Trump Firing FBI Director Comey Won’t Slow Down the Russia Investigation
President Donald Trump has fired Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey, smack in the middle of the FBI’s ongoing investigation into potential ties between the Trump administration and Russia. But while whomever Trump appoints to take Comey’s place could shut down the Russia probe eventually, Comey’s removal won’t make it skip a beat.
According to Press Secretary Sean Spicer, the decision to terminate Comey had nothing to do with the investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russia ties but rather Comey’s handling—including controversial public statements—of the Clinton email case. In a statement, Trump said that he relied on Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ guidance that “a fresh start is needed” to restore confidence in the FBI. In a letter to the president, Sessions wrote, “It is essential that this Department of Justice clearly reaffirm its commitment to longstanding principles that ensure the integrity and fairness of federal investigations and prosecutions.”
In Trump’s own statement, the president said that the FBI is “one of our Nation’s most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement.” He also dedicated a paragraph to thanking Comey for “informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation.”
It won’t, though, be a reset button for the Russia investigation. At least, not yet.
A Controversial Year
This move on behalf of the White House brings to an end a truly tumultuous year for Comey, one that began last July when, in an unprecedented move, the FBI director described in granular detail the thinking behind the bureau’s decision not to recommend charges against Hillary Clinton for using a private email server. He called Clinton’s actions careless, but not criminal, stoking suspicion among Trump supporters that Clinton was being let off easy.
He later exacerbated the situation when, just 11 days before the presidential election, he sent a letter to members of Congress explaining that the FBI had reopened its investigation into Clinton, after finding thousands of her emails on the laptop of Anthony Weiner, the husband of Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin. He did all this without mentioning that the FBI was simultaneously investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, which he only confirmed this March.
In a letter to Sessions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein faults these events as damaging to public trust in Comey. “The director laid out his version of the facts for the news media as if it were a closing argument, but without a trial,” Rosenstein writes. “It is a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do.”
The firing culminates Trump’s love-hate relationship with Comey on the campaign trail. The then-GOP candidate condemned Comey for his recommendation to absolve Clinton of wrongdoing, but praised him for the October letter. Still, this week, as the Senate Judiciary Committee called Comey to testify about Russia’s election interference, it became clear that relationship may have soured for good. The night before Comey testified, Trump tweeted that the FBI director had given Clinton a “free pass.”
Quote:
FBI Director Comey was the best thing that ever happened to Hillary Clinton in that he gave her a free pass for many bad deeds! The phony…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 3, 2017
Not that Comey had many friends on the left, either. In a recent CNN interview, Clinton herself argued that Comey’s letter definitively swung the November election in Trump’s favor. “I was on the way to winning until a combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28 and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me and [they] got scared off,” she said.
Ongoing Investigation
For all the talk of Clinton’s emails, the fact remains that the president has fired the man in charge of investigating ties between Russia and Trump’s associates, an act that raised objections from both sides of the political aisle.
Democratic senator Ron Wyden, who has often criticized Comey for his stances on surveillance and torture called the decision “outrageous.” “Director Comey should be immediately called to testify in an open hearing about the status of the investigation into Russia and Trump associates at the time he was fired,” he said in a statement. GOP senator Bob Corker of Tennessee said in a statement that Comey’s removal “at this particular time will raise questions.”
Senate Intelligence Committee head and prominent GOP senator Richard Burr said in tweet that he was “troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey’s termination.” And Republican senator John McCain said that “the president’s decision to remove the FBI Director only confirms the need and the urgency” for a special congressional committee to investigate the Russian ties.
Democratic senator Mark Warner, who also serves as vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, took that thought one step further, calling for an independent counsel to be appointed to carry the investigation forward. “The only way this Administration can begin to demonstrate a commitment to the rule of law, which has so far been sorely lacking, is to cooperate fully with the ongoing congressional investigations and to support the appointment of an independent special counsel,” Warner wrote in a statement.
An independent counsel would ensure that investigations into the Trump administration’s Russia ties continued regardless of FBI leadership. But in truth, it should continue even if that contingency plan never materializes.
“The Russia investigation will continue,” says a former FBI cybercrimes investigator, who spoke with WIRED under the condition of anonymity. “The director doesn’t run the investigation, the assistant director doesn’t run it, the unit chiefs don’t run it. There’s a case agent or a series of case agents assigned to run it all the way through.”
That means that at least until Congress approves Comey’s replacement, the investigation should continue undaunted. “If you want to stop this investigation, someone in management could hinder it, reassign the agents, block requests for investigative techniques, but there’s always a different way to get the information,” says the former agent. “There are ways to circumvent bad supervisors.”
There’s also no certainty that whomever takes Comey’s place would necessarily pull the plug, especially given the wariness with which prominent senators and representatives have so far viewed the firing. And if they did, it would have serious repercussions.
“If that happens, you’ll hear it,” says the former agent. “People will talk and it will be very loud. Or he’ll have to let it run and let the chips fall where they may.”
Politics as Unusual
In an attempt to replace an FBI director who was deeply distrusted by members of both parties, the Trump administration has only served to politicize the role even more. Now, anyone seeking answers in the Russia investigation may be all the more suspicious of its ability to be carried out without political bias. Some already have compared the firing to President Richard Nixon’s decision to axe Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor who was investigating the Watergate scandal.
Firing Comey also doesn’t make him disappear. As of this writing, he was still slated to testify before the House Intelligence Committee Thursday, as scheduled.
All of it feels a world away from that July press conference about Clinton’s email server, when Comey, then unaware of the turbulent year ahead, told reporters, “Only facts matter, and the FBI found them here in an entirely apolitical and professional way. I couldn’t be prouder to be part of this organization.”
The FBI may be try to transcend politics, but politics has a way of making that impossible.
[WIRED]
