How to Lose a Presidency in 100(0) Days

Today’s Pnut is a special edition addressing the firing of FBI Director James Comey. We have writers all over the world, which means we monitor the news right until the moment we press ‘send’ (which we are pressing a little bit later than normal today–our apologies!). We hope you enjoy the latest updates from this important story. Thank you for reading Daily Pnut.

President Trump stunned the nation late Tuesday afternoon when he fired FBI Director James Comey. Rather than handling the dismissal personally, or more discreetly, the president sent his former body guard, Keith Schiller, now the White House’s Director of Oval Office Operations, to hand deliver the termination letter in a manila envelope to FBI headquarters. Comey was in Los Angeles at the time, speaking to FBI agents. The news of his firing flashed on television screens in the room. He was “caught flat-footed,” an anonymous FBI source said.

Many view the timing of the sack as suspect. It came one day after former acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified about warnings given to the White House about Michael Flynn and two days before Comey was scheduled to appear before Congress to discuss worldwide threats. Just a few days before the November election, Trump praised Comey for his handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server (and for his late October announcement that the investigation had been re-opened). “It took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where they’re trying to protect her from criminal prosecution,” Trump said at a campaign rally. “It took a lot of guts.” (Watch Trump effusively praising Comey over and over and over at his 2016 campaign rallies.)  

According to two of his advisors, the President had become increasingly enraged over the continuing investigation into his alleged Russia connections and the fact that Comey did not support his claims that Obama wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower. Trump was frustrated by his inability to control the growing narrative around Russia and had been considering firing the FBI director for more than a week.  

The rationale for Comey’s termination–that his mishandling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server flouted Justice Department policy and damaged public trust in the agency—is spurious. If that is in fact the reason, why did Trump not fire Comey as soon he took office in January? If Trump was so dissatisfied with Comey’s performance, why would he single him out for praise at a gathering of law enforcement officials at the White House on January 22? We hope that anyone elected to be the president of the United States knows that he or she is no more above the law than any other citizen, right? Well, when Trump picks Comey’s successor (ah, the perks of the job!) and we see where the Russia investigation ends up, we fear that Trump will make it all too clear that our hope was greatly misplaced.

Related Reads: 

• The White House made public a memorandum from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that outlined the reasons for Comey’s dismissal (NYT)
• Federal prosecutors issue subpoenas to associates of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn (CNN Exclusive)
• Senate Russia investigators have sent a request to FinCEN at the Treasury Department for any information related to President Trump or his top officials and campaign aides. FinCEN is the federal agency that has been investigating allegations of foreign money-laundering through purchases of US real estate (CNN Exclusive)
• President Trump will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the White House on Wednesday (USA Today). The meeting is entirely closed to the press (ABC News)
• Reactions from members of Congress over Comey’s termination (Reuters)
• White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says “it’s time to move on” from Trump/Russia investigation (Business Insider)
• White House dismisses questions about why it waited to fire Flynn (Chicago Tribune)
• The French were prepared for election hackers (NYT)

South Korea Elects New President: On Wednesday, South Korea’s new president Moon Jae-in was sworn in a day after his decisive win. Lasting just ten minutes, his inauguration speech was low-key. The former human rights lawyer and son of North Korean refugees stated (in a sharp departure from his ousted predecessor) that he would consider a visit to Pyongyang under the right circumstances. He has also promised to reform South Korea’s family-run conglomerates, known as chaebols, which currently dominate the country’s economy.

He also said he wanted to meet US President Trump and that he would have “serious negotiations” with the US and China over the controversial deployment of the US anti-missile system THAAD. North Korea has not yet made an official statement on Moon’s victory or his remarks, but had previously hinted Moon was its preferred candidate.

• Congo’s Kabila Does Not Adhere to Interim Agreement (DW)
• Turkey Hopes US Will End Support of Syrian Kurdish YPG (Reuters)
• Fecal Cocktails (“Poopootovs”) Thrown as Protests in Venezuela Continue (Reuters)
• More Than 250 People Feared Dead Following 2 Mediterranean Shipwrecks (TIME)

On Twitter, regarding Comey’s dismissal:

“This FBI director has sought for years to jail me on account of my political activities. If I can oppose his firing, so can you.” –Edward Snowden

“FUN FACT: President Nixon never fired the Director of the FBI #FBIDirector #notNixonian” –Official Twitter account of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum

Comey’s Firing–Comparisons to Watergate?: Trump’s decision to fire James Comey drew immediate comparisons to the “Saturday Night Massacre” in October 1973, when President Richard M. Nixon ordered the firing of Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor investigating the so-called ‘third-rate burglary’ at the Watergate Hotel and Office Complex Building. What may be important to consider today, 44 years hence, is the prevailing mindset apparently existing in both of these White Houses.

Egil Krogh was a young staffer in the Nixon White House in 1973. He pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy and served over four years in prison for his part in one of the most blatant of the dirty tricks orchestrated by Nixon. Writing in an opinion piece for The New York Times in 2007, Krogh said: “I finally realized that what had gone wrong in the Nixon White House was a meltdown in personal integrity. Without it, we failed to understand the constitutional limits on presidential power and comply with statutory law….As President Nixon himself said to David Frost during an interview, ‘When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.’ To this day the implications of this statement are staggering.” Fast forward to today, when the United States has a president who said before an adoring crowd that he could shoot someone on the streets of New York City, and he still wouldn’t lose any of his supporters.

Krogh concluded his piece: “In early 2001, after President Bush was inaugurated, I sent the new White House staff a memo explaining the importance of never losing their personal integrity. In a section addressed specifically to the White House lawyers, I said that integrity required them to constantly ask, is it legal? And I recommended that they rely on well-established legal precedent and not some hazy, loose notion of what phrases like ‘national security’ and ‘commander in chief’ could be tortured into meaning. I wonder if they received my message.”

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