Just weeks after praising him publicly, Donald Trump made the decision to fire FBI director James Comey. Trump claims that he did this because of Comey’s handling of the Clinton email sideshow, but the truth is that Comey was investigating the Trump administration’s ties to Russia, and like everyone else that was investigating and getting closer to an answer, Comey had to go. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
Transcript:
On Tuesday evening news broke that President Donald Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey. Sent him a letter, thanked him for not pressing charges against him, or telling him he did nothing wrong three different times, but the reasoning that the Trump administration gave, that Donald Trump himself gave, for firing James Comey, was his handling of the Hillary Clinton email sideshow, basically.
According to Trump and people within the White House, it was the fact that James Comey decided to go on national TV, hold this press conference, and say that we’re not pressing charges against Hillary Clinton, but she still did some things wrong and she was a pretty bad woman. That allegedly, is what made Donald Trump, nearly a year after that event occurred, decide to fire this man.
While I do not condone most of the things James Comey has done, I agree he should not have gone on television and done that, and he sure as hell shouldn’t have gone and told us that they were essentially reopening the email investigation a few days before the election, that did help swing it in Trump’s favor. And yes, I agree that James Comey needed to go, he clearly was not good at his job, and he clearly had political motivations in his going after Hillary Clinton here, but the timing is what everyone is talking about, because that, is what’s so important here.
It’s not that Donald Trump fired the FBI Director, even though that’s only happened one other time in the history of the FBI, which is important to point out. Bill Clinton fired the FBI Director in 1993, after it was revealed that this guy had very serious ethical lapses, not because, you know, like James Comey, he did one thing wrong. This guy was a borderline criminal, running the FBI, that’s why Bill Clinton fired him.
That aside, do not think for one second that Donald Trump fired James Comey because of the Hillary Clinton email saga. Maybe Donald Trump is pissed off that he didn’t bring charges against Hillary Clinton, we don’t know that for sure, we do know that Donald Trump tweets about that at least once or twice a week, so maybe that played a small role, but the real reason James Comey was fired, is because he is investigating, he is leading the inquiry into the involvement of Trump campaign officials with the Russians. That is why James Comey was fired.
A lot of people out there want to say that no, that had nothing to do with it. Some Republicans are out there saying, “You’ve got to move on.” There’s some Democrats out there, saying that this had nothing to do with the Russians. I’m sorry, but that’s simply not true. You’re lying to yourself if you honestly believe that James Comey was fired by Donald Trump because he hurt his political opponent. That makes no sense! The only logical conclusion that a rational thinking person can come to at this point, is that James Comey was leading this Russia inquiry, whether he wanted to or not, and they were getting closer.
We know in recent weeks, that this investigation has been heating up. We’re finding out more and more about Michael Flynn every day. Sally Yates went into the Senate and lambasted Ted Cruz and the rest of the Republicans there, things are heating up. On top of that, you have to factor in that James Comey is the third person investigating the Trump administration and campaign’s connection to Russia, who has been fired. Sally Yates, Preet Bharara, all fired, all investigating the connections to Russia.
This thing stinks to high heaven, and if you can’t see that, if you don’t understand that, then you’re in the wrong business, and you shouldn’t be talking about it. There is no question why James Comey was fired, even Republicans in the Senate, hard-core folks like John McCain understand why James Comey was fired. Had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton. Had James Comey been fired when Trump came into office, maybe it could have been plausible that he fired him because of the way he handled the Hillary Clinton email situation. Had he advised Barack Obama to fire him before Trump was even sworn in, we could have bought that, but right now, in the current mess of a situation that’s going on, absolutely untrue.
There are reports from White House insiders, saying that Donald Trump has spent the last few weeks screaming at the television, because of the coverage of the Russian connections, and while I don’t know exactly what will come of these Russian investigations, I don’t think it’s smart to get us involved in a new cold war, or potentially a ground war with another nuclear super power, I do think we need to know what happened. We need to know who spoke to whom, and about what. We need to know to what extent Russians were involved with any of the hacking that took place. Was it a lone wolf? Was it just a group of people who happened to be Russians? Or was it directed by the Russian government?
Those are questions we need answers to, and questions that we cannot just assume, “Yes, they did it, let’s go get them.” We have to be rational about this, but we also have to be realistic, and that is why we have to understand the fact that James Comey, the timing of this firing is because he was investigating Russia.
