President Trump lost me when he fired FBI Director James
Comey. Comey may have made some
mistakes, but he was put in an impossible position when both parties nominated deeply
flawed candidates who had potentially carried out criminal acts. I don’t know that Clinton’s misuse of a
private server for government business was so bad, but she did not cooperate
with the FBI investigation, raising questions about whether there was something
more serious that she refused to disclose.
It’s possible that some of the emails dealt with personal financial gain
from her official position, or that they illegally disclosed highly classified
information available on her server to anyone with simple hacking skills.
Trump may have some justification for calling Comey a
“showboat” and for not strictly following FBI guidelines when discussing
Hillary Clinton’s server case last year, but Comey is a good man who was put in
an almost impossible position during the campaign by the accusations about both
candidates. I trust Comey more than I
trust Trump. At the very least, Trump
should have personally informed Comey that he was firing him, rather than
having Comey learn about it from a TV showing news behind him as he was
speaking to FBI agents. It was cowardly
not to tell Comey face to face.
Firing Comey has to intimidate FBI agents working on the
case, no matter what the FBI says.
Whether or not it is actually true, the appearance is that Comey was
fired because he was too committed to finding the truth about the connections
between the Trump campaign and Russia.
FBI agents have to be worried that if they find a “smoking gun” it will
be the end of their careers, as it was for Comey.
The New
Yorker ran a long article about two ways to remove Trump from the
Presidency, impeachment or the 25th Amendment. For impeachment, he would have had to have
committed “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” The 25th Amendment allows removal
of the President when there is an official finding that he “is unable to
discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
Trump’s firing of Comey does not appear to have triggered either of
these processes. He apparently had the
right to fire Comey, and while doing so showed poor judgment, it does not by
itself show that he is unable to discharge the powers of his office.
No doubt Democrats will continue to accumulate evidence that
either of these processes could be triggered against Trump. The FBI investigation and the Senate and
House investigations may turn up evidence that could be used against him. Of course either method is as much political
as it is legal, and the ultimate success or failure would depend on Trump’s
popularity and his support in the House and Senate. If the Democrats pick up enough seats in the
next election to give them a majority, the chances of removing him will
increase.
In any case, Trump is clearly overloading the political system. He apparently enjoys chaos, but the political
system is not set up to deal with this much chaos at once. For the sake of the nation, Trump needs to
calm down. There may be crises that
require immediate, complex action, but this was not one of them. Trump should have laid the groundwork for
firing Comey, rather than surprising everyone, even his own Vice President, and
he should have had a replacement vetted and in line to replace Comey. Failing to do that was poor leadership.
No comments:
Post a Comment