous to have a leader with disdain for the law. It is also dangerous to have a leader who believes that anything legal is permissible,” Gerson adds. “Trump’s firing of Comey was legal. It also violated a democratic norm — a proper presidential deference for an ongoing investigation and the independence of law enforcement. There is no evidence that such considerations even occur to Trump. In their place: What kind of sucker would not press all his advantages? ...

- Charles Krauthammer thinks Comey probably needed to go, but the conservative columnist believes Trump could easily have arranged for him to gracefully step aside: “Instead we got this — a political ax murder, brutal even by Washington standards....If Trump thought this would kill the (Russia) inquiry and the story, or perhaps even just derail it somewhat, he’s made the blunder of the decade. Whacking Comey has brought more critical attention to the Russia story than anything imaginable. … So why did he do it? Now we know: The king asked whether no one would rid him of this troublesome priest, and got so impatient he did it himself.”

 A few hours after Trump fired Comey, a prominent Republican politician gave David Ignatius this blunt assessment....The Trump presidency is a test. We’ll find out how strong our institutions are and, even more, whether this generation of leaders is worthy of our Founding Fathers. So far, the evidence is mixed.”

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 Inside the West Wing, the mood right now is dour. From Politico: “Several White House officials said aides who didn’t need to see the president stayed away from the Oval Office — and kept their doors closed. … Trump did the lengthy interview with Holt even though some on his staff believed it was a bad idea and gave his answers off-the-cuff. One person who spoke to him said he’d been ‘fixated’ on his news coverage and believed his press team was failing him and that he needed ‘to take the situation into his own hands.’ …

“The episode highlights two fundamental issues of the Trump presidency: It is often impossible to work for Trump in the White House — and it is often impossible for Trump to be happy with those who work for him. ...

“Another White House official said there is a ‘widespread recognition this was handled terribly but not a real sense that we can do much here.

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• Trump's lawyers say he received no income from Russia in the past decade, but added the now widely mocked caveat "with a few exceptions." 

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NEW YORK  has updated its great summary of the last three days that shook the nation: 

28 Reasons Trump’s Firing of James Comey Is a World-Historic Shit Show

28 Reasons Trump’s Firing of James Comey Is a World-Historic Shit Show

NEW YORK

Sense of Crisis Deepens as Trump Defends Firing Comey

• VOX
• It’s day three of the fallout from President Donald Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey.
• A quick summary of the chaos: Trump originally said he fired Comey due to his poor handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. But not many people, particularly on the left, buy this — they think Trump fired Comey to stifle the FBI’s investigation into possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign. [Vox / Andrew Prokop] 
• The White House repeatedly insisted that Trump fired Comey strictly upon the recommendation of the US Department of Justice. Specifically, that Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told Trump to fire Comey. [CBS News / Jacqueline Alemany] 
• But Trump has now admitted that he wanted to fire Comey all along, telling Lester Holt at NBC News, “I was going to fire regardless of recommendation.” [NBC Nightly News] 
• And then Trump dropped a bombshell, essentially admitting that Russia was on his mind when he fired Comey: “[W]hen I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.” [NBC News / Bradd Jaffy]
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• The danger from Trump isn’t an authoritarian plot. It’s his instincts.

• From  [Erica Chenoweth to Vox / Zack Beauchamp] :
• The issue isn’t so much a premeditated anti-democratic plot as it is the result of repeated collisions between a leader who wants to do whatever they want and a democratic system that won’t let them do it.

  In well-functioning democracies, leaders don’t do things like that. Not because they can’t in legal terms ...but because they think it’s wrong to. They believe there are certain steps that, while they would enhance one’s own power, simply shouldn’t be taken because they undermine the long-term health of democracy.
• This looks particularly bad for Deputy AG Rosenstein, who until this week was widely received with bipartisan praise for some of his previous work as a federal prosecutor. [Vox / Dara Lind] 
• Now, though, there are questions about whether Rosenstein will quit — and he’s meeting with the Senate Intelligence Committee. [Politico / Ali Watkins] 

Deputy AG Rosenstein     The Washington Post / Getty

• By the way, in the midst of all of this chaos, Trump signed an executive order creating a new commission to study voter fraud. Trump claims “millions” of illegal votes cost him the popular vote in 2016, but multiple studies have found that voter fraud is, in fact, rare to nonexistent in the US. [Vox / German Lopez​] 

WASHINGTON POST

 Stipulating that they can withstand pressure for a special prosecutor, there are already strong indications that the fallout from firing Comey will make it harder to put points on the board:

• “This scandal is going to go on,” McCain told a group of security experts after the Comey news broke. “This is a centipede. I guarantee you there will be more shoes to drop. I can just guarantee it. There’s just too much information that we don’t have that will be coming out.” (Josh Rogin got permission from the Arizona senator to let him public comments that were initially made off-the-record.)
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• “The only thing that is guaranteed right now is that the sense of chaos will continue, not only in law enforcement but also in Congress,” GOP strategist Kevin Madden, a veteran of Capitol Hill and the Justice Department, tells Karen Tumulty. “Every single lawmaker in the House and Senate is going to be pressured to take a stance.”
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• “Comprehensive tax reform just got an awful lot harder, as did nearly every other challenge facing the nation, both foreign and domestic: infrastructure, health care, immigration, trade and others,” Michael Bloomberg argues in an op-ed for his eponymous news organization.
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• Comey’s termination has prompted some Republican rank-and-file to show additional independence:
  • House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who is leaving Congress, asked the DOJ Inspector in a letter last night to investigate why Comey was fired.
  
  
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  • The Senate Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena yesterday to force former national security adviser Michael Flynn to turn over documents related to the panel’s probe. “It is the first subpoena the committee has announced in the course of its Russia investigation — a step Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) was long reluctant to take,” Karoun Demirjian reports. “But the chairman began signaling this week that if Trump surrogates did not turn over requested materials to the committee by Tuesday — a deadline that some missed — he and Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) might begin issuing subpoenas. ‘Everything has been voluntary up to this point, and we’ve interviewed a lot of people, and I want to continue to do it in a voluntary fashion,’ Burr said. ‘But if in fact the production of things that we need are not provided, then we have a host of tools.’”
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• To press for a special prosecutor, Senate Democrats plan to begin slowing down the process of confirming lower-level nominees. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) put a hold yesterday on Sigal Mandelker, a Trump nominee for the Treasury Department. Wyden said he would maintain the hold until the agency provides lawmakers with more documents related to Russia and its dealings with Trump. Republicans can override Wyden, but it will eat up valuable floor time. (Don’t forget: Democrats will use the tax reform debate to score more points against Trump for refusing to release his tax returns.)
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• As another form of protest, Democrats forced the postponement of some committee hearings yesterday.

What Was Trump Thinking?

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• "Every time Comey appeared in public, an ever-watchful Trump grew increasingly agitated that the topic was the one that he was most desperate to avoid: Russia. Comey, Trump figured, was using the Russia probe to become a martyr. He had long questioned the FBI director’s judgment, and was infuriated by what he saw as a lack of action in recent weeks on leaks from within the federal government. By last weekend, he had made up his mind: Comey had to go.
  “Back at work Monday morning in Washington, Trump told Vice President Pence and several senior aides -- Reince Priebus, Stephen K. Bannon and Donald McGahn, among others -- that he was ready to move on Comey. First, though, he wanted to talk with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his trusted confidant, and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, to whom Comey reported directly. Trump summoned the two of them to the White House for a meeting … The president already had decided to fire Comey … But in the meeting, several White House officials said Trump gave Sessions and Rosenstein a directive: to explain in writing the case against Comey. The pair quickly fulfilled the boss’s orders, and the next day Trump fired Comey…
  “ROSENSTEIN THREATENED TO RESIGN after the narrative emerging from the White House on Tuesdayevening cast him as a prime mover of the decision to fire Comey and that the president acted only on his recommendation...

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  Mr. Trump initially discussed his decision to fire Mr. Comey with a close circle, including Jared Kushner, left. Stephen K. Bannon, center, questioned whether the time was right, and Reince Priebus, center right, mulled similar concerns at one point but was supportive. CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

“Within the West Wing, there was little apparent dissent over the president’s decision to fire Comey, according to the accounts of several White House officials. McGahn, the White House counsel, and Priebus, the chief of staff, walked Trump through how the dismissal would work … Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, and her husband, Jared Kushner -- both of whom work in the White House -- have frequently tried to blunt Trump’s riskier impulses but did not intervene to try to persuade him against firing Comey.”

The FBI’s probe was occupying more and more of Comey’s time in the weeks before he got fired. “Mr. Comey started receiving daily instead of weekly updates on the investigation, beginning at least three weeks ago,” the Wall Street Journal’s Shane Harris and Carol E. Lee report. “Mr. Comey was concerned by information showing possible evidence of collusion..."

-- Trump’s anger reached a boiling point when Comey refused to preview for top Trump aides his planned testimony before a Senate panel last week.

 From Reuters’ Steve Holland and Jeff Mason: “Trump, Sessions and Rosenstein had wanted a heads-up from Comey about what he would say at a May 3 hearing about his handling of an investigation into [Clinton's] use of a private email server. When Comey refused, Trump and his aides considered that an act of insubordination … A former Trump adviser said Trump was also angry because Comey had never offered a public exoneration of Trump in the FBI probe into contacts between the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Sergei Kislyak, and Trump campaign advisers last year.” One adviser said Comey’s Senate testimony on Clinton reinforced in Trump’s mind that “Comey was against him.” "He regretted what he did to Hillary but not what he did to Trump," A former adviser added.

-- Another turning point: Relations between Trump and Comey began to deteriorate significantly after Trump accused Obama of wiretapping him. From the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, Glenn Thrush, Michael S. Schmidt and Peter Baker: “[Comey] was flabbergasted. The president, he told associates, was ‘outside the realm of normal,’ even ‘crazy.’ For his part, Mr. Trump fumed when Mr. Comey publicly dismissed the sensational wiretapping claim. In the weeks that followed, he grew angrier and began talking about firing Mr. Comey. After stewing last weekend while watching Sunday talk shows at his New Jersey golf resort, Mr. Trump decided it was time. There was ‘something wrong with’ Mr. Comey, he told aides. … To a president obsessed with loyalty, Mr. Comey was a rogue operator who could not be trusted … To a lawman obsessed with independence, Mr. Trump was the ultimate loose cannon, making irresponsible claims on Twitter and jeopardizing the bureau’s credibility. (But) Mr. Comey’s fate was sealed by his latest testimony … Mr. Trump burned as he watched, convinced that Mr. Comey was grandstanding. He was particularly irked when Mr. Comey said he was ‘mildly nauseous’ to think that his handling of the email case had influenced the election, which Mr. Trump took to demean his own role in history.”

At a private dinner just after Mr. Trump took office, the NY Times reports Mr. Comey demurred when asked to pledge his loyalty. Associates say Mr. Comey now believes it ultimately played a part in his dismissal.

-- A source close to Comey told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he got fired for two reasons: He declined to provide Trump with any assurances of personal loyalty, and the FBI's investigation into possible Trump team collusion with Russia in the 2016 election was accelerating quickly.

-- White House lawyers have had to “repeatedly” warn the president against reaching out to Flynn as he is being investigated, cautioning him that direct contact with his former national security adviser  could be seen as “witness tampering,” the Daily Beast reports: “Trump, angered by press coverage of the Russia investigation and Gen. Flynn, has asked senior staff and the White House counsel’s office multiple times if it was appropriate to reach out … A White House staffer also stressed Trump’s personal affinity for his former aide. The president ‘clearly feels bad about how things went down,’ the staffer said.”

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ELIZABETH BROCKWAY/THE DAILY BEAST

INSIDE THE FBI:

-- Many employees were furious yesterday about the firing (some others were fearful). There was agreement that the circumstances of his dismissal did more damage to the bureau's independence than anything Comey did in his three-plus years in the job. From The Post's DOJ beat reporters: "One intelligence official who works on Russian espionage matters said they were more determined than ever to pursue such cases. Another said Comey’s firing and the subsequent comments from the White House are ‘attacks’ that won’t soon be forgotten. Trump had ‘essentially declared war on a lot of people at the FBI,’ one official said. ‘I think there will be a concerted effort to respond over time in kind.’”

THREE BIG QUESTIONS WE STILL HAVEN’T GOTTEN ANSWERS TO, from The Post’s lead story:

The White House said Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy Rod Rosenstein urged the president in a closed-door meeting Monday to fire FBI Director James Comey. | Getty

1. “Why was Sessions involved in discussions about the fate of the man leading the FBI’s Russia investigation, after having recused himself from the probe because he had falsely denied under oath his own past communications with the Russian ambassador?” (Politico’s Eliana Johnson reports that Trump has brought Sessions back into his inner circle recently after being angry at him for weeks when he recused himself.)

2. “Why had Trump discussed the Russia probe with the FBI director three times, as he claimed in his letter dismissing Comey, which could have been a violation of Justice Department policies that ongoing investigations generally are not to be discussed with White House officials?” (Glenn Kessler explores this question more.)

“How much was the timing of Trump’s decision shaped by events spiraling out of his control — such as Monday’stestimony about Russian interference by former acting attorney general Sally Yates, or the fact that Comey last week requested more resources from the Justice Department to expand the FBI’s Russia probe?”

(Ron Sachs/Pool/Getty Images)

SMART ANALYSIS OFF THE COMEY NEWS:

-- "Why Trump expected only applause when he told Comey, 'You're fired,'" by Marc Fisher:...."In moments of crisis, presidents tend to revert to the traits that got them to the pinnacle. Nixon, stubborn and righteous, dug in as the Watergate morass deepened. Bill Clinton faced his crises by flitting from anger and denial to deeply personal confessionals. … That’s never been Trump’s style. Throughout his business career, and now in the presidency, he has proudly lived by simple mottos: Never look back. No regrets. When you’re hit, hit back 100 times harder. At his darkest moments, such as when Trump faced financial ruin and a very public battle over his divorce, some business associates wondered how he managed to come to work each morning. But Trump showed no signs of distress: He ‘showed up every morning at 8 a.m.,’ one of his top executives said, ‘tie tied, suit pressed, focused and moving forward.’ His family coat of arms, a regal symbol featuring a lion and a knight’s helmet, carries this Latin motto: ‘Numquam Concedere.’ ‘Never Concede.’"

-- “That Trump believed he could fire the person leading law enforcement’s Russia investigation without a meaningful response from another branch of government is a sign of his unfamiliarity with the separation of powers, and, most perilous to himself, an enduring notion of impunity,” The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos writes. “Before entering the White House, Trump operated by a principle that, as he put it in a moment of ‘locker room’ candor, ‘When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.’ The Constitution disagrees, and, by firing Comey and making a baldly contestable claim to his motives, Trump has invited a new investigation into why he took that step, how he described his reasoning, and whether it represents an abuse of office.”

HOW VOTERS ARE REACTING:

-- Disapproval for the president reached its highest level yet, according to a Quinnipiac Poll that was in the field before Comey was fired. His favorable rating fell to an all-time low of 35 percent. He also sank to record lows on a number of characteristics such as temperament, values, and honesty. 

• -- “‘I wish he’d quit tweeting’: Many Trump backers say it’s time for him to put down his phone,” by Jenna Johnson in Florida: “On any given day, [Trump] is known to fire off tweets that grab the attention of those inside the Beltway.  But nearly 1,000 miles south of Washington, in the bar of American Legion Post 221 in the Florida Panhandle, no one seems to notice. No one has a Twitter account — frankly, many aren’t even sure how Twitter works — although they do know it keeps getting the president into trouble....

 The New York Times’ Trip Gabriel, Alan Blinder, and Jack Healy spoke to Trump voters across the country on how they felt about Comey getting firing:

In Dahlonega, Ga: “At Rusted Buffalo, an eclectic retail shop on the Dahlonega town square, Marie Garrett saw Mr. Comey’s dismissal as a necessary, inevitable product of Mr. Trump’s vow to clean house in Washington. Working one of her three jobs, Ms. Garrett, 40, said she merely wanted familiar figures like Mr. Comey gone from government, no matter Mr. Trump’s rationale. … Ms. Garrett said her support for Mr. Trump would not waver. She added that she had not given all presidents such backing.”

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