An attack on American democracy
By John Cassidy 10:24 P.M.
... Things like this are not supposed to happen in a liberal democracy .. that takes pride .. in safeguards .. against the arbitrary exercise of power. The F.B.I. is meant to be an independent agency, above and beyond partisan politics and personal grudges. (That is why its directors are appointed for ten-year terms.) The President is supposed to respect this independence, especially when it comes to matters in which he has, or could have, a personal interest ...
... Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, was a central figure in the ouster of Comey. In March, Sessions—a close political ally of Trump’s—was forced to recuse himself from the Russia investigation after it emerged that he had failed to disclose meetings with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian Ambassador to Washington. But this recusal didn’t prevent Sessions from pushing for Comey’s dismissal ...
... Comey, in his March 20th testimony on Capitol Hill, confirmed that the F.B.I. was conducting a criminal investigation into “any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coördination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts” ...
We also know that Comey issued a blunt public dismissal of Trump’s claims on Twitter that Barack Obama ordered U.S. spy agencies to wiretap Trump Tower during the Presidential campaign. “I have no information that supports those tweets, and we have looked carefully inside the F.B.I.,” Comey said ...
This, surely, is the relevant context of Comey’s dismissal ...
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/donald-trump-james-comey-attack-american-democracy
