Dismissal
President Trump formally dismissed Comey on May 9, 2017, fewer than 4 years into his 10-year term as Director of the FBI. Comey first learned of his termination from television news reports that flashed on screen while he was delivering a speech to agents at the Los Angeles Field Office. Sources said he was surprised and caught off guard by the termination. Comey immediately departed for Washington, D.C., and was forced to cancel his scheduled speech that night at an FBI recruitment event. Trump reportedly called Deputy Director Andrew McCabe the next day, demanding to know why Comey had been allowed to fly back to Washington on an FBI jet after he had been fired.
On May 10, Comey sent a letter to FBI staff in which he said, "I have long believed that a 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." In the absence of a Senate-confirmed FBI director, McCabe automatically became Acting Director.
The White House initially stated the firing was on the recommendation of United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, to both of whom Comey reported. Rosenstein had sent a memorandum to Sessions, forwarded to Trump, in which Rosenstein listed objections to Comey's conduct in the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. It allowed the Trump administration to attribute Comey's firing to Rosenstein's recommendation about the Clinton email controversy. It was later revealed that on May 8, Trump had requested Sessions and Rosenstein to detail in writing a case against Comey. Rosenstein's memo was forwarded to Trump on May 9 and was then construed as a recommendation to dismiss Comey, which Trump immediately did. In Trump's termination letter to Comey, he attributed the firing to the respective letters from Sessions and Rosenstein. On May 10, Trump told reporters he had fired Comey because Comey "wasn't doing a good job". White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders added that the FBI rank and file had lost faith in Comey and that she had "heard from countless members of the FBI ... grateful and thankful for the president's decision."
By May 11, however, in a direct contradiction of the earlier statements by the White House, Vice President Mike Pence, and the contents of the dismissal letter itself, President Trump stated to Lester Holt in an NBC News interview that Comey's dismissal was in fact "my decision" and "I was going to fire [Comey] regardless of recommendation [by Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein]." Trump later said of the dismissal "when I decided to just do it [fire Comey], I said to myself, I said 'You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.'" In the same televised interview, Trump labelled Comey "a showboat" and "grandstander".
On May 19, The New York Times published excerpts of an official White House document summarizing Trump's private meeting, the day after the firing, with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, in the Oval Office. Trump told Kislyak and Lavrov that he "just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job". Trump added: "I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off", further adding "I'm not under investigation."
According to reports, Trump had been openly talking to aides about finding a reason to fire Comey for at least a week before both the dismissal and the request of memoranda from Sessions and Rosenstein the day prior. Trump was angry and frustrated when, in the week prior to his dismissal, Comey revealed in Senate testimony the breadth of the counterintelligence investigation into Russia's effort to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election. He felt Comey was giving too much attention to the Russia probe and not enough to internal leaks to the press from within the government. Shortly before he was fired, Comey had requested additional money and resources to further expand the probe into Russian interference into the presidential election. Trump had long questioned Comey's loyalty to him personally and Comey's judgment to act accordingly. Moreover, Trump was angry that Comey would not support his claim that President Barack Obama had his campaign offices wiretapped.
On May 16, 2017, it was first reported that Comey had prepared a detailed set of notes following every meeting and telephone call he had with President Trump.
On May 12, President Trump tweeted "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!", which some political and legal analysts, as well as opposition politicians, interpreted as a threat to Comey. On June 8, when asked by the Senate Intelligence Committee about the existence of tapes, Comey replied "Lordy, I hope there are tapes!" He added that he would have no problem with the public release of any recordings.
On June 22, after the House Judiciary committee threatened the White House with a potential subpoena for the alleged tapes, Trump issued a tweet stating "I have no idea ... whether there are 'tapes' or recordings of my conversations with James Comey, but I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings." Hours later, when asked to clarify the non-denial denial wording of Trump's tweet regarding the tapes, Principal Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated that Trump's tweet was "extremely clear" and that she did "not have anything to add". Questions raised for clarification on Trump's tweet centered principally on whether Trump ever had knowledge of said tapes having ever existed and whether he is simply no longer privy to the knowledge of whether said tapes still exist; whether Trump currently has or ever had knowledge of a person or persons other than Trump having made said tapes or recordings; and whether Trump currently has or ever had knowledge of a person or persons other than Trump currently having or previously having had in their possession said tapes or recordings. U.S. representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), stated that Trump's tweet "raises as many questions as it answers", and that in any event, the tweet did not comply with the June 23 deadline, and that Schiff would move forward with subpoenas for the tapes, adding that "[r]egardless of whether the President intends his tweets to be an official reply to the House Intelligence Committee, the White House must respond in writing to our committee as to whether any tapes or recordings exist."
On October 4, 2019, allegations of a possible White House recording system resurfaced after House Democrats, who have controlled US House of Representative since the 2018 election, issued a subpoena for White House documents, including any possible audio tapes, following the Trump–Ukraine scandal, setting the stage for a legal battle which could go as far as the US Supreme Court.
Comey's termination was immediately controversial. It was compared to the Saturday Night Massacre, when President Richard Nixon terminated special prosecutor Archibald Cox who was then investigating the Watergate scandal, and to the firing of Acting Attorney General Sally Yates in January 2017. Many members of Congress expressed concern over the firing and argued that it would put the integrity of the investigation into jeopardy. Critics accused Trump of obstruction of justice.
In the dismissal letter, Trump stated that Comey had told him "on three separate occasions that I am not under investigation". Fact checkers reported that while they had no way of knowing what Comey may have told Trump privately, no such assertion was on the public record at that time of Comey directly stating that Trump was not personally under investigation. However, in later Congressional testimony, Comey confirmed that on three occasions he volunteered to Trump that the latter was not personally under FBI investigation.
According to Comey associates interviewed by news organizations, Trump had asked Comey in January to pledge loyalty to him, to which Comey demurred, instead offering him "honesty". Comey indicated he was willing to testify about his dismissal but only in an open hearing. He declined an invitation from the Senate Intelligence Committee to testify before a closed-door session.
On May 11, Acting Director McCabe testified before the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that "Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does" and that "the vast majority of FBI employees enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey". This contradicted White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who said she had heard from "countless" FBI agents in support of the firing.
On May 16, The New York Times revealed the existence of a memo Comey had written after a February 14 meeting with Trump. It said that Trump had asked him to drop the FBI's investigation into Mike Flynn, who had been fired as National Security Advisor the day before. Comey later explained that he had arranged, through a friend, for the memo to be shared with the press in hope it might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.
On June 8, 2017, Comey gave public testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee about his firing. When asked why he thought he had been fired, he said he had been confused by the shifting explanations for it but that "I take the president at his word that I was fired because of the Russia investigation." He said that he had made contemporaneous notes about several of his conversations with the president because "I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting so I felt the need to document it." He said he had not done so with the two previous presidents he had served.
On April 19, 2018, the Justice Department released 15 pages of documents to Congress which comprise partially declassified memos that Comey made after his meetings with Trump. The memos were released by Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd in both classified and unclassified versions. The unclassified version was obtained by Mary Clare Jalonick of the Associated Press on April 19 and published the next day.
In June 2018, DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had received a referral from the FBI regarding Comey's release of his Trump meeting memos to Daniel Richman, parts of which were classified "confidential" after the fact. The DOJ decided in July 2019 to not prosecute Comey, with Fox News quoting one official saying, "Everyone at the DOJ involved in the decision said it wasn't a close call. They all thought this could not be prosecuted."
In a second report released August 29, 2019, IG Horowitz found that Comey violated agency policies when he retained a set of memos he wrote documenting meetings with President Donald Trump early in 2017, and caused one of them to be leaked to the press. Though Comey is said by the report to have set a "dangerous example" for FBI employees in an attempt to "achieve a personally desired outcome", the Inspector General has found "no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media", and the Department of Justice declined to prosecute Comey.
In July 2022, The New York Times reported that both Comey and McCabe had been selected for the most invasive type of IRS audit after they had been fired from the FBI. The matter was referred to a Treasury Department inspector general on the day after the report. The Times said that the odds of anyone being selected for such an audit are very low, and the odds of the two top former FBI officials both being selected by chance were "minuscule". According to tax experts, both had an increased chance of being randomly selected for research audits because their incomes increased after their FBI careers ended – Comey by his book deals and paid speeches, and McCabe by his CNN punditry. The Times reported in November 2022 that Trump's former chief of staff John Kelly said the president told him Comey and McCabe were among his perceived political enemies he wanted to "get the IRS on". Trump denied being involved in the audits. The inspector general's report found no wrongdoing. According to the report, in overall, IRS audit processes "worked as designed".
