president can fire an fbi director for any reason or for no reason at all. i m not going to spend time on the decision or the way it was executed. i hope you won t either. it is done and i will be fine, although i will miss you and the mission deeply. sources inside the white house tell cnn president trump kept his decision to fire comey very close to the vest in the 48 hours before he dropped the bombshell. it did not seek he did not seek a wide range of viewpoints and he grew increasingly angry with the fbi director after reaching the conclusion comey was his own man and could not be trusted. a longtime friend who spoke to the president over the weekend described him as white hot and complaining repeatedly about russia, russia, trump and russia. that friend says the president has regularly expressed frustration that they can t make this all go away, apparently referring to comey and his staff, among others.
james comey was fired on tuesday. just adds another layer to this question of whether the white house is truly being forthcoming. they said that the reason that they fired comey was because of the way he handled hillary clinton s e-mails but as you follow this, things continue to lead back to russia. anderson? we should point out the department of justice denies that comey asked for more resources. correct? that s right. they said that was 100% false. that comey went to rod rosenstein and asked for more resources or more money. you indicated the white house seems to keep moving the goal post as to why they chose to fire director comey yesterday. this was evident today. in the white house briefing with sarah huckabee sanders. initially they said the reason the president decided to fire comey was because of this full throated letter saying the way that james comey handled hillary clinton s e-mail scandal was not acceptable and no longer fit to lead the department.
house not eager to address, certainly not in this timeline, is the issue of the attorney general having recused himself, having played a role in the firing of the man in charge of the russia investigation. so, there s still a lot more explaining to do. alison, dave? okay, athena, thanks very much. and james comey refusing to dwell on his dismissal in a farewell letter to his colleagues at the fbi, writing i have long believed that a president can fire an fbi director for any reason or for no reason aall. i m not going to spend time on the decision or the way it was executed. i hope you won t either. it is done and i will be fine, although i will miss you and the mission deeply. sources inside the white house tell cnn president trump kept his decision to fire comey very close to the vest in the 48 hours before dropping this bombshell. he did not seek a wide range of viewpoints and grew increasingly angry with the fbi director after reaching the conclusion
again or did he mislead the american people? i believe i ve answered that question. if you have, i don t think i caught it. because the vice president said yesterday that the president chose to accept and support the decision of the deputy attorney general and attorney general he certainly accepted the deputy attorney but that doesn t mean he wouldn t still accept his recommendation. they re on the same page. why are we arguing about the semantics of whether or not he accepted it. they agreed! i m not sure how he didn t accept the deputy attorney general s recommendation when they agreed with one another. so let me just switch topics, slightly. if the president knew he was going to do this, why ask for those memos to begin with? why not just fire comey? why have these memos put out and explain that he did it because of the moemos, but then say tha he was going to do it either way. i m confused as to why we even got those memos? look, i think he wanted to get the feedback fr
attorney general, who the director of the fbi reports to. again, it further solidified the decision that he had made. the only person that could fire comey was the president. he made that decision. it was clearly the right one, as evidenced by all of the comments, both by house and senate democrats, republicans, and many people within the fbi. i think, instead of getting so lost in the process, did this happen at 12:01 or 12:02, did he fire him because he wore a red tie or a blue tie? he fired him because he was not fit to do the job. it s that simple. this shouldn t be a complicated process. the president knew that director comey was not up to the task. he decided that he wasn t the right person in the job. he wanted somebody that could bring credibility back to the fbi. that had been lost over these last several months. the president made that decision. he made it, he moved forward, it was the right one.