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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Comey Sought to Expand Russia Inquiry

 Furor over Comey firing grows with news that he sought resources for Russia investigation before his dismissal.

The cloud hanging over the White House just got bigger and darker.

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• Last week, James B. Comey asked a Justice Department official for more resources for the F.B.I.’s investigation into Russia’s election meddling. That official then wrote the memo used to justify his firing.
• On Wednesday, the Senate Committee investigating Russia demanded the records of Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser.

Although several Democrats confirmed that Comey had informed lawmakers of the request he made last week in a meeting with Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, the Justice Department denied those reports.

 Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general 

WASHINGTON POST

Senior officials at the White House were caught off guard by the intense and immediate blowback to the president’s stunning decision to fire James Comey. They reportedly expected Republicans to back him up and thought Democrats wouldn’t complain loudly because they have been critical of Comey for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. Indeed, that was the dubious excuse given publicly for his ouster.

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To put it mildly, the optics of firing Comey are terrible. Trump looks like he does not actually want to get to the bottom of Russia’s interference in the U.S. election and the potential wrongdoing of his own staffers.

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Trump doesn’t grasp it yet, but firing Comey will only lead to more, and louder, questions about Russia, as well as what exactly Trump knew about Flynn and when he knew it. Sometimes it turns out that the simplest explanation is the correct one. Is it possible that the president kept his national security adviser in the White House for 18 days after he’d been warned by the acting attorney general that he had been “compromised” and was vulnerable to “blackmail” by Russia because he had authorized the conversations in question?

 David Ignatius... writes in a must-read column. “...In a book called ‘Spy the Lie,’ a group of former intelligence officers explain the behavioral and linguistic cues that indicate when someone is being deceptive. Interestingly, many of these are evident in Trump’s responses to questions about Russia’s covert involvement in U.S. politics. The authors’ list of tip-offs includes ‘going into attack mode,’ ‘inappropriate questions,’ ‘inconsistent statements,’ ‘selective memory’ and the use of ‘qualifiers,’ such as ‘frankly,’ ‘honestly’ and ‘truthfully.’ The authors’ point is that people who are innocent answer questions simply and directly.”

Our Justice Department beat reporters relay that Comey’s removal has also sparked fears inside the FBI that the Russia investigation might be upended. Trump, after all, will get to handpick the new supervisor of a probe into possible collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. “The investigation is still in its infancy, but the probe’s sensitive subject matter has already created a political quagmire for the Justice Department,” Ellen Nakashima and Matt Zapotosky report. “A number of current and former officials said that the FBI special agents and National Security Division attorneys who are conducting the Russia probe will continue the investigation. The probe, though, might slow down in the short term. Comey’s successor will undeniably play a major role. ‘No big-time decisions will be made until they appoint a new FBI director,’ said one former federal prosecutor. ‘It’s just a big thing. The FBI will make a recommendation to the Justice Department as to whether or not to go forward, and you’re going to want an FBI director to make that kind of decision, I would think.’ Inside the bureau, agents said that there was shock at the news of Comey’s dismissal and hope that it would not disrupt the Russia investigation.”

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Columnist Charles Krauthammer: “To fire him summarily with no warning in the middle of May because of something that happened in July is almost inexplicable.”

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President Trump with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, left, and the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, at the White House on Wednesday.CreditRussian Foreign Ministry

View image on Twitter

The timing is terrible for the White House in another way: A day after firing the FBI director overseeing the Russia probe, Trump has just one event on his public schedule today: An Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey I Kislyak. “The sit-down between Trump and Lavrov, the first face-to-face contact the president has had with a senior official of the Russian government, will take place at 10:30 a.m. in the White House,” Philip Rucker and Karen DeYoung report. “It will be closed to the press. … Trump and Lavrov are … picking up on the conversation Trump had with Russian President Vladimir Putin via telephone on May 2. … Trump is expected to hold his first meeting with Putin in July, when both travel to Germany to a summit of the Group of 20 leading and developing world economies.” Every one of these meetings will now look more suspect.

Mr. Kislyak has figured prominently in the furor surrounding the Trump team’s contacts with Moscow. It was conversations between the ambassador and Michael T. Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser, that ultimately led to Mr. Flynn’s ouster in February, ostensibly because he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about whether the two had discussed United States sanctions on Russia

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 Keep in mind: The classless way Trump axed Comey might contribute to a desire among some allies and supporters of the ex-director to leak additional damaging information about the president.

....Whoever Trump nominates as Comey’s replacement will face a brutal confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It will get saturation-level media coverage.

-- In the short-term, firing Comey will give fresh and significant momentum to Democratic calls for a special prosecutor: Democrats say they won't support a new FBI director unless a special prosecutor is appointed to investigate Trump's ties to Russia.

The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, addressed the Senate on Wednesday morning, largely sticking to the Republican party line and saying that partisan calls for a new investigation should not delay the “considerable work” already being conducted.

Unless Congress passed legislation, which seems unlikely, [above] Rosenstein (who wrote the letter to justify Comey’s termination) would need to decide to appoint a special counsel. But the calls from the left are about to become deafening, and Rosenstein might bow to pressure to save the diminishing credibility of the Justice Department. The special counsel would operate with greater day-to-day independence from Mr. Rosenstein’s supervision, but could still be overruled or fired by him.

[Congress could create a special commission, like the 9/11 Commission, or a special select committee, like the Select Committee on Benghazi, that would replace or supplement the current congressional inquiries. A special commission would require new legislation, which ultimately would have to be signed by President Trump.(Thus it is not likely to happen.-Esco) 

A special prosecutor or an independent counsel, like Kenneth W. Starr, who investigated a range of scandals during the Clinton administration, is not an option because the law that created that type of prosecutor expired in 1999.]

“Rosenstein has one chance to rehabilitate his reputation: He can name a special prosecutor to continue the probe. If he doesn’t, the wave of rebellion against Trump so far will become a tsunami, and it will swamp Trump’s protectors in the polls,” Dana Milbank writes in his column. “This president may think himself unassailable, but Americans are seeing him for what he is: a tin-pot tyrant.”

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NY TIMES:

The House committee’s efforts have stalled after the recusal of its chairman and partisan feuding over the focus of the investigation.

The Senate committee is seen as having more legitimacy and being less marred by partisanship than its House counterpart, but that has not stopped lawmakers from calling for a new special congressional inquiry into the matter.

Justice officials interviewing for ‘interim’ F.B.I. leader

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein were expected to interview at least four candidates on Wednesday to be “interim” F.B.I. director, a Justice Department official said. The person selected for that role would hold it until Mr. Trump’s eventual nominee for the position is confirmed by the Senate.

---- -- The media coverage is brutal. Here are takes from five prominent voices:  “It’s a grotesque abuse of power by the president of the United States,” longtime New Yorker staff writer Jeffrey Toobin said on CNN. “This is the kind of thing that goes on in non-democracies, that when there is an investigation that reaches near the president of the United States or the leader of a non-democracy, they fire the people who are in charge of the investigation.” Toobin went on to say that “if anyone thinks that a new FBI director is going to come in and the agency will just take over and continue their investigation as if this had never happened, that’s not how it works. They will put in a stooge who will shut down this investigation.” He specifically mentioned Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani. Ruth Marcus: “Comey’s firing should make all of us ‘mildly nauseous.’” The New Yorker’s John Cassidy writes that Trump’s firing of Comey “AN ATTACK ON AMERICAN DEMOCRACY.” Lawfare: “The Nightmare Scenario: Trump Fires Comey, the One Man Who Would Stand Up to Him.” The Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian (and former editor-in-chief of Newsweek):

Going forward The committee has invited Mr. Comey to testify in a hearing on Tuesday. In the end, the committee is expected to produce unclassified and classified reports on its findings.

A great summary of the events of the last two days can be found here at New York magazine

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1. A new report from the Council on American-Islamic Relations claims that violent anti-Muslim incidents have spiked 600 percent in the U.S. since 2014. (HuffPost)