Parsing The Comey Firing
In analyzing Tuesday’s firing of FBI Director James Comey by Trump, it’s useful to lay out the most charitable and the most uncharitable interpretations of what transpired.
The least charitable interpretation is that Trump, incensed and fearful that the FBI’s “Russian interference” investigation was close to turning up damning material on him or his associates, moved to fire Comey so as to impede that investigation. The surface rationale for the firing, as articulated by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, was a pretextual ruse devised to give Trump an excuse to get rid of Comey for purely self-interested reasons. Rosenstein, thereby, was complicit in some kind of Trump-directed scheme or coverup.
The most charitable interpretation is that the rationale for the firing laid out by Rosenstein — that Comey’s handling of the Clinton email sever investigation was intolerable, that his unrepentant attitude was inexcusable, and that there was wide bipartisan consensus that he should be ousted — can be accepted on its face. Rosenstein’s recommendation was made for the sole purpose of restoring integrity to the FBI, as it was honestly concluded that Comey’s continued presence would inhibit the ability of the FBI to regain the public trust.
It’s unlikely that either of these interpretations are strictly true.
For one thing, prior to being appointed by Trump as Deputy Attorney General, Rosenstein served throughout the entirety of Barack Obama’s presidency as U.S. Attorney from Maryland. He was confirmed by the Senate on April 25 by a vote of 94 to 6.
In order to believe the least-charitable interpretation, you’d have to believe that Rosenstein willfully participated in an obstruction scheme he knew to be pretextual, so as to insulate Trump from criminal liability. Anything’s possible in these blinkered times, and it’d be unwise to fully discount that possibility, but it at the very least would strain credulity for Rosenstein to have done such a thing. Once again: it’s certainly possible that Rosenstein knowingly took part in a devious plot. But there are also alternate explanations that don’t require the attribution of such blatant malice to Rosenstein.
The odd thing is that Rosenstein’s stated rationale almost perfectly mirrors what Democrats have been saying for months about Comey’s alleged misdeeds.
If you thought that Comey’s conduct with regard to the Clinton email investigation was so egregious that it warranted his firing, then Trump has just attained the outcome you claimed you wanted. If you still have objections to Comey’s firing, then the objections must be rooted in some other factor. One other factor that keeps getting cited is timing. It’s true that the timing of the firing raises a number of questions; Comey wasn’t even in Washington D.C. when the order was handed down. It’s also true that Comey formally confirmed the existence of the FBI’s “Russian interference” investigation on March 20, and that investigation is reportedly ongoing.
But here’s another “timing”-related consideration: Rosenstein only took office as Deputy Attorney General on April 26. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that it was always going to be in the Deputy Attorney General’s portfolio to examine the conduct of Comey and render a recommendation as to his continued employment. If that’s the case, then the timeline makes some degree of sense. The firing would have come 13 days after Rosenstein took office, which seems like a reasonable span of time for him to make a considered judgment about Comey. By this reading, it’s feasible that Trump didn’t immediately dispatch with Comey on January 20 because he didn’t have the requisite personnel in place to furnish that decision. Once the requisite personnel were in place, he furnished the decision.
To reiterate once again, it’s still perfectly possible that Rosenstein was party to a scheme and that the public explanation for the termination was a crock. However, people taking that view really ought to consider the implications of their accusations, and whether those implications comport with what is known about Rosenstein.
Much of the outrage about the termination stems not from the dismissal of Comey, who is widely disliked and distrusted, but from the sense that it seems to confirm that there’s “fire” beneath the “smoke” of the Trump/Russia investigation. For instance, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) said Tuesday night that the reason the firing was so outrageous in his view was that it “goes right to the heart of the compromise of our election by the Russians.” If you accept the premise that the 2016 election was “compromised” by “the Russians,” then it stands to reason you’d be doubly exercised about this firing.
However, the “compromising” of the 2016 election by Russia is far from established fact. Just last week, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) stated that there is still no evidence to her knowledge of Trump/Russia collusion.
Those insistent that Russian subterfuge markedly affected the election outcome usually invoke words like “influence” — Russia “influenced” the election — which of course could mean just about anything. (Senators Sasse, Klobuchar, Whitehouse, and others all repeatedly used that particular word during the latest Russia hearing this week.) Their allegations are losing specificity over time, because the underlying contention — that Trump campaign officials colluded with Russian officials to hatch an epic geopolitical conspiracy — gets less plausible by the day, or at least, the continued lack of evidence for the conspiracy suggests its implausibility.
That’s partially why it’s slightly difficult to conjure up panicked indignation over Comey’s firing if you don’t view the underlying “Russia conspiracy” as having merit.
But to be clear: the firing can still be wholly condemnable even if it doesn’t validate the underlying “Russia conspiracy” narrative. It’s always been possible that Trump, given his rash demeanor, could take some action in response to Russia-related political pressure that is discrediting on its own terms, notwithstanding how it bears on the broader “Trump/Russia” thesis. Put another way, Trump firing Comey could be worthy of condemnation irrespective of the underlying “Russian interference” narrative which some are so hell-bent on proving. Firing the FBI director is an extreme act, and could only be justified under extreme circumstances; as yet Trump has failed to supply a rationale for why the present circumstances are so extreme that the firing should be viewed as warranted.
That said, the pattern so far is that Trump officials’ incompetence or political miscalculation stemming from the wider Russia controversy gets portrayed as evidence that the conspiracy is real and discovery of the final proof is imminent. Mike Flynn, for instance, commits a political blunder by apparently misrepresenting his communications with the Russian ambassador, actions which came to light at least in part due to scrutiny regarding Russia. Those revelations are noteworthy and perhaps even prosecutable, but they don’t validate the underlying conspiracy which liberals have attempted so desperately to unearth.
It’s worth repeating the underlying conspiracy, just because the true extremism of the charges can sometimes get lost in the noise: the idea is that Trump, now the sitting president, committed treason as a candidate by allying with a hostile foreign state to thwart his election rival and seize power, in part to do the bidding of his sinister Russian benefactors. Large swaths of the American population currently believe some version of that theory, in part due to the drumbeat of Russia hysteria that has been on full blast for approximately ten months.
Just when you think Russian mania has subsided, some event which can be connected to it explodes into the news cycle, re-inflating the bubble once again. Trump’s firing of Comey raises a host of legitimate questions, but those questions more have to do with Trump’s impulsivity and authoritarian proclivities than his supposed “Russian ties.”
Malfeasance committed in response to Russia-related pressure might be severe enough to warrant censure or even impeachment — if Trump firing Comey amounts to an act of obstruction, then that would be blameworthy notwithstanding the veracity of the underlying “Russia conspiracy” thesis. That distinction might seem trivial, but it’s worth being crystal clear about, otherwise those who’ve been peddling nonstop hysterical nonsense will wrongly feel vindicated.
