INQUISITR.COM / News & Politics

Twitter Has Answers For Donald Trump, Who Wants To Know When People Will Thank Him For Firing James Comey

By Jonathan Vankin
Published on: 10:41 PST, Jun 7, 2018

Donald Trump suddenly fired FBI Director James Comey on May 9, 2017, and just two days later, as New York Times reported, Trump revealed in a nationally televised interview that, “when I decided to just do it, I said to myself — I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.”

And just one day after he fired Comey, Trump met with two top Russian officials — Ambassador Sergei Kislyak and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov — in the Oval Office telling them, as later leaked to the media, and shared by Vanity Fair, “I just fired the head of the F.B.I.. He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

In that same meeting, Trump leaked highly classified information about anti-terrorist operations in Syria to the two Russian officials, as the Inquisitr reported at the time.

Trump fired Comey despite the fact that during the 2016 presidential campaign, he praised Comey for sending a letter to Congress saying that the FBI might reopen the investigation into Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, with less than two weeks to go in the campaign. Trump lauded Comey’s “guts” and said that he “did the right thing,” Politico reported in October of 2016.

But on Thursday, Trump, in a message posted to his Twitter account, asked when people would thank him for firing Comey.

Trump’s Twitter posting appeared to come in response to news accounts saying that an upcoming report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz will fault Comey for his handling of the Clinton investigation. The IG report will not be made public until June 14, but on Thursday, ABC News reported that Horowitz will fault Comey for having “defied authority” when he sent what has become known as “The Comey Letter” to congress in the waning days of the 2016 campaign.

According to election expert Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com, Comey’s letter and decision to make it public was likely decisive in getting Trump elected.

“Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28,” Silver wrote.

In addition, as multiple media outlets have reported, Russia investigation Special Counsel Robert Mueller is believed to be looking closely at Trump’s firing of Comey as a case of possible obstruction of justice.

So will Americans soon begin thanking Trump for firing Comey? Twitter users on Thursday had a few answers to Trump’s query, and most probably were not what Trump wanted to hear.

Others suggested that they would be perfectly willing to thank Trump — if he agreed to quit his job.

Some Twitter users noted that Horowitz’s report doesn’t look good for Trump because it will say that Comey’s faulty actions helped Trump win.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

Trump has leveled numerous public insults, mostly via his Twitter feed, at Comey since firing the 57-year-old FBI director nearly 13 months ago, calling him, as the political news site The Hill recounted, a “slimeball” and a “leaker” who left the FBI in “tatters.”

But Comey struck back in a round of interviews to promote his recent book, such as an interview with the Washington Post in which he called Trump “morally unfit to be president” and said that it was “possible” that the Russian government might be blackmailing Trump with some sort of compromising material or information.

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