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Trump tweets that firing Comey was a ‘great service’
By ERIC TUCKER and CHAD DAY, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former FBI Director James Comey will “now official- ly go down as the worst leader, by far, in the history of the FBI,” President Donald Trump declared on Twitter Friday.
“I did a great service to the people in firing him,” he wrote.
It’s one of the president’s first tweets since the Justice Department’s internal watchdog released a 500-page report finding that Comey was “insubordinate” when he denied agency protocols in
his handling of the email investigation involving Democrat Hillary Clinton.
The inspector general also said politi- cally charged text messages by some FBI employees about Trump sullied the FBI’s reputation and “cast a cloud” over the probe.
Trump’s supporters say the political bias leaked into the ongoing Russia probe, which includes an examination of whether the president tried to obstruct justice by firing Comey.
“The IG Report is a total disaster
for Comey, his minions and sadly, the FBI,” Trump tweeted. “Comey will now officially go down as the worst leader, by far, in the history of the FBI. I did a great service to the people in firing him.”
The Justice Department inspector general does not conclude that political preferences influenced Comey or the Justice Department.
And while the president has slammed Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe, be- cause of Democratic political contribu- tions to his wife, the Justice Department report said he was not required to recuse himself and had correctly flagged the
issue inside the bureau.
“We found no evidence that the
conclusions by the prosecutors were affected by bias or other improper considerations; rather, we determined that they were based on the prosecutors’ assessment of the facts, the law and past department practice,” the report says.
Yet there’s no doubt the report gave Trump fresh ammunition for continued attacks on Comey and for his defense that Comey’s firing in May 2017 — an act now central to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether the president sought to obstruct justice — was wholly justified. At the same time, it likely gave comfort to Clinton support- ers who believe Comey’s actions may have torpedoed her chance of becoming president.
The report branded Comey as insub-
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