While, thanks to Roseanne Barr, the whole world was busy debating the extent to which Ambien causes racism, Donald Trump took the opportunity to rewrite a little bit more of American history today. [He also sent a signal to his numerous co-conspirators by announcing his intention to pardon the racist far-right “intellectual” Dinesh D’Souza, but we’ll have to save that for another time.]
In spite of having stated on multiple occasions that he fired FBI Director James Comey for refusing to stop the Russia investigation, our president took to Twitter this morning – the day after lashing out at his Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation rather than stopping it – and said definitively that he “never fired James Comey because of Russia!” This, as we know, is a lie, and one that’s very easy to fact check.
There may be more, but I can recall at least two instances, one of which was broadcast over network television, in which Donald Trump has said before witnesses that it was his decision to fire James Comey not because of how the former FBI director had handled the Clinton email investigation, which, as we now know, was never anything more than a politically motivated farce, but because of… to use his own words… “the Russia thing.” Here he is using that exact phrase with NBC’s Lester Holt on May 11 of last year, two days after the FBI Director had been fired, and hours after the White House put out a statement saying that the firing had not been Trump’s decision, but that Comey had been fired based on the advice of the Department of Justice’s Rod Rosenstein and Jeff Sessions, both of whom, by the way, the President has since turned on.
“(It was) my decision,” the President told a caught-off-guard Lester Holt, who had clearly not been expecting Trump to admit that he’d given the word to fire the man charged with investigating him. The President then when on to say that he was thinking about “this Russia thing” when he decided to terminate the FBI director. Here, if you’d like to the refresh your memory, is video of the exchange, which I’m certain will one day be played in court. [Word is that the special investigator already has enough to charge Donald Trump with obstruction of justice, but he’s still shoring up the rest of case, which centers on corruption, money laundering and conspiring with foreign powers against the interests of the American people.]
“[Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein] made a recommendation, but regardless of recommendation I was going to fire Comey knowing there was no good time to do it. And in fact when I decided to do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.” – Donald Trump
This isn’t like “laurel” and “yanni”. There’s no debating what it is that Trump said, or what he meant. It’s clear. He told Lester Holt that he’d decided to fire Comey himself, and that had to do with “the Russia thing.”
And, before we move on, it’s worth noting that this video, as we now know, was followed shortly afterward by the release of a memo authored by James Comey just after the President called him to the Oval Office, where, according to the former FBI Director, he was both asked for his “loyalty” and told to stop looking into National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s interactions with the Russians prior to the election. [Flynn, it’s worth noting, ultimately plead guilty to charges of lying to the FBI, when evidence surfaced that he’d lied to federal investigators about his contacts with Russians who had been engaged in election interference on Trump’s behalf.]
But Trump didn’t only tell the NBC audience that he fired Comey for refusing to put “the Russia thing” to bed. He also told a delegation of Russians, who he’d brought to the White House without the public’s knowledge on the very day he fired Comey. The visit hadn’t been on the public calendar, and the only reason we ever found out about it is because the Russians in attendance reported on it… Here’s something that I wrote about the meeting at the time.
Trump must be trolling us, right? I mean who in their right fucking mind, on the day immediately after he fires the man heading the investigation into whether or not his campaign team colluded with the Russians to steal an election, not only invites into the White House the very Russian Ambassador who’s widely thought to have helped orchestrate the whole thing, but bans the American press, allowing in only Russian news agencies? I mean, this is the very same guy, Sergey Kislyak, that Michael Flynn was fired for having lied about having talked with during the campaign. This is the guy who many think coordinated the whole “we’ll hack the election if you lift the sanctions” deal at the heart of this whole fucking thing. And Trump invites him into the White House on the day after he fires FBI Director Comey in hopes of killing the investigation. It’s absolutely insane. This would be like if Obama, at the height of the Tea Party madness, joined the Black Panther Party, donned a dashiki, released his Kenyan birth certificate, and started to speak exclusively in Bantu…
And it wasn’t just that Trump invited Kislyak into the Oval Office the day he fired Comey. He also laughed about it in front of them, calling the former FBI director a “nut job,” and noting how, now that he’d been removed from office, there would be less significantly less “pressure” on him. Here’s a clip from a New York Times article written at the time.
…“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
Mr. Trump added, “I’m not under investigation.”
The conversation, during a May 10 meeting — the day after he fired Mr. Comey — reinforces the notion that the president dismissed him primarily because of the bureau’s investigation into possible collusion between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russian operatives. Mr. Trump said as much in one televised interview, but the White House has offered changing justifications for the firing.
The comments represented an extraordinary moment in the investigation, which centers in part on the administration’s contacts with Russian officials: A day after firing the man leading that inquiry, Mr. Trump disparaged him — to Russian officials.
The White House document that contained Mr. Trump’s comments was based on notes taken from inside the Oval Office and has been circulated as the official account of the meeting. One official read quotations to The Times, and a second official confirmed the broad outlines of the discussion.
Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, did not dispute the account…
At first, the White House said Mr. Trump had fired Mr. Comey based on the recommendation of the Justice Department, and because of Mr. Comey’s handling of the F.B.I. investigation into Hillary Clinton last year. Officials said the move had nothing to do with the Russia investigation.
But the president undercut that argument a day later, telling NBC News, “When I decided to just do it, I said to myself — I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story”…
So, today, when you hear Donald Trump say, “The Corrupt Mainstream Media loves to keep pushing that narrative, but they know it is not true!,” just keep in mind that he’s lying. It’s absolutely true that he fired Comey in hopes of ending the investigation, and he’s only saying this now because he’s scared, and knows for a certainty that his only chance of avoiding prosecution is to convince Republican voters that he never said what he said, and that all of this is nothing more than the ‘lying press’ trying to keep him from saving America and getting the credit which is so rightfully his. We can’t let him get away with it.