When President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey last week, all hell broke loose in the media. Political commentators kept comparing it to Watergate, and for good reason. The amount of similarities between the 1972 scandal and Comey’s abrupt dismissal are truly frightening.
Take, for example, the fact that a source close to Comey said that the former FBI director was fired for two reasons:
- Because Comey wouldn’t pledge his personal loyalty to the president.
- Because Comey asked for more resources to look into the Russia probe.
And it makes sense. Just days prior to being handed the pink slip, Comey had requested more resources to investigate ties between Trump and Russia. If that doesn’t smell like a cover-up, I don’t know what does.
And then there’s the fact that there are multiple conflicting stories as to when and why Trump decided to fire Comey. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that Trump acted on behalf of a recommendation made by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.
Rosenstein, who wasn’t pleased with the way that Comey handled the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server, had recommended that Trump remove Comey from his position as director of the FBI. Even Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that President Trump was merely heeding Rosenstein’s advice.
But that proved not to be true, because during an interview with NBC News, Trump revealed that he planned to fire Comey long before Rosenstein even sent his recommendation.
“I was going to fire Comey,” Trump said in an interview with NBC News. “Regardless of the recommendation, I was going to fire Comey.”
And yet—and yet—on top of all this, Sean Spicer has said that there is “no need” for a special prosecutor to look into Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. Again, could it be any clearer that this is a cover-up?
*Photo credit: Victoria Pickering at Flickr Creative Commons.
