Not only was the story that Donald Trump told about why he had to fire James Comey a total fabrication, so was the story that Trump and White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told after the firing. While Trump forced Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to write him a cover excuse for dropping Comey on the incredible premise that Trump was upset over Comey being too mean to Hillary Clinton, Sanders attempted to post-justify the firing with another idea: That Comey was simply bad at his job.
MS. SANDERS: The President, over the last several months, lost confidence in Director Comey. The DOJ lost confidence in Director Comey. Bipartisan members of Congress made it clear that they had lost confidence in Director Comey. And most importantly, the rank and file of the FBI had lost confidence in their director.
The idea that the FBI “rank and file” was anti-Comey and happy about his dismissal was one that Sanders returned to again and again.
Q What gives you such confidence that the rank and file within the Bureau lost faith in the FBI Director? There’s a special agent who is inside, who wrote us, who said: “The vast majority of the Bureau is in favor of Director Comey. This is a total shock. This is not supposed to happen. The real losers here are 20,000 front-line people in the organization because they lost the only guy working here in the past 15 years who actually cared about them.”
So what’s your response to these rank-and-file FBI agents who disagree with your contention that they lost faith in Director Comey?
MS. SANDERS: Look, we’ve heard from countless members of the FBI that say very different things.
But now thousands of FBI memos from that period have been released, and Lawfare has detailed their contents. The truth is that agents at all levels were shocked and upset by Comey’s firing. And that Sarah Huckabee Sanders was pushing an enormous lie—which is the one thing about this affair that’s not shocking.
Sanders was back at it in her White House podium the day after Comey’s dismissal.
MS. SANDERS: Well, I can speak to my own personal experience. I’ve heard from countless members of the FBI that are grateful and thankful for the President’s decision. And I think that we may have to agree to disagree. I’m sure that there are some people that are disappointed, but I certainly heard from a large number of individuals — and that’s just myself — and I don’t even know that many people in the FBI.
“Countless” is obviously Sarah Sanders’ term for “zero.” Because that’s how many FBI agents seemed to be in agreement with the decision as indicated by the recently released emails.
Many of the texts and emails published at Lawfare show just how shocked and surprised people around the FBI were by the abruptness and manner of Comey’s dismissal. Rather than allow the director any dignity, Trump sent his private bodyguard to Comey’s office while he was out of town, to leave a dismissal letter on the director’s unattended desk. Comey himself found out while giving a talk to agents at the Los Angeles FBI office. This might have seemed accidental, except that Trump later called Acting Director Andrew McCabe to yell at him—and insult his wife—for allowing Comey to fly back on a government plane.
Clearly Trump not only fired Comey, he wanted it to be humiliating. He wanted to leave the FBI director embarrassed in front of his troops and stranded on the far side of the country without so much as a suitcase—because Donald Trump is exactly the kind of giant, petty jackass.
What did most of the FBI think about this? They found it enormously dispiriting and offensive. They found it hard to believe that it was even real.
In the Knoxville field office, Special Agent in Charge Renae McDermott wrote to the staff she leads: “Unexpected news such as this is hard to understand but I know you all know our Director stood for what is right and what is true!!! . . . He truly made us better when we needed it the most.”
Far from being in chaos, or disillusioned with Comey, leadership in many officers was worried about the effect that Comey’s firing would have on their agents. Morale of the FBI wasn’t damaged by Comey, but by how Trump dealt with Comey. In fact, what is revealed by the memos is the opposite of what Sanders’ claimed.
What does it show? Simply put, it shows that Ellingsen nailed it when she described a reaction of “shock” and “profound sadness” at the removal of a beloved figure to whom the workforce was deeply attached. It also shows that no aspect of the White House’s statements about the bureau were accurate—and, indeed, that the White House engendered at least some resentment among the rank and file for whom it purported to speak. As Amy Hess, the special agent in charge in Louisville, put it: “On a personal note, I vehemently disagree with any negative assertions about the credibility of this institution or the people herein.”
Since that time, Trump has been engaged in an ongoing effort to demean and degrade the FBI for the sole purpose of protecting himself from the continuing revelations being uncovered in the Russia investigation. And Sarah Sanders has continued to do what she’s done every day on the job—lie her ass off.
Those May 10 and May 11 press conferences are also worth a bookmark, not for what they say about the FBI or Comey, but for what they say about someone else who is now on Trump’s “no confidence” list.
MS. SANDERS: And somebody like the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein — who everybody across the board has unequivocally said, this guy is a man of upstanding character and essentially the gold standard at the Department of Justice — when you take an action like that, when you go around the chain of command in the Department of Justice, then you have to make steps and take action to make a recommendation to the President. And that’s what he did. …
MS. SANDERS: Right now I believe that would fall to the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein. And we are incredibly confident in his abilities, as I believe you can tell by the rest of the Senate, including many Democrats, are as well. Given the fact that he was confirmed 94 to 6 and had overwhelming praise from both sides of the aisle, I think there’s complete confidence in him.
Remember those statements when Trump decides to have his pal Keith drop a note on Rosenstein’s desk.