On Tuesday evening, President Donald Trump's office announced suddenly that they were firing FBI Director James Comey. A brief statement from Press Secretary Sean Spicer said, "Today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement."
A recommendation from Attorney General Jeff Sessions was equally vague, saying only that "The Director of the FBI must be someone who follows faithfully the rules and principles of the Department of Justice and who sets the right example for our law enforcement officials... Therefore, I must recommend that you remove Director James B. Comey, Jr."
The firing comes less than 24 hours after the website ProPublica published a damning investigative report showing that aspects of Comey's testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week were wrong.
Comey said during the testimony that top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin had forwarded "hundreds and thousands" of emails to her husband Anthony Weiner (yes, that Anthony Weiner), "some of which contain classified information," so that he could print them out. However, it turns out the real amount was closer to "a handful." The FBI knew this, and sent a letter correcting Comey's testimony—a letter that quickly became public, and that you can read here. That letter says that the "thousands" of emails Comey referred to as being manually forwarded were actually simple electronic backups, and only "a small number [were] a result of manual forwarding by Ms. Abedin to Mr. Weiner."
One complication of Comey's firing is that he was leading an investigation into Trump's ties to Russia. Now the government is left with the sight of Trump appointing the very person who will be investigating him. This led to many people calling for an independent prosecutor to head up the investigation.
