2017 May 10^th

President Trump has fired FBI Director Comey. I am not a fan of Comey’s political behavior but the method and the rational for this action is ridiculous. Comey was delivering remarks to agents in Los Angeles when a TV screen flashed the news of his firing. He, and the assemblage, thought it was a prank; it wasn’t. The particulars were Comey’s actions last July involving Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the very action for which Trump had praised Comey effusively; now these same behaviors, nine months later, get the man fired? Oh, come now!

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, substituting for Sean Spicer, Trump’s usual flack, explains that Trump changed his mind about Comey because he was just a presidential candidate last July and now he is president. We all understand that Trump’s status has changed but exactly why should that change in his status change his opinion of Comey? No such follow up question was asked of Sarah.

Trump’s apologists cannot understand why Democrats should be upset that Trump has fired Comey. According to Hillary Clinton, Comey did contribute to her election loss by coming out with his renewed evaluation of Anthony Weiner’s emails. Huma Abedin, Clinton’s assistant, had sent her husband emails to be printed out on his computer. Comey seized his laptop because Weiner was being investigated for sexting a 15 year old southern girl. In the process of evaluating these Weiner emails Comey discovered other Huma Abedin emails and immediately reported this publicly. He claimed that these emails, “… contained hundreds and thousands of classified articles.” They did not. Had Comey bothered to obtain a search warrant he would have discovered that and avoided making a fool of himself. He announced just days before the election that he had this new information about Clinton’s emails. Then he discovered, belatedly, that he had seen all of these emails before and that he had nothing new. Clinton assumed that Comey’s comments influenced her election chances.

Trump’s dismissal of Comey was by way of his long-time bodyguard who was sent with the official letter of dismissal to the Justice department. The letter was signed by Attorney General Sessions who had recused himself from such issues. Maybe Sessions had forgotten he had done that. In any event Comey was on the west coast when this happened and was notified there of his dismissal. Nice touch President Trump. What a guy.

In the week before his dismissal Comey had decided he needed more money for his investigation of the Russian interference in our election. Very shortly later he was fired. It does seem that those who look too closely at Trump’s Russian connections are removed from government.

There was Preet Bahara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. This man was fired by Trump along with many other attorneys after Trump had specifically told him that he could keep his job. Bahara was in the process of bringing to justice Russian attempts to launder money invested in New York City real estate. Nothing to do with Trump of course.

Finally there was Sally Yates; she was also on the case of Trump’s Russian connections through General Flynn. Now she is no longer an employee of our government. Isn’t it funny how that seems to work.