Just dropped · Trial Balloon · Ep. 194
What Just Happened?
“Days before he was fired, James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, asked the Justice Department for a significant increase in money and personnel for the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Comey asked for the resources during a meeting last week with Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who wrote the Justice Department’s memo that was used to justify the firing of the F.B.I. director this week.”
Washington Post: “Capitol Hill was roiled Wednesday by the aftershocks of President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James B. Comey, as Senate Democrats began the process of slowing committee business and renewed calls for an independent investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.”
“Democrats invoked an obscure Senate rule that prevents committee hearings from lasting more than two hours after the Senate convenes. The move will cause Wednesday’s committee business — including nomination hearings for three deputies to Attorney General Jeff Sessions — to shut down around lunchtime.”
In these trying times, New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg says advertisers have to step up to support the news media:
So, yeah, America’s Advertisers, I’m talking about democracy, and your role in it. News flash: You have one. Let me explain.
We are still very much in the midst of a fascinating, often exciting but sometimes scary digital transformation in which advertising dollars are moving to Google and Facebook in a hurry.
But as those dollars are moving toward Google and Facebook, they are often moving away from quality news and information providers, starving them of the direct digital revenue they need to pay for fact-based news gathering. Real news costs real money; fake news comes cheap.
However well-intentioned an idea, it will never happen. The reason advertisers are moving to Google and Facebook — and away from news sites — is that it just works better.
The digital news media needs a better business model. Pleading with advertisers to support news — against their own financial interests — is just not a viable long term strategy.
The membership model works much better. Publishers are directly accountable to their readers. That’s it.
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Esquire: “In a day of truly cinematic developments from the executive branch, one nearly slipped by. Journalist Dan Heyman, a producer for Public News Service, approached Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price and his colleague Kellyanne Conway at the capitol building in West Virginia to ask them a question about the American Health Care Act. A few minutes later, he was arrested.”
“Preliminary eye-witness reports suggest that capitol police were unaware Heyman was a member of the press. He was reportedly detained after getting too close to Price and Conway. Heyman was charged with ‘willful destruction of state government processes’ by the capitol police and held in a regional jail for several hours. He was released on $5,000 bond.”
John Cassidy: “At a time like this, it is important to express things plainly. On Tuesday evening, Donald Trump acted like a despot. Without warning or provocation, he summarily fired the independent-minded director of the F.B.I., James Comey. Comey had been overseeing an investigation into whether there was any collusion between Trump’s Presidential campaign and the government of Russia. With Comey out of the way, Trump can now pick his own man (or woman) to run the Bureau, and this person will have the authority to close down that investigation.”
“That is what has happened. It amounts to a premeditated and terrifying attack on the American system of government. Quite possibly, it will usher in a constitutional crisis. Even if it doesn’t, it represents the most unnerving turn yet in what is a uniquely unnerving Presidency.”
“Things like this are not supposed to happen in a liberal democracy, especially in one that takes pride, as the United States does, in safeguards put in place against the arbitrary exercise of power.”
For members: Will Republicans Step Up to Protect Our Democracy?
James Hohmann: “Trump doesn’t grasp it yet, but firing Comey will only lead to more, and louder, questions about Russia, as well as what exactly Trump knew about Flynn and when he knew it. Sometimes it turns out that the simplest explanation is the correct one. Is it possible that the president kept his national security adviser in the White House for 18 days after he’d been warned by the acting attorney general that he had been ‘compromised’ and was vulnerable to ‘blackmail’ by Russia because he had authorized the conversations in question?”
“Somewhere Dick Nixon is smiling.”
— Trump confidant Roger Stone, quoted by the New York Times, on the firing of FBI Director James Comey.
John Harwood: “President Trump has made an enormous bet that takes the entire Republican agenda hostage and could even shorten his time in office.”
“His bet is that now, with James Comey under fire across the political spectrum, he could fire the FBI director investigating his campaign and associates with a minimum of blowback.”
“The muted initial reaction from many Republicans offered encouragement to the White House. But subsequent criticism, as the news sank in, from the Republican senator leading the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation and others underscored the risks facing Trump.”
James Hohmann: “Every piece of Trump’s agenda just became harder to get through Congress. Democrats will be less inclined than ever to work with this president, and the liberal base will become even less tolerant of red state incumbents collaborating with him. It’s going to be really hard to get to 60 votes for anything Trump wants for a while. Whoever Trump nominates as Comey’s replacement will face a brutal confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. It will get saturation-level media coverage.”
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From the Articles of Impeachment adopted by House Judiciary Committee on July 27, 1974:
Richard M. Nixon, using the powers of his high office, engaged personally and through his close subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or plan designed to delay, impede, and obstruct the investigation of such illegal entry; to cover up, conceal and protect those responsible; and to conceal the existence and scope of other unlawful covert activities.
The means used to implement this course of conduct or plan included one or more of the following… interfering or endeavouring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the office of Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and Congressional Committees.”
Gerald Seib: “Amid the controversy over the firing of the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the key players in Washington suddenly are a small group of moderate and independent-minded Republican senators whose support, or lack thereof, now becomes the crucial factor for President Donald Trump.”
“Those senators—perhaps fewer than 10 in all—will, more than anyone, determine whether the probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election now moves toward an independent counsel or some other independent body. They also will determine whether or not a new FBI director can be confirmed without a deal being struck on a new path for that Russia inquiry.”
Rick Klein: “In a presidency defined by the unprecedented, this is a big deal, bigger even than politics itself. These are republic-defining, Constitution-preserving stakes, courtesy of a president who has defied convention and tradition and pushed the boundaries of appropriate conduct so consistently that he has caused his motivations to be questioned even when circumstances don’t look anything like this.”
“In this case, though, President Trump would have us believe that he decided to dismiss FBI Director James Comey organically and innocently, based on sincere outrage about the way he handled the investigation that may have handed him the presidency. Trump fired Comey in the middle of an active, sprawling investigation into his campaign’s contacts and connections with Russia, an investigation that the president himself declared to be a ‘total hoax’ and a ‘taxpayer funded charade’ less than 24 hours earlier. Trump and his attorney general, who was supposed to have recused himself from all matters regarding Russia and Hillary Clinton, of course celebrated Comey’s actions back when they benefited their political cause, and are now throwing Democrats’ words blasting Comey back at him.”
“These are moments for truth and of truth for public servants, inside the Department of Justice, the Congress and even the White House, and regardless of political persuasion. Perhaps it all ends as it’s supposed to end, with a real investigation by an unimpeachable professional replacement at the FBI. Plus, Trump can’t fire Congress, at least not this easily. Trump distills almost everything to politics, the for-us-or-against-us combat in which he relishes. This now transcends that. At stake is the credibility of the federal government, period, end of story. The president doesn’t get to write the next chapter by himself.”
New York Times: “Not since Watergate has a president dismissed the person leading an investigation bearing on him, and Mr. Trump’s decision late Tuesday afternoon drew instant comparisons to the ‘Saturday Night Massacre‘ in October 1973, when President Richard M. Nixon ordered the firing of Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor looking into the so-called third-rate burglary that would eventually bring Nixon down.”
“The decision stunned members of both parties, who saw it as a brazen act sure to inflame an already politically explosive investigation.”
“Trump may have assumed that Democrats so loathed Mr. Comey because of his actions last year in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server that they would support or at least acquiesce to the dismissal. But if so, he miscalculated.”
Axios lists the people comparing Trump to Nixon.
For members: ‘Impeach the Cox Sacker’
The Washington Post notes that White House press secretary Sean Spicer would only answer questions about the firing of FBI Director James Comey in the dark:
After Spicer spent several minutes hidden in the bushes behind these sets, Janet Montesi, an executive assistant in the press office, emerged and told reporters that Spicer would answer some questions, as long as he was not filmed doing so. Spicer then emerged.
“Just turn the lights off. Turn the lights off,” he ordered. “We’ll take care of this… Can you just turn that light off?”
Spicer got his wish and was soon standing in near darkness between two tall hedges, with more than a dozen reporters closely gathered around him. For 10 minutes, he responded to a flurry of questions, vacillating between light-hearted asides and clear frustration with getting the same questions over and over again.
Meanwhile, Deadline Hollywood reports that Melissa McCarthy is hosting Saturday Night Live this weekend.
Mike Allen: “Republicans around town, and even some White House officials, tell me they’re baffled by President Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey in the middle of his Russia investigation — and with the explanation that it’s because of his handling of Hillary’s email, which Trump had praised him for in the past.”
“Even some White House officials believe that the likely result will be a special counsel, which Democrats are now pushing nearly in unison.”
Playbook: “Democrats and many Republicans are furious at Trump for firing the FBI director. Leave aside any lingering concerns with Jim Comey’s performance. The optics of firing Comey the way Trump did is almost too reckless to believe, according to the insiders we’ve spoken to. One senior Republican aide put it this way: It’s almost as if Trump was courting controversy with both parties by handling the situation the way he did.”
The AP reports that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said last night that he told Trump in a phone conversation “You are making a big mistake.”
David Ignatius: “The Comey putsch heightens the mystery at the center of the Flynn case: Why Trump didn’t react sooner to warnings about Flynn’s involvement with Russia. Why didn’t Trump listen to President Barack Obama’s caution against hiring him? Why did Trump wait 18 days before removing his national security adviser after urgent advice that Flynn could be blackmailed?”
“After Comey’s dismissal, critics are likely to examine more sharp-edged theories of the Flynn case and other Russia matters. One obvious possibility is that Trump didn’t take action earlier because he already knew about Flynn’s Dec. 29 discussion with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about sanctions, and knew that Flynn had misrepresented the Kislyak call to Vice President-elect Mike Pence.”
Rudy Giuliani told The Atlantic that “he is not up for consideration to replace FBI Director James Comey, whose firing by President Trump set off a political maelstrom on Tuesday.”
Said Giuliani: “I’m not a candidate for FBI director. The president’s not gonna ask me and I’m not gonna be FBI director.”
Washington Post: “All Democratic senators have been asked by Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) to be in the Senate chamber when the legislative day formally begins at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday.”
“The rare early-morning appearance by the entire Democratic caucus is a symbolic attempt to sit, watch and listen as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) makes his traditional morning speech. The hope, Democratic aides said, is that McConnell will weigh in on Trump’s decision to fire Comey.”
“If McConnell says nothing new about Comey, Schumer is expected to use his morning floor speech to call out Republicans for supporting Trump’s controversial move. Schumer also plans to convene a caucus meeting Wednesday morning so that Democrats can discuss a more formal response.”
Taegan Goddard
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire -- which for more than two decades has been one of the nation's most influential political news sites.
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