The NPR Politics Podcast - President Trump Fires FBI Director James Comey

Episode Date: May 10, 2017

This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional reporter Scott Detrow, and justice correspondent Carrie Johnson. More coverage at nprpolitics.org. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

It's the NPR Politics Podcast, and we're back for a second time today because, wow, President Donald Trump has fired FBI Director James Comey. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. And I'm Carrie Johnson, the justice correspondent. Carrie, wow. We are glad to have you here with us. I'm happy to be here. Although this news keeps breaking unpredictably. This I got to say, of all the things that have happened since November 2016, this one comes out of the blue. And so your jaw

dropped too, not just ours? Not just mine. I'm hearing from sources inside the FBI that they had no clue this was happening, nor that it was happening today. There's a lot of shock and surprise and uncertainty at the Bureau right now. Wow. So I figure we should probably do our timestamp disclaimer here. It is about 8.10 p.m. on Tuesday, May 9th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this podcast, and they sure as heck have since the last time we were in this studio about seven hours ago. Today is the banner headline for why we do a time step on our podcast. Yes. So I want to start by reading the letter that President Donald Trump wrote to FBI Director

James Comey. So here goes. Dear Director Comey, I have received the attached letters from the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General of the United States recommending your dismissal as the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I have accepted their recommendation and you are hereby terminated and removed from office effective immediately. While I greatly appreciate you informing me on three separate occasions that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau. Yeah, I think one thing that we should think about here is that this comes after a stretch of about a week where James

Comey was in the news a lot. Hillary Clinton was in the news a lot. And the 2016 election was being relitigated. James Comey was in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. And Democrats like Dan Feinstein were blasting Comey for his decision to send that letter on the eve of the election to Congress, a letter that the Clinton campaign thinks that cost them the election. So Comey was in the news for that. And earlier today, he was also in the news on a more minor level, correcting the testimony he gave to that committee, because when he was talking, he misstated key details about the nature of those emails that were found on Anthony Weiner's laptop. So President Trump had been responding to that, saying that that Comey did not help Hillary Clinton win the election.

But it just seemed like there was a lot of Comey churn in the news before this happened. Carrie, that letter, there's a lot to unpack in there, but it refers to the attorney general and the deputy attorney general. So what was their argument for removing Comey? Well, Jeff Sessions, who has recused himself from any investigation of Russia, submitted a short letter to the White House saying he supported the dismissal of the FBI director, James Comey. And Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, the man who's running the day-to-day operations of the Justice Department and the Russia probe for all intents and purposes, submitted a blistering three-page memo in which he talked about a litany of wrongdoing, in his view, that James Comey

had engaged in throughout the Clinton email investigation, from having a news conference in July 2016 to more or less beat her up and then conclude he didn't think she should be charged. In looking back at our investigations into the mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. To the notion that Comey made that decision himself instead of leaving it to senior DOJ officials where the responsibility rests. And he finally criticized Comey for those two letters late in the campaign, telling Congress he was going to reopen the investigation because the FBI discovered some, what I believe were new emails on the computer belonging to Anthony

Weiner, the estranged husband of Clinton's close aide, Huma Abedin, and then telling Congress a short time before the election, nevermind, we didn't find anything. Rod Rosenstein said this went against all of the longstanding procedures within the Justice Department that argued against speaking before an election and beating up people you decide not to charge. He said it put the FBI's reputation and credibility at great risk. And he said Comey refused to accept responsibility or any blame, despite what Rosenstein called the near universal rejection of the methods he took in the Clinton email investigation. So very rough stuff. But Tim and Scott, this was all known throughout 2016. This was not new news. And the president himself,

the President Donald Trump, embraced James Comey in January, gave him a big hug on camera. Literally, I was there in the room. He gave him a hug. Or maybe it was like a bro hug. It wasn't like a total bear hug, but there was definitely an embrace. So how did they lose that loving feeling? I don't know. One point of data I would like to share is the notion that in March, when President Trump tweeted that Obama had wiretapped him, a tweet for which there was no evidence, and that Obama had more or less sick the FBI on Trump Tower in 2016, we have reported, as have others, that James Comey strongly urged senior DOJ leadership to push back against the president, speak out publicly to defend the FBI and the way in which the FBI conducts surveillance. The senior DOJ brass at the time refused to speak

up for Comey or the FBI and criticize the White House. Now, in terms of like what this memo from Rosenstein actually says, it seems to point to Comey's testimony last week before Congress, where he was essentially defending himself and defending his decision to release that letter to Congress just days before the election. And he said he had two choices, speak up or conceal. And here's that audio. And so I stared at speak and conceal. Speak would be really bad. There's an election in 11 days. Lordy, that would be really bad. Concealing, in my view, would be catastrophic, not just to the FBI, but well beyond.

And honestly, as between really bad and catastrophic, I said to my team, we've got to walk into the world of really bad. I've got to tell Congress that we're restarting this, not in some frivolous way, in a hugely significant way. But Kerry, in that letter, in that memo, Rosenstein says, quote, conceal is a loaded term that misstates the issue. Yeah, nobody on Capitol Hill was happy with James Comey on last week when he testified, because if you were a Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, you were really peeved at his mistreatment, alleged mistreatment of Hillary Clinton throughout the investigation. And if you were a Republican, many Republicans worried, in fact, that what would there was a sense that they were not sure whether that would carry over into this administration. Comey in light of last year's past investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails, but rather the ongoing investigation, which we know about because Comey told the House Intelligence Committee that it was happening, the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the election and whether or not there was any coordination or collusion between Russian operatives and Trump's campaign. That's something that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer

talked about when he had a last minute press conference at the Capitol to respond to all this. We know the FBI has been looking into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. A very serious offense. Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president? I don't think we know because, in fact, this investigation, there have been leaks around the margins, but we don't know whom the FBI has interviewed and exactly how many people are under surveillance or under investigation in connection with possible ties to Russia. Can I ask one quick thing on that note? In the letter from the president that I read at the beginning, he says that, you know, Comey reassured him on multiple occasions that he was

not the subject of an investigation. Do we know that? We don't know that, Tam, and it would be highly, highly strange in my experience in 21 years covering federal law enforcement for an investigator to tell someone they were not the subject of an investigation when that investigation concerned their campaign and close aides to now President Trump. So it sounds like we should be suspicious of that statement? You know, I don't want to characterize it in any way other than to say it is unusual, potentially inappropriate and not done lightly in my long experience doing this. The fact that you have to say it and say it happened three times is a very, very interesting use of the president's letter. And because of all these questions that that were around for a long

time before this, but have certainly been heightened because of all these questions that were around for a long time before this, but have certainly been heightened because of this, Schumer and other Democrats are saying the only thing that should happen next is for the Department of Justice to appoint an independent special prosecutor to continue this investigation. If Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein does not appoint an independent special prosecutor, every American will rightly suspect that the decision to fire Director Comey was part of a cover-up. Carrie, can you tell me more about Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein? He was just confirmed to this position like two weeks ago. Yeah, And with very little opposition except from Democrats like Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, who insisted that as a condition of his confirmation that that Rosenstein appoint a special prosecutor to not coming out of the blue. Rosenstein is a longtime Justice Department official. lot of public corruption cases. He also served as a

junior or associate independent counsel investigating Whitewater in the Clinton era, which is little known. But he's more or less a solid line guy, not super flashy, doesn't like the limelight. It's a little unusual to see him cropping up at such a high profile now. And I think one key thing on Rosenstein is that when he was in front of the Senate for confirmation, both Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, two pretty liberal Democrats who represent Maryland, they both gave him strong backing, said that they trusted him. He had a long track record in Maryland and they supported his nomination. I want to read one more quote of reaction because this has just been a flood.

I have a tweet deck column of members of Congress and senators, and it has just been this nonstop. It hasn't stopped once in terms of people responding. But what Schumer said kind of clarified what a lot of Democrats are saying. I want to read one more statement. This is from Patrick Leahy, a Vermont senator who's a longtime senior member of the Judiciary Committee. He said this is nothing less than Nixonian. The president's action and the way it has been handled is shocking. No one should accept President Trump's absurd justification that he is now concerned that the FBI Director Comey treated Secretary Clinton unfairly. And then he goes on to say that he also is calling for a special prosecutor. There simply is no avoiding the compelling fact that this cascading situation demands the prompt appointment of an independent special counsel to pick up the pieces of the investigations. And Richard Burr is a key Republican voice who we just heard from. He is leading the Senate Intelligence Committee,

which, as we know, is investigating this. He said he was troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination. The Richard Nixon Library is weighing in on this. They tweeted out, fun fact, President Nixon never fired the director of the FBI. Hashtag FBI director. Hashtag not Nixonian. Thank you very much. Setting the record straight. Nixon did a lot of things, but apparently not this. Let me throw this out, too. You know, if you were so upset by this

conduct in 2016, which was well known, and you didn't act in November, December or January. In fact, my sources, my Republican sources told me that they were very concerned about Comey and were advising the president and the new White House to get rid of him as of November 2016, in part because he's kind of a maverick and an independent guy and they weren't sure where that would lead. I even did a story on NPR about it at the time. Nothing happened for months and months and months. So if you're so alarmed by this Clinton era investigation, why don't you wait for the Justice Department Inspector General to finish its investigation into Comey's conduct? Comey told the Senate recently that he'd been interviewed

once by the Inspector General and would be happy to be interviewed again, thought in fact he would. That investigation is not over. Why don't you wait till that investigation is done? If you're this White House, this Justice Department brass in order to insulate yourself from some of the political pressure that they are feeling tonight from Democrats of the sort that Scott is discussing. And Scott, are there Republicans who think this was a good move? Yeah, Chuck Grassley is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and he was supportive in a statement saying the handling of Clinton's email investigation is a clear example of how Comey's decisions have called into question the trust and political independence of the FBI. John Cornyn is a leader in the Senate Republican caucus. He was supportive as well, saying the FBI director serves as the pleasure of the president. And the president clearly lost confidence in him. And I just saw that Cornyn tweeted, Democrats were against Comey before

they were for him. So he's making the point that the Trump White House was making a lot when it initially released this news saying, hey, here are all these examples of Democrats criticizing this guy. Yeah. I mean, I got a big fat PDF in my inbox from the White House with all of these quotes of various Democrats saying, you know, that that Comey was no good. Yeah. But you know what, Sam? Some of the some of your old sources, Robbie Mook and Brian Fallon on the Clinton campaign, have all said tonight that they are, you know, not in love with James Comey, but they've described his ouster as terrifying. Yeah, they're not celebrating.

They seem to be concerned. Carrie, one thing I think we should have actually asked before, but just to put it out there, because I've seen a lot of questions about this, the president does have the right to fire the director of the FBI, but isn't the FBI director's term set up in a way to kind of give him that independence? Oh, absolutely.

After J. Edgar Hoover, whose legacy has loomed large over the Bureau for many, many decades, the Senate decided that the FBI director needed to serve a 10-year term that insulates him or her from politics in any one president's term. And so it's extremely unusual for an FBI director to be fired. In my memory, it only happened once when Bill Clinton fired his FBI director who had been jammed up for alleged financial improprieties, the spending of government resources and the like. That was controversial at the time. This firing of James Comey today seems like it's going to be even more of a firestorm moving forward. So, like, why would they do it? Why would they do it now when there's no way that this isn't

going to blow up into a massive controversy that, you know, makes it look like the Trump administration, the president is trying to hide from something? Was it worse to leave him? You know, I can't answer that question at this point. I certainly have a lot of questions about why this was done, why it was done now, and why it came as a major surprise to virtually everybody inside the FBI. And I think across official Washington, we heard statements from senators on key committees indicating they got a call from the White House at 5.30 at night tonight, shortly before this went down. The FBI director is actually not even in Washington. He's been in Los Angeles for an event, and they had to track him down there to find out he'd been fired.

It's a startling turn of events. And to get that point of whether this does more harm than good, you know, that Nixonian term, Leahy said it, several other Democrats said it as well, kind of shorthand, that's referring to Richard Nixon's decision as the Watergate investigation was picking up to fire the special prosecutor to try and slow that investigation down. That's, of course, something that clearly backfired for Nixon and caused a lot more public support to go against him. Of course, we have no idea what the heart of this investigation is. So those comparisons kind of stop at a certain point. But that's certainly something that a lot of people in Washington immediately went to. Well, this has certainly raised a host of new questions about the Russia investigation,

what's being done, who's being asked questions, what the next steps are, who's under surveillance, whose emails are being monitored. Is former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn sharing any interesting information with the FBI or anyone else, none of these questions are going to go away. And in fact, they've been jumpstarted by the firing of the FBI director tonight. Who's in charge of an investigation like this when the director gets fired or leaves? So the deputy director is a guy named Andrew McCabe. He's a career FBI official, made his bones handling terrorism issues in the FBI's Washington field office, one of the biggest. He's well-respected among many agents in the Bureau, but some Republican

senators on Capitol Hill are not a fan of his, including Charles Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who's been asking a lot of questions about McCabe's wife, who unsuccessfully ran for political office as a Democrat. So it's not clear how long he's going to be in charge at the Bureau, but this is a Senate confirmable position, and it's going to take a long time to get through both an FBI background check process and then the Senate confirmation process. I can't even imagine what that Senate confirmation process is going to be like, because the stakes are so high. The politics around this is so heated. some fashion, whether that deal includes explicitly or implicitly the appointment of a special prosecutor or something else, you are going to have to make a deal, even though I think, and you tell me if I'm wrong, Scott, under the Senate rules, the FBI director nominee,

whoever that is for President Trump, would only need 51 votes to be confirmed. If they're able to peel off people like Richard Burr that you mentioned, and Lindsey Graham and some other Republicans who are concerned about national security and independence of law enforcement, they could run into some trouble here. that Comey was in L.A. for a speaking appointment. L.A. local news now has a helicopter over James Comey's SUV as he drives down the freeway. No, it's not white. It's black. Okay. So it's not a white Ford Bronco. It is not a white Ford Bronco. Can I add this to, Liz, I met James Comey 12 or 13 years ago when he was the top federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, prosecuting Martha Stewart, prosecuting gang members. He had a reputation that was unsurpassed. And he went on to become the Deputy Attorney General under President George W.

Bush, later came to fame for standing up for the rule of law in a crisis, possible crisis during the Bush years over wiretapping and legal permissions for wiretapping. This guy has been spotless for decades. And the notion that his FBI career and his law enforcement career end in this manner at the hands of President Donald Trump is really something else. Well, and it also, it seems like possibly standing on principle, carving his own path that made his reputation is the thing that's being used against him now in this memo to fire him. Well, the thing was, his handling of the Clinton email matter infuriated a lot of people who might have been much more vocal at his firing. To wit, Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. She is a champion of law enforcement and national security efforts,

but she's also a fierce partisan and friend of Hillary Clinton. And she has been deeply, deeply disturbed by Comey's handling of the Clinton email matter. Her statement tonight on his ouster was really mild. Yeah, that really struck me amid all the Democratic concern and outrage and saying we need a special prosecutor. She was pretty terse, saying the president called her and indicated he'd be removing Comey, saying the FBI needs a change. The next FBI director must be strong and independent and will receive a fair hearing in the Judiciary Committee. I feel like that says a lot by not saying that much. So one more thought experiment before we go. Do you think Hillary Clinton would have fired James Comey? I think it would have been impossible for Hillary Clinton to fire James Comey, in part because of his handling of her investigation, it would have had too high a political price.

And that is why before the election, when many people in Washington and outside thought Hillary Clinton would win the election, some Democrats were telling me they expected President Obama might fire James Comey before Hillary Clinton took office. I always thought that was unlikely, but it was possible. Became highly unlikely after November 6th, I guess. Well, we're in the era when everything is a surprise and every day brings something new in 2017. All right. That is a wrap for us today. Really, this time, we mean it. We're going to go to sleep. You all should go to sleep. And we will discuss more of this and all of this week's political news on our Thursday roundup. Keep up with us on Twitter, Facebook,

Instagram, all at NPR Politics, as well as all of our various handles. And as always, please support the podcast by supporting your local public radio station. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. And I'm Keri Johnson, the justice correspondent. Thank goodness for Keri Johnson. Thank you, Keri. My pleasure. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.