The president, Mr. Comey told associates, was “outside the realm of normal,” even “crazy.”
‘Enough Was Enough’: How Festering Anger at Comey Ended in His Firing
By MAGGIE HABERMAN, GLENN THRUSH, MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and PETER BAKER
MAY 10, 2017
WASHINGTON — By the end, neither of them thought much of the other.
After President Trump accused his predecessor in March of wiretapping him, James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, was flabbergasted. The president, Mr. Comey told associates, was “outside the realm of normal,” even “crazy.”
For his part, Mr. Trump fumed when Mr. Comey publicly dismissed the sensational wiretapping claim. In the weeks that followed, he grew angrier and began talking about firing Mr. Comey. After stewing last weekend while watching Sunday talk shows at his New Jersey golf resort, Mr. Trump decided it was time. There was “something wrong with” Mr. Comey, he told aides.
The collision between president and F.B.I. director that culminated with Mr. Comey’s stunning dismissal on Tuesday had been a long time coming. To a president obsessed with loyalty, Mr. Comey was a rogue operator who could not be trusted as the F.B.I. investigated Russian ties to Mr. Trump’s campaign. To a lawman obsessed with independence, Mr. Trump was the ultimate loose cannon, making irresponsible claims on Twitter and jeopardizing the bureau’s credibility.
The White House, in a series of shifting and contradictory accounts, first said Mr. Trump decided to fire Mr. Comey because the attorney general and his deputy recommended it. By Wednesday, it had amended the timeline to say that the president had actually been thinking about getting rid of the F.B.I. director as far back as November, after he won the election, and then became “strongly inclined” after Mr. Comey testified before Congress last week.
For public consumption, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a White House spokeswoman, said on Wednesday that Mr. Trump acted because of the “atrocities” committed by Mr. Comey during last year’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email. But in private, aides said, Mr. Trump has been nursing a collection of festering grievances, including Mr. Comey’s handling of the Russia investigation and the perceived disloyalty over the wiretapping claim.
“He’d lost confidence in Director Comey and, frankly, he’d been considering letting Director Comey go since the day he was elected,” Ms. Huckabee Sanders said.
Mr. Comey’s fate was sealed by his latest testimony about the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s efforts to sway the 2016 election and the Clinton email inquiry. Mr. Trump burned as he watched, convinced that Mr. Comey was grandstanding. He was particularly irked when Mr. Comey said he was “mildly nauseous” to think that his handling of the email case had influenced the election, which Mr. Trump took to demean his own role in history.
At that point, Mr. Trump began talking about firing him. He and his aides thought they had an opening because Mr. Comey gave an incorrect account of how Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Mrs. Clinton, transferred emails to her husband’s laptop, an account the F.B.I. later corrected. They also assumed that because Democrats were mad at Mrs. Clinton for recently blaming her loss on Mr. Comey, there might not be as much objection if the president fired him.
At first, Mr. Trump, who is fond of vetting his decisions with a wide circle of staff members, advisers and friends, kept his thinking to a small circle, venting his anger to Vice President Mike Pence; the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II; and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who all told him they generally backed dismissing Mr. Comey.
Another early sounding board was Keith Schiller, Mr. Trump’s longtime director of security and now a member of the White House staff, who would later be tasked with delivering the manila envelope containing Mr. Comey’s letter of dismissal to F.B.I. headquarters, an indication of just how personal the matter was to the president.
The chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, who has been sharply critical of the F.B.I., questioned whether the time was right to dismiss Mr. Comey, arguing that doing it later would lessen the backlash, and urged him to delay, according to two people familiar with his thinking. Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, at one point mulled similar concerns, but was supportive of the move to the president.
Mr. Trump was adamant, denouncing Mr. Comey’s conduct in the Clinton and Russia investigations, and left aides on Monday with the impression that he planned to take action the next day. He met that day with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who were at the White House on other business. White House officials said that the two raised concerns about Mr. Comey with the president and that he told them to put their recommendations in writing.
At the same time, he signaled his thinking on Twitter, essentially calling for the investigation into the Russian meddling to be halted. “The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?” he wrote on Monday afternoon.
Early Tuesday, he made his final decision, keeping many aides, including the president’s communications team and network of surrogates, in the dark until news of the firing leaked out late in the afternoon. About an hour before the news broke, an administration official involved in communications and strategic planning joked that the relatively news-free events of Monday and Tuesday represented the start of a much-needed weeklong respite from the staff’s nonstop work over the past few months.
As the announcement was imminent, Mr. Trump called several congressional leaders from both parties to let them know. He caught Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, on his mobile phone as the lawmaker was walking home after a vote. Mr. Graham told him that a fresh start was good for the F.B.I.
But Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader who had been harshly critical of Mr. Comey for his conduct during last year’s election, told Mr. Trump it would be a mistake. Mr. Trump seemed surprised by the reaction, possibly assuming that Democrats would be happy to remove the F.B.I. director some blamed for Mrs. Clinton’s loss.
Another Democrat he reached was Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. “When I talked to the president last night,” she recalled, “he said: ‘The department’s a mess. I asked Rosenstein and Sessions to look into it. Rosenstein sent me a memo. I accepted the recommendation to fire him.’”
Mrs. Feinstein noted that Mr. Rosenstein had just been confirmed by the Senate. “I mean, my goodness. This is a man who’s been there for two weeks. So I’m a bit turned off on Mr. Rosenstein.”
In letters released Tuesday evening, Mr. Trump explained the firing by citing Mr. Comey’s handling of the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server — a justification that was rich in irony, White House officials acknowledged, considering that as recently as two weeks ago, the president appeared at a rally where he was serenaded with chants of “Lock her up!”
On Wednesday, the president and his staff added to their criticism of Mr. Comey’s conduct on the Clinton inquiry to include a wider denunciation of his performance. “He wasn’t doing a good job,” Mr. Trump said, before entering a meeting with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov. “Very simply, he was not doing a good job.”
Yet even in his letter to Mr. Comey, the president mentioned the Russia inquiry, writing that “I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation.” And that reflected, White House aides said, what they conceded had been his obsession over the investigation Mr. Trump believes is threatening his larger agenda.
Looking back, the two men may have been destined to clash. Five days after Mr. Trump was elected, he said in an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes” that he had not made up his mind about keeping Mr. Comey. But during the transition, Mr. Trump and his aides asked Mr. Comey to remain on as director.
Despite Mr. Trump’s apparent endorsement, Mr. Comey remained skeptical about his future. He believed his unwillingness to put loyalty to Mr. Trump over his role as F.B.I. director could ultimately lead to his ouster.
“With a president who seems to prize personal loyalty above all else and a director with absolute commitment to the Constitution and pursuing investigations wherever the evidence led, a collision was bound to happen,” Daniel C. Richman, a close Comey adviser and former federal prosecutor, said on Wednesday.
Still, according to associates, Mr. Comey thought the president was unlikely to get rid of him because that might be interpreted as a conclusion that the F.B.I. director was wrong to announce shortly before the election that he was re-examining the email case, which would call into question the legitimacy of Mr. Trump’s victory.
While Mr. Trump publicly insisted that he had confidence in Mr. Comey, the hostility toward the F.B.I. director in the West Wing in recent weeks was palpable, aides said, with advisers describing an almost ritualistic need to criticize the Russia investigation to assuage an anxious and angry president.
Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime informal adviser to Mr. Trump who has been under F.B.I. scrutiny as part of the Russia inquiry, was among those who urged the president to fire Mr. Comey, people briefed on the discussions said.
Mr. Trump denied on Twitter on Wednesday morning that he had spoken to Mr. Stone about the F.B.I. director, and Mr. Stone declined to describe his interactions with the president in an interview. But two longtime Trump associates with knowledge of the matter said the two had recently discussed their dissatisfaction with Mr. Comey and his inquiry.
Whatever the specifics, Mr. Stone ultimately reflected the president’s view of Mr. Comey. As Mr. Stone put it shortly after the dismissal became public on Tuesday, “There was a sense in the White House, I believe, that enough was enough when it came to this guy.”
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