Trump Fires Comey

President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said.

"The president has accepted the recommendation of the Attorney General and the deputy Attorney General regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," Sean Spicer told reporters in the briefing room.

NOW TIMES CHANGE:

Sanctimonious Comeynius the Nauseous

The FBI has a long and dishonorable record of political interference and malfeasance, often associated with its first director, J. Edgar Hoover. He placed his agents on the staffs of the most powerful committees of Congress. He turned the FBI into a political police, infiltrating and disrupting the nation’s “enemies” as he defined them—the USA Communist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, anti-Vietnam War protest organizations, the civil rights movement, the New Left, and even white hate groups like the KKK. 

All became targets of FBI dirty tricks, infiltration, and disruption. And what’s more, Hoover did it on his own authority—ignoring Justice Department guidelines and the recommendations of his superiors—not unlike Comey.

Some say Hoover’s power was rooted in the infamous secret files on members of Congress—known as the director’s “confidential files” that he kept in his inner office. But after Hoover’s death, Congress came to its senses. 

In 1975, it empowered the Church Committee to investigate and rein in the illegal domestic spying activities of the Intelligence Community, specifically including the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And it legislated term limits.

Today the FBI director is nominated by the president and appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate for a 10-year term—10 years, that is, during good behavior and at the pleasure of the president. Following the Church Committee investigations, it was widely believed that the FBI had been brought to heel by superior power emanating from the U.S. Congress.

But that was before 9/11 and the explosive growth of the intelligence agencies and assets over the past 15 year. New powers of surveillance, internal security, and counterterrorism were added across the Intelligence Community, and especially to the FBI’s portfolio and budgets, which mushroomed.

Now comes Director Comey, who was a registered Republican until July, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2013. In a spectacular arrogance of power, Comey put his office in jeopardy, as well as the FBI, wading into the political arena, intervening not once but twice, in the closing days of the presidential election of 2016. But make no mistake about the gravity of his misconduct.

It was a direct assault on the electoral process, even if he says it was not; no matter his intentions, it was an attempt to subvert democracy as it has been practiced in the United States for 240 years.