FBI Director James Comey learned he had been fired by President Donald Trump without warning on Tuesday afternoon first on TV ‘Breaking News’ and then in a phone call while he was at the FBI’s Operations Center in Los Angeles, according to news reports which stated Comey was “shocked” while his fellow FBI associates were “stunned.” Comey then left California in a private jet bound for Washington amid explosive controversy.

Comey, 56, was appointed as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in September 2013 by former President Barack Obama for a 10-year term. But not yet four years into his term, Comey became a hot potato apparently becoming too political to effectively lead the nation’s premier investigative agency, and was thought to have overstepped his authority at the conclusion of the FBI investigation into the use of a private email system used by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

President Trump on May 9 issued a letter firing Comey after receiving written recommendations to do so by Trump appointees U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The final paragraph of Rosenstein’s letter to Attorney General Sessions states the bottom line of Comey’s dismissal rather well.

“Although the president has the power to remove an FBI director, the decision should not be taken lightly. I agree with the nearly unanimous opinions of former Department officials. The way the Director handled the conclusion of the email investigation was wrong,” stated Rosenstein. “As a result, the FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a Director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them. Having refused to admit his errors, the Director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions.”

The same congressional Democrats that praised Comey last year for not bringing any criminal charges against Clinton involving her email scandal, then blasted Comey for reopening Clinton’s email investigation, are now calling his termination a “big mistake” due to the ongoing FBI investigation into suspected collusion between Trump campaign officials and the Russian government that may have influenced Trump’s win.

Now that Comey is out, these same Democrats are calling for an independent prosecutor to be appointed to probe any Russian/Trump Campaign connection instead of the FBI continuing on their own. The Comey firing has gone politically ballistic in under 24 hours.

The search for a new FBI director will begin immediately while Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe will serve as acting director. Comey’s firing is only the second time in American history that a president has fired the FBI director. Former President Clinton dismissed FBI Director William Sessions in 1993 after learning Sessions had improperly billed the FBI for personal spending, according to Wikipedia.

Just last week Hillary Clinton stated during a CNN interview that she listed Comey and his reopening of her email investigation only days before the national election last November as one of the main reasons she lost the presidency to Trump.

Comey in recent weeks had appeared before the U.S. Senate’s judiciary committee and was expected to return on Thursday for more questioning under oath.

FBI directors are given a 10-year term in order to remain independent of partisan politics as well as independent from the president. The FBI director reports to the U.S. Attorney General, not the president, but it’s the president’s official duty to appoint the FBI director and if necessary remove him from office upon the recommendation of the U.S. Attorney General, which did occur. So President Trump accepted that recommendation and sent Comey to the unemployment line.

Democrats universally declared Wednesday — on the morning network news shows — that the confirmation hearings for President Trump’s FBI director nominee would be exhaustive and questions will be asked about the ongoing Russian/Trump campaign connections and whether the nominee would follow wherever the facts led in that investigation. President Trump has called the Russian/Trump investigation a hoax.

For political watchers, it’s time to read between the lines and witness the Democrats’ unrelenting assault upon President Trump, who was right to dump Comey who seemed to have his own controversial agenda — enough so to say goodbye.

About the Author

Britt Nelson relocated to Costa Rica in 2011 from Florida, where he served as news editor for the Palatka Daily News, a newspaper owned by the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group (NYT-RNG) for 20 years.

Nelson served the NYT-RNG for 18 years in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida as a correspondent, reporter, staff writer, senior staff writer training new reporters, copy editor, page designer, editorial writer, editorial page editor and editorial board member.