References to Watergate are flying thick and fast — again. Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump abruptly dismissed FBI director James Comey in the middle of a probe into Russian interference in the 2016 elections. It is difficult to overstate how bad this move is, and how much it has rattled political and bureaucratic firmaments.
Richard Nixon feels like a natural comparison, given the similarities around an intransigent executive intent on sabotaging the gears of accountability. In 1973 Nixon fired the independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was tasked with investigating the break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices.
Cox had refused to compromise on a subpoena for Oval Office recordings; he was fired on a Saturday. Then as now, an official overseeing an investigation that bears impact on the White House was removed — just as the investigation intensified.
Comey had recently started receiving daily briefings rather than weekly, with the Wall Street Journal reporting that he was disturbed by 'potential evidence of collusion'. Days before he found out from a TV screen that he had lost his job (he thought it was a prank), he had asked for more funding and personnel for the investigation into the links between the Trump campaign and Russian elements.
There are differences, however, between then and now. Trump is not Nixon, for one thing. Perhaps we can be thankful for that, in that infantile impetuosity is not paired with a much more cunning mind. Trump has made a habit of lobbing own goals, mostly via Twitter. The people around him don't seem much more competent.
His administration's attempts to dampen or derail the search for truth about contacts with Moscow will continue to backfire, including the Comey dismissal. FBI directors of course serve at the behest of the president; Comey does not imagine himself a martyr, and nor should we.
But the self-involved rage and contempt involved in the President's decision are not likely playing well across the national security apparatus. No president can afford an adversarial relationship with it.
It will only provide further incentive for whistleblowers and leakers. How else must the truth emerge if the executive branch, as well as the Republican legislators, will not leave unimpeded the search for facts? Yet for Trump, politically embarrassing leaks against his administration are the foremost security issue, not the questions that they raise about potentially criminal conduct involving those in his orbit and even himself.
"Firing the FBI