Can Trump fire Comey when Comey is conducting an investigation against Trump?

Great Debates
1

The breaking news that is the root of this question is thisarticle. TLDR, Comey has announced there is an ongoing FBI investigation that is investigating whether Russia actually meaningfully interfered with the election, and whether any of the Trump campaign team committed treason through collusion with Russia.

So this makes Trump look bad. It’s entirely possible the FBI will clear him and all his close advisors, like they cleared Hillary. But the political damage still happens.

So, if Trump fires Comey and then nominates someone for FBI director who publicly says he’s “sure Trump didn’t collude with Russia” or something, how does this work? Congress cannot exercise their Constitutional power to impeach the President if he can just fire anyone conducting any investigation against him.

2

The reality is a little different. The FBI Director serves at the pleasure of the President, and legally speaking Trump could fire him at will.

While that could materially interfere with Congress’s ability to be properly informed on an issue (since a disrupted investigation might be prevented from producing evidence), the reality is that wouldn’t affect whether Congress could use its impeachment power. The constitution offers guidelines for impeachment, but it’s basically left up to the Congress. If a majority of the House agrees to impeach, and then 2/3rds of the Senate votes to convict, the President is removed from office. Thus most people acknowledge impeachment is ultimately a “political decision.”

Since it’s a political decision, the political ramifications of the President using executive branch authority to interfere with an investigation that might implicate him, would be very bad, probably so bad it could result in the President being impeached.

The one good test case we have of this is from Watergate. Nixon decided the Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox was a problem, and ordered his Attorney General, Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused, and then resigned as Attorney General. This made Deputy AG William Ruckelshaus acting AG, he was also ordered to fire Cox and refused, and likewise resigned in protest. So finally acting AG falls to Solicitor General Robert Bork, who considers resigning instead of firing Cox, but ultimately goes along with it and fires him.

This really backfired pretty substantially. A Federal court ruled the firing to be illegal (but there was no immediate remedy.) More importantly, public opinion was big, and for the first time significant numbers of Americans began to support Nixon’s impeachment. This was known as the “Saturday Night Massacre” (it occurred on a Saturday in October 1973), this also soured Nixon’s relationship with many congressional Republicans. Due to the immense public and political pressure, Nixon was pressured into appointing a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski. While there were many more twists and turns between the massacre and Nixon’s resignation in August of 1974, his actions here did him no favors. While I’m not sure Nixon could’ve ever survived Watergate, his firing of Cox definitely did him no favors, it turned more of the country against him in a lasting way, that made people question his honesty and integrity.

Since he was pressured into appointing a new special prosecutor, the firing of Cox also produced little material gain in Nixon’s quest to try and weather the Watergate storm.

I think we’d see a similar thing with Comey’s firing, except right now there has yet to be a true “smoking gun” incident directly linking Trump with Russian election meddling. So if anything, firing Comey at this point could serve as the first step toward both the public and congressional leaders seriously considering impeachment, so it could actually be worse for Trump than the Saturday Night Massacre was for Nixon.

It’s also worth noting that just like firing Cox served little strategic purpose, firing Comey would likewise serve little purpose. The meat of the investigation is being done by career civil servants, whom the President cannot fire at whim. If the President fires Comey, is able to appoint a new FBI Director who is a yes-man, and the FBI director orders the career civil servants to cease their investigation that would be an unprecedented political interference in the workings of the FBI. That in itself, like firing Comey, would build significant support towards impeaching Trump for abuse of power, even without clear evidence linking his campaign to Russian election meddling.

So basically:

  1. Yes, Trump can fire Comey
  2. No, it wouldn’t stop Congress from impeaching him
  3. It would probably make impeachment more likely than if he doesn’t fire Comey
3

There are several parts of your post that I would like to respond to.
[ol]
[li]Yes, the President can fire Comey for pretty much any reason. This would likely not work out well for him.[/li][li]The House could in fact impeach 45 for said firing. The House is the sole body that defines what “high crimes and misdomenors” actually are. This has been mentioned several times on the boards in several different threads.[/li][li]IF Trump did fire Comey for the investigation it wouldn’t be as simple as appointing a crony who would stop the investigation. 45 could try that but the FBI Director must be approved by the Senate.[/li][/ol]

4

Not to address the question of “could he”, but to comment on the notion of “would he” -

I suspect, in the crazy conspiracy theory part of my mind, that Trump sees Comey as being part of his team. After all, Comey was an underling of Guiliani earlier in his career. Before Comey’s Clinton email announcement, Guliani was on the TV talking about a bombshell that was coming, suggesting he knew about what Comey was going to do (how could he possibly know? Hmm, I wonder?) Then Comey makes his announcement, and Trump wins! So, to Trump, Comey is on the team. And, that somehow, Comey will steer the investigation to an outcome that is satisfactory to Trump. Sure, there will be an investigation, Congress will hold hearings, then a report will come out in, oh, maybe 2019? After the midterms? Stating that really they can only find circumstantial evidence, and only some individuals overstepped (Flynn, Manfort), but Trump was not REALLY involved at any detail level. So, no firing of Comey, why would he?

We shall see.

5

Why would Trump fire his co-conspirator?

Mark my words, in the next days or weeks, Comey will say something along the lines of “The FBI investigation is concluded and it turns out we were pretty wrong. Trump is actually a really great dude!” It will be obvious, maybe even blatantly so, that Comey did everything he could to misdirect and interfere with any actual investigation, however congressional Republicans will do nothing about it.

Comey proved the kind of man he was when he said “The result of our enormous thorough criminal investigation into something Hillary did that isn’t even really controversial, let alone illegal, is that the FBI will not pursue criminal charges. That totally unremarkable thing she did that literally every person in her position also did since the technology was available was stupid, arrogant, bitchy, despicable, treasonous, and hateful, but it’s not technically illegal.”

Then he further proved himself when he said “We’re reopening the criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton” like three days before the election when there was literally nothing suggesting there was any reason to, on even the flimsiest of pretexts. Then a couple of hours before the election he said, “okay, nothing changed. Everything’s good!”

No he just proved himself again, when he said “We didn’t inform congress of the months long ongoing criminal investigation into the Trump campaign because of our tradition against commenting on active investigations, especially during political campaigns. Except in rare circumstances when it’s in the public interest!” Apparently it was in the public interest to announce an investigation into Hillary before they even read the emails to see there was no new information there, but it wasn’t in the public interest to inform Americans that they were investigating a foreign government using its spy agencies to influence the election.

Please spare me. Comey is no friend to America. He cast his lot in with Trump at least a year ago, and there’s no way the dude who did all that stuff above is honestly seeking the truth about whether Russia and the Trump campaign conspired to undermine the American democracy. This is a coldly calculated power play that is designed to take the wind out of the sails of any serious, real investigation into Russia’s collaboration with Trump.

Edit - or what Icarus just said above. Damn, beaten to the punch!

6

Hillary was the only person I’m familiar with, in her position at that level of government, to have used a private email server maintained by a minimally competent family friend who she got a special government job for and ran out of her New York residence with minimal security set up.

There’s a genuine difference between that and Colin Powell, Condi Rice and John Kerry using private email accounts (Kerry switched to his state.gov account once this scandal broke), because those email accounts were hosted by large professional IT enterprises, not on a private server in a private residence. Based on the number of successful hacks and leaks we get from government, a gmail or even yahoo (I know they were hacked) email account is probably no worse security wise than a state.gov–that’s actually at least somewhat tacitly acknowledged, proper protocol at state was classified information didn’t go over email at all because the government knows it can’t properly secure email.

FWIW I’m a Republican who voted for Hillary and repeatedly said her email scandal wasn’t disqualifying, and only rates to a moderate degree as a legitimate scandal, but it wasn’t “nothing.” The best defense of it is there have been similar scandals involving sketchy handling of information (particularly during the Bush admin, read about some of Cheney’s borderline illegal information handling or the millions of Bush admin lost emails), but “they also did this bad thing” is a poor justification for making it “not a scandal.”

7

The point was that Comey made sure to describe the investigation in terms that made it sound like what Hillary did ought to qualify her for being fired into the sun. He couldn’t actually arrest her, but he made sure to damage her as much as he possibly could. His language didn’t even disguise the fact that he was doing everything possible to damage her credibility as a candidate for office.

Keep in mind that at the exact same time Comey was making this speech about how despicable Hillary was, the Trump campaign was (and I guess still is, for what it’s worth) under investigation for literally conspiring with spies of a foreign government to undermine democracy. But not a goddamn peep about that!

Comey’s with Trump. Anyone who is celebrating Comey’s recent way, way too late announcement that the investigation regarding Russia is real is fucking kidding themselves, and should stop. Getting hopeful is just going to make it hurt more when the curtain is pulled back and it turns out Comey is exactly what he appeared to be all along.

8

I wasn’t a fan of the way Comey went about things, but I disagree that he’s with Trump. I think Comey is with Comey, and he believes he’s building some sort of name for himself as an impartial operator by going after both sides. I’ve read at least some third hand accounts from colleagues who have spoke about it on the news that say Comey is particularly concerned with his image in this regard, and I think he just has a really fuck-ass way of going about it. Instead of just mostly staying in the background like most FBI directors have, to prove his neutrality and independence, he’s chosen instead to make flashy intrusions into the public sphere directed at both parties at different junctures.

9

Great post with interesting Watergate details. I watched the Watergate hearings every day when I got home from work. Even so, it didn’t feel like the whole country was in crisis like it does now. One felt there were sane people in government who would come forward and prevail. There was an audible sigh of relief when Gerald Ford was sworn in.

My bolding.

One big difference (of many) between Trump and Nixon is that Nixon didn’t have the rabid cadre of fanatically devoted followers in whose eyes the man could do no wrong.

Also, when Nixon saw the writing on the wall, he resigned. I don’t think Trump would. I think he would dig in and create massive distraction with a Twitterstorm whiteout. Martin Hyde, I’d be interested in your thoughts on this.

10

Nixon retained majority support among Republicans right up to the bitter end.

11

Well, but Icarus acknowledged that it’s ‘in the crazy conspiracy theory part of my mind’…you seem to be going whole hog. My question to you is, how does the fact the it’s been Comey mainly hammering Trump et al about the Obama wiretap allegation, and in fact working with the DOJ to do the same? Seems a disconnect between that and your narrative here, at least to me.

12

It seems to me that by the time Nixon was toast, there was no reason for people to burn their Republican bridges. Trump’s passionate, deluded followers are in a class by themselves.

13

You forget Nixon faced a Democratic majority in Congress. There is no way a GOP run Congress will Impeach Trump.

14

In fact , No President has ever been Impeached (yes, I know, due to a odd wording in the Constitution, pedants will insist that the first phase is actually “Impeachment” and thus ClinTon and Johnson were “Ipeached” but since that words means “removed from office” no they werent) and yes, in two cases the House voted but in the most recent case it was a opposition run House who also knew full well the Senate wouldnt confirm.

And it blew up in the GOPs face. So, no, it wont happen.

15

Cite as to the word impeach actually meaning “removed from office?”

So far as I am aware, the word derives from the Latin impetere, meaning to attack or accuse, and was first used c. 1600 to mean “accuse a public officer of misconduct.”

But I might be wrong.

So, cite?

16

They will if they think continuing to support him will endanger their prospects in 2018.

Now what he’ll have to do to cause that is beyond my ken. However, the GOP doesn’t support Trump because he’s Trump, or one of them; they support him because in 2016 he was good for the Republican brand. If he ceases to be so good for the brand, his support will drop, and if he becomes a liability to the brand, they’ll drop him faster than Subway dropped Jared Fogle.

17

Republicans could have blocked Nixon’s removal from office, the reason he resigned is enough members of his own party met with him and told him he lacked enough Republican support to withstand an impeachment trial in the Senate (he was estimated to have only 15 Senators who would have voted to acquit, he needed 34–so a significant number of Senate Republicans had abandoned Nixon.)

So in the one case in our history in which a President was all but forced from office, his own party participated. It’s worth noting Watergate was never completely partisan, in the earlier stages of the scandal the House didn’t even have enough votes to impeach him because he had some level of support even from House Democrats. The more information that came out and the more his complicity became known, and the more the public turned on him, the more that changed.

18

I find this claim questionable. I have had difficulty finding out the details of the software configuration used, but I thought it was some flavor of Linux and an open source server.

To break in, you would need a hack - probably a zero day - that works remotely against Linux. Not the easiest to come by.

In general terms, you would be able to send messages to this computer. If the message is a ping command, it might respond. If the message is a login request WITH the correct password and username, it will definitely respond.

If the hacker doesn’t know either, modern password lengths are so long and the server would not have had very much bandwidth, and might have had IP based timeouts, that guessing it isn’t going to happen.

So what you have to have is a special message that corrupts the OS itself by exploiting some flaw in how it processes network messages. If this was CentOS or something, there wouldn’t even be much surface area to exploit - that is, there are very few software functions that even read network messages, and Linux contributors have probably removed most or all buffer overflow bugs at a minimum.

A zero day might have been available - I can look it up if I can find out exactly what version was in use - but this is no trivial matter. You’d need to be a very capable hacker and probably state supported and if there are no known flaws, it is NOT POSSIBLE. Hacking is nothing like the world of physical security. Electronic barriers are generally either indestructible or a luggage lock.

If she’d used a Yahoo account, all the hackers have to do is trick Yahoo customer service into resetting the password. If she’d use 2 factor authentication, all they’d have to do is trick the wireless company into deauthorizing her sim card and authorizing one they control with the same number. This has been done many times.

So my conclusion is it is easier to have a “large, professional” IT organization because there are many ways to get a password reset or changed. There are also many people inside the organization who you can try to corrupt or bribe or hack. By contrast, Clinton’s server had 1 admin, probably just 2-3 total valid credentials, and no method of password reset that did not require physical access.

19

It was a Windows server with lots of known vulnerabilities.

20

Well I retract everything I said above, lol. Might have been easier for her to just keep her emails on a public bulletin board outside her office to save hackers the inconvenience.