Comey, chaos … crisis? Trump enters
new territory after most explosive week yet
Trump’s decision to fire James Comey
stunned Washington, upset the bureau, and brought Russia back into focus. How
much more can Republicans take?
David Smith in Washington
Saturday 13 May 2017 15.15 BST
Ill met by moonlight, a dozen reporters and cameramen peered
into the darkness. Where was Sean Spicer? The press secretary had given a TV
interview at 9pm then disappeared behind an awning, apparently conferring with
colleagues. Journalists waited on the drive. The White House glowed behind
them. “This is so weird,” one said. “It’s like hunting a dog and then killing
it.”
A couple of minutes later Spicer emerged on a path running
along a fence and hedgerow. He was caught in a blinding light and asked the cameramen
to turn it off. “Relax, enjoy the night, have a glass of wine,” he said
jocularly. Spicer then spent 12 minutes trying to explain why Donald Trump had
taken the most explosive decision of his young presidency: axing the director
of the FBI.
But the rationale that Spicer presented – that Trump had
been acting on the recommendation of the attorney general and his deputy – was
shredded by the president himself two days later. He had already decided that
James Comey must go regardless of the recommendation, Trump said, because he
was a “grandstander” and a “showboat”.
The man who sealed his fame by telling reality TV show
contestants “You’re fired!” had now done it to America’s top law enforcement
official, creating a public relations catastrophe. Comey was only the second
FBI director to be dismissed. Not since Richard Nixon had a US president fired
the person leading an investigation bearing on himself.
That investigation is examining Russian interference in last
year’s election with potential Trump campaign collusion. The removal of Comey
prompted accusations of a cover-up, warnings of a constitutional crisis, and
comparisons with the Watergate scandal that brought Nixon down. The president
fuelled the fire by suggesting he had “tapes” of his conversations with the FBI
director.
Even for Trump, the inveterate rule-breaker, it was
outrageous new territory. It prompted anew the question: just how much is the
Republican party able and willing to tolerate? “With an approval rating of 35%,
he’s a liability in the 2018 elections, not an asset,” said Rick Tyler, the
former communications director for Senator Ted Cruz, a rival of Trump in the
party primaries. “At some point they’re going to have to tell the president:
shape up or ship out.”
Less than a week earlier, Trump had welcomed dozens of
Republican House members to the Rose Garden at the White House to celebrate the
passage of a healthcare bill. It seemed to be a moment of respite, of getting
on track, of making peace with the party. “Hey, I’m president!” Trump said.
“Can you believe it?”
There was no hint of what was to come. Contrary to Spicer’s
explanation, Trump had decided Comey’s fate long ago. He was, according to
multiple US media reports, angered by the FBI’s director’s dogged pursuit of
the Russia investigation, ease in the media limelight (FBI directors are
supposed to keep a low profile), insouciance when it came to White House leaks
and failure to back the president’s allegation of wiretapping against Barack
Obama.
Last weekend, it seems, Trump decided to pull the trigger.
The Washington Post reported: “At his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey,
Trump groused over Comey’s latest congressional testimony, which he thought was
‘strange,’ and grew impatient with what he viewed as his sanctimony, according
to White House officials. Comey, Trump figured, was using the Russia probe to
become a martyr.”
When he returned to the Oval Office on Monday, Trump
summoned attorney general Jeff Sessions and his deputy Rod Rosenstein and told
them to make the case against Comey in writing. With Sessions having recused
himself from the Russia investigation over his contacts with the Russian
ambassador, it was left to Rosenstein to do the heavy lifting in a memo that
cited the FBI director’s mishandling of last year’s Hillary Clinton email
investigation.
On Tuesday afternoon, Trump called senior members of both
parties to inform them of his decision. Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority
leader in the Senate, told him: “You are making a big mistake.” But the
president went ahead anyway. There have been many political earthquakes since
Trump was sworn in on 20 January but this hit a new spike on the Richter scale.
The crude method of dismissal also caused disquiet. Shortly
before Spicer’s manoeuvres in the dark on Tuesday night, the FBI director had
been addressing staff in Los Angeles when news of his termination flashed up on
TV screens. At first he laughed, thinking it was a prank, the New York Times
reported, but then his staff intervened, he stopped speaking and, in a side
office, learned it was no joke.
When the Guardian asked Spicer why the dismissal had not
been done in person or by phone, as is customary in most walks of life, he said
only that a message had been sent by hand to FBI headquarters and
electronically. Some commentators felt the rushed nature of the deed and basic
lack of courtesy spoke volumes.
A political novice governing by gut instinct, Trump appeared
to have made arguably his biggest misjudgment yet. He seemed to think that
Comey’s unpopularity on both sides of the aisle (Clinton has blamed him for her
loss) would make it a win-win for him; instead it was a spectacular lose-lose.
He told Justice with Judge Jeanine on Fox News: “I guess I was a little bit
surprised, because all of the Democrats, I mean, they hated Jim Comey. They
didn’t like him. They wanted him fired or whatever. And then all of a sudden,
they come out with these glowing reports. Look, it’s politics.”
Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster, said:
“It’s stunning they didn’t think it would be this controversial. It’s an
example of his ignorance of American political history and the norms and
traditions of the system.”
What he failed to consider was the Russia question. Reports
emerged that Comey had been accelerating the investigation and seeking more
resources as he became increasingly concerned about evidence of collusion.
Democratic senator Dick Durbin of Illinois said: “I think the Comey operation
was breathing down the neck of the Trump campaign and their operatives, and
this was an effort to slow down the investigation.”
Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence
committee, told HBO: “If there was no ‘there there’, James Comey would still
have a job.”
On Tuesday night, Democrat after Democrat lined up to use
the word Nixonian and draw parallels with the so-called Saturday Night Massacre
when, in 1973, Nixon sought to fire Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor
leading the Watergate investigation, triggering resignations and then Cox’s
dismissal. Many demanded the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into
Russiagate.
Republican elders were also dismayed. Bill Brock, a former
labour secretary under President Ronald Reagan, said: “It was either way too
late or way too early. The FBI as an organisation is sacrosanct in this
country: non-political, non-partisan, with brilliant people working for it, and
I hate to see it being dragged into this mess.”
The following morning, Trump lived up to his reputation for
spectacle beyond the likes of Scandal or Veep. Of all the days, he hosted
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and ambassador to the US Sergei
Kislyak. American media did not have access to the meeting but photos taken by
a Russian state news media photographer were posted online. A White House
official was quoted by CNN: “They tricked us. That’s the problem with the
Russians – they lie.”
And then, when US media did gain access to the Oval Office,
they found not Lavrov but a surprise visitor: 93-year-old Henry Kissinger, who
was secretary of state under Nixon. It was either coincidence, or evidence of a
particularly dark sense of humour.
The White House stuck to its line until Thursday: that Trump
had fired Comey based on Rosenstein’s recommendation and because he had lost
the confidence of FBI colleagues (many FBI members disputed this). But then the
president gave an interview to NBC News that blew this out of the water.
“Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey,” he said.
Startlingly, Trump also revealed that Russia was a factor in
his thinking. “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’ve won.’”
James Comey, the FBI director, had been addressing staff in
Los Angeles when news of his termination flashed up on TV screens. He thought
it was a prank. Photograph: Cliff Owen/AP
And, Trump told NBC News, he had asked Comey – over dinner
and in two phone calls – whether he was personally under investigation, and was
told not. During the dinner, according to an associate quoted by the New York
Times and Associated Press, Trump asked for Comey’s loyalty, implying a
possible obstruction of justice. Trump has denied this.
As the story dominated the news cycle of what was supposed
to be a quiet week, Trump reached for Twitter. He posted on Friday morning:
“James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before
he starts leaking to the press!” The White House refused to deny that Trump had
made secret recordings.
The Democratic response to the week’s events was
predictable; that of the Republicans less so. Trump was, after all, an outsider
who staged a hostile takeover of the party in last year’s election. His
relationship with Republicans on Capitol Hill remains fractious. It could have
been a moment to emulate Howard Baker, a Republican senator from Tennessee who,
during the Watergate investigation, took a stand and asked: “What did the
president know, and when did he know it?”
Indeed, in the first few hours, some critical voices
emerged. Richard Burr, the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said
the timing and reasoning did not make sense. Senator John McCain called for a
select committee to investigate and told security experts: “This scandal is going
to go on. This is a centipede. I guarantee you there will be more shoes to
drop.” Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona tweeted that he has spent several hours
trying to find an acceptable rationale for the timing of Comey’s firing and
could not do it.
But the centre held, at least for now. House Speaker Paul
Ryan and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who have already swallowed
numerous indignities for the sake of their legislative agenda, batted away
calls for a special prosecutor and accused the Democrats of double standards.
Cabinet veteran Brock, 86, agrees. “I don’t think there’s
any comparable situation with what President Nixon did,” he said. “The
Democrats are clearly overstating the case. They said James Comey has lost all
credibility. That is the height of hypocrisy and I find it totally repugnant.
Let’s agree how we can move this process forward without playing the political
card. I would welcome it if the president called for a special prosecutor.”
Conservative author Sykes described the Republican reaction
as “a mixed bag”. He said: “It is significant the number of Republicans who are
willing to distance themselves from the decision. There are some signs of
cracks in the support.
“I’m personally disappointed in Mitch McConnell and Paul
Ryan and I also think they’re making a mistake. This is going to be a
distraction from the agenda and makes all their legislative programmes harder
to get through. This has been the pattern: they’ve been willing to roll over
because they think they’ll get their programme through but the price tag keeps
going up. If it begins to dawn on them there’ll be a high cost next year [in
the mid-term elections], that could change the calculation.”
The Comey firing led to renewed soul-searching in the
conservative movement, which has ostensibly embraced Trump despite his
uncertain values. Sykes added: “From the moment he was nominated, he posed an
existential threat to conservatism. There was a time when conservatives would
have been horrified at having a president who has so much contempt for the
norms and traditions of government, or the separation of powers, or the rule of
law. The fact they’re rolling over on this is defining test of conservatism.”
With a single, ill-considered and poorly executed act, Trump
stunned Washington, sowed discontent at the FBI and inadvertently gave fresh
impetus to two congressional investigations into Russia’s election meddling. It
was a sobering reminder to Republicans about who they must wake up next to
every day. They must live with the savaging of norms, the outlandish tweets,
the profound unpredictability.
Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National
Committee, said: “Their destiny is something they embraced when they nominated
him because Donald Trump is not a conservative.”
In a simple message to Republicans, he added: “You clearly
made an assessment his brand of politics, or whatever you want to call it, was
worth the risk, and now you have to account for it.”
Voters are unleashing their anger at Republicans on issues
such as healthcare at town hall events. A Quinnipiac University poll, conducted
before Comey was fired, found Trump’s favorability rating at an all-time low of
35%. And by a record 54%-38% margin, voters said they would prefer the
Democrats rather than Republicans to control the House.
Paradoxically, the healthcare bill that was cause for
euphoria in the Rose Garden could, through its effects in stripping health
insurance from millions of people, cost the party more votes than the Comey
saga. Trump may then find himself running out of friends fast. Principles are
one thing; popularity another.
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