Deputy Attorney General Threatened To Quit After Trump Pinned Comey Firing On Him
The White House storyline in the Comey firing is falling apart fast.
Immediately after the announcement of James Comey’s firing, the White House tried to pin the blame on the new Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
However, according to a new report in the Washington Post, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein very unhappy with that characterisation and has threatened to resign over the issue.
Based on reporting over the last 24 hours, the true story of Comey’s firing that is emerging directly contradicts the stories the White House has put out.
The White House initially said that the Deputy Attorney General was the force behind the firing of the FBI Director. The Trump administration put forth a small memo penned by Rosenstein that cited Comey’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server. However Rosenstein never actually recommended firing Comey in the memo.
And as multiple news outlets have reported Donald Trump spent the week before Comey’s firing fuming about the FBI Director and eventually made the decision himself. Trump then asked Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to put in writing a rationale for firing the former FBI director, the Post reported.
Here is one of the most compelling segments of the Washinton Post report that included 30 sources:
But the private accounts of more than 30 officials at the White House, the Justice Department, the FBI and on Capitol Hill, as well as Trump confidants and other senior Republicans, paint a conflicting narrative centered on the president’s brewing personal animus toward Comey. Many of those interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to candidly discuss internal deliberations.
Trump was angry that Comey would not support his baseless claim that President Barack Obama had his campaign offices wiretapped. Trump was frustrated when Comey revealed in Senate testimony the breadth of the counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s effort to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election. And he fumed that Comey was giving too much attention to the Russia probe and not enough to investigating leaks to journalists.
The known actions that led to Comey’s dismissal raise as many questions as answers. Why was Sessions involved in discussions about the fate of the man leading the FBI’s Russia investigation, after having recused himself from the probe because he had falsely denied under oath his own past communications with the Russian ambassador?
Why had Trump discussed the Russia probe with the FBI director three times, as he claimed in his letter dismissing Comey, which could have been a violation of Justice Department policies that ongoing investigations generally are not to be discussed with White House officials?
And how much was the timing of Trump’s decision shaped by events spiraling out of his control — such as Monday’s testimony about Russian interference by former acting attorney general Sally Yates, or the fact that Comey last week requested more resources from the Justice Department to expand the FBI’s Russia probe?
According to the report, Trump made the final decision to fire Comey over the weekend at his golf course in New Jersey.
During the daily White House press briefing Wednesday, Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Comey had committed “atrocities” while leading the bureau as the reason for his firing. However, she seemed to contradict that story line when she said that Donald Trump had been considering firing Comey ever since election day.
You can read the full Washington Post report here.
