In a letter sent to Comey informing him he's firing him, Trump said:
“While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau.”
According to The New York Times, officially the Justice Department apparently recommended Trump that he fired Comey because of the way Comey disclosed information about the Hillary Clinton emails.
Memos released by the White House show that Rod Rosenstein, the newly sworn-in deputy attorney general, that recommended Mr. Comey be fired over how he disclosed the investigation into Mrs. Clinton.
But the NYT said something else that could be the real reason why Trump fired Comey:
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a post on Twitter that Mr. Comey “should be immediately called to testify in an open hearing about the status of Russia/Trump investigation at the time he was fired.”
One has to wonder why did Trump fire Comey out of the blue. But there are two things to consider. First, the fact that while he is a Republican, Comey was appointed by Barack Obama. A new FBI director would be 100% loyal to Trump and may put a stop to the Russia investigation.
Second, this week it was revealed that Comey gave incorrect information about Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's top aide, to the Senate during a hearing under oath and didn't correct the mistake.
According to The New York Times, the FBI sent a letter to Congress today telling legislators that Huma Abedin did not forward thousands of emails, some with classified information, to the laptop of Abedin's husband, Anthony Weiner.
Instead, what the FBI found was that Abedin simply backed up the emails to Weiner's laptop.
The problem is Comey told the Senate during a hearing that Abedin had “forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, some of which contain classified information” to Weiner.
But the letter, published by the New York Times in this article shows there was no such forwarding of "hundreds of thousands" of emails. Instead, Abedin forwarded two emails with classified information to Weiner's computer and ten other emails with classified information were simply backed up to Weiner's computer.
Still, the FBI did not find any wrongdoing in that because she only did it to have them printed. Something that's actually legal, as the Secretary of States does require the printouts. From the New York Times article:
“Our investigation determined that Ms. Abedin commonly forwarded emails to others who would print documents for her,” Gregory A. Brower, the assistant director in the F.B.I.’s Office of Congressional Affairs, wrote in the letter to the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa.
In fact, Comey himself said during his testimony that there was no evidence of any illegal activity. “We could not prove that the people sending the information, either in that case or in the other case with the secretary, were acting with any kind of the mens rea — with any kind of criminal intent,” Comey said.
But Comey mischaracterized the FBI findings anyway, something that was pointed out by the press on Monday, May 8. The next day, the FBI had to clarify the issue to Congress, as Comey had clearly lied to Congress.
By the way; those emails where the reason why Comey wrote a letter to Congress about Hillary Clinton's emails just a few days before the 2016 election.
Now, Trump already knew most of what Comey said to Congress, so using the emails investigation is not a credible reason for firing Comey. Sounds more like an excuse.
What could be a more credible reason is the ongoing investigation into Trump's collusion with Russia.
So the firing of Comey boils down to Trump being scared about the Russia investigation. Now why would that be?
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