The White House has changed its tune about James Comey, with far-reaching consequences
Chicago, May 10.─ James Comey had no intention to leave his job. “You are stuck with me for about six and a half years,” said the former deputy attorney-general, who was appointed as the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation by Barack Obama at a cyber-conference in Boston in March 2013. But it was not to be. On May 9th the next president, Donald Trump, sent Mr Comey a letter informing him that his attorney-general and deputy attorney-general had recommended his dismissal—and that he had accepted their recommendation.
In his brief letter to Mr Comey, Mr Trump said he was firing him because he was not able to lead the bureau effectively. In a longer memorandum, Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney-general, cast Mr Comey’s dismissal entirely as the result of his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server during her tenure as secretary of state. “The FBI’s reputation and credibility have suffered substantial damage, and it has affected the entire Department of Justice,” wrote Mr Rosenstein. “I cannot defend the director’s handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton’s e-mails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken. Almost everyone agrees that the director made serious mistakes; it is one of the few issues that unites people of diverse perspectives.”
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