Monitor columnist
I might have ruined Joe Foster’s vacation on Wednesday.
New Hampshire’s former attorney general and his wife were enjoying the Pacific Northwest, with its lush forests and scenic coastal roads. They attended the annual Shakespeare Festival in Oregon. Life was uncomplicated.
Then I called Foster, moving him from pristine surroundings to a swamp. The one in Washington, D.C. The one President Donald Trump promised to drain. James Comey, the FBI director, was fired earlier this week “because he was not doing a good job,” the president said Wednesday.
Is that why? Or is the president trying to cover something up?
“You can look at this thing in two different ways,” Foster told me by phone.
These days, everyone looks at everything in two different ways. That’s the climate, with Hillary Clinton supporters still smarting over the November election, and Donald Trump supporters telling the Hillary Clinton supporters to get over it.
And now, the fissure is growing, swallowing everything in its path. Comey’s behavior last year, when he called Clinton’s email habits reckless and then reopened his investigation just weeks before the election, made the Democrats furious. Some thought it cost Clinton the White House, and Clinton herself has not been shy about making that claim.
“I was troubled by Director Comey’s action in connection with the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails,” Foster told me. “Holding a press conference and then following it up with a letter to Congress. The office that I most recently ran, when you conduct a criminal investigation, you don’t comment, you don’t say much. You have a decision whether or not there’s a crime that can be charged and you leave it at that.”
But Comey’s ongoing investigation into a potential scheme between Trump associates – and possibly the president himself – and Russia to sway the election has the GOP fuming.
Could that be behind Trump’s decision to fire the FBI director? To save his presidency? To slow down the investigation until Trump can hire an ally?
Joe?
“Obviously the firing is also troubling, the timing of the firing,” Foster said. “Director Comey has made it clear that there is an investigation going on that at least involves the Trump administration if not the president himself. There may be different reasons and different motivation by different individuals, but the timing is troubling.”
John Greabe, a law professor at the University of New Hampshire Law School, moved along a path similar to Foster’s, one that viewed both sides of the street.
On the one hand, Comey’s statements about Clinton last year were shocking, coming out of left field.
“I think a lot of people were really bothered by what he did last year,” Greabe told me. “It was heavily criticized by people within the Justice Department as well as the Democrats. You’re not under a continuing obligation to report investigations, and in fact many people have questioned that, what Comey did and why.”
Of course, Greabe saw the flip side as well. Why did Trump wait so long to lower the boom on Comey? Were things getting too hot? And once upon a time, didn’t Trump praise Comey for his harsh words about Clinton? The words that painted Clinton as someone who lacked discipline?
“I think if this had been done as part of the transition, it would have looked different,” Greabe said. “If you combine the timing with the public statements of this administration from last year, it strains believability. The Russian investigation is of course what everyone is going to think about when Comey was let go.”
Not everyone. Watch Fox News, and Trump’s reasoning behind Comey’s firing made perfect sense. The public had lost confidence in the man and the office.
Switch to MSNBC, and the president had an ulterior motive.
As Foster pointed out, “We live in a different time. We live in a difficult time. People are getting their news more and more from sources that one could say have a very strong slant, and that is upsetting. I think it makes it difficult for people to know what to believe, and you really have to read a bunch of different sources.”
Greabe echoed Foster’s thoughts, telling me, “There is a real reason for concern about the independence of certain press outlets. I still think it is possible to get good, neutral journalism, but I think you have to be a savvy consumer. Media literacy is an important piece of that, knowing what you are tuning in to.”
These are confusing, serious times. There’s little doubt that lots of people want to see Trump fail, and his critics are comparing what he did to Comey to what President Richard Nixon did to Archibald Cox in 1973.
Cox had been appointed as special prosecutor, assigned to investigate the growing Watergate scandal. When Cox subpoenaed Nixon’s secret recordings, the president fired him in what amounted to a public relations disaster.
Is it fair to compare these two scenarios?
“Some have equated it to that, yes,” Foster told me. “I’m not sure I’m willing to go there yet, but it certainly is troubling.”
There’s more to come. Trump said his search for a new FBI director has begun. Meanwhile, the Democrats and even some Republicans are calling for an independent investigation, one that’s clean, fair, devoid of partisanship.
As for Foster, he’s taking a red-eye flight home Thursday from Portland, Ore.
“It’s beautiful here,” he told me. “Beautiful and unspoiled.”