Updated at 9:22 p.m. ET The president has fired FBI Director James Comey, who was overseeing an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections and possible ties to the Trump campaign and top aides. The White House pointed to Comey's handling of the probe into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's private email server while secretary of state as the reason for his dismissal. But Democrats were quick to call the move " Nixonian ," saying that the decision by Trump was part of an effort to impede the Justice Department's Russia investigation which, in the view of many leading Capitol Hill Democrats, could now only be managed by a special prosecutor going forward. "Today, President Donald J. Trump informed FBI Director James Comey that he has been terminated and removed from office. President Trump acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions," White House press secretary Sean Spicer said

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Attorney General Bill Barr explained that the FBI did not conduct “a bonafide counterintelligence investigation” in the case that led former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn to plead guilty to federal investigators in 2017.Barr, speaking in an exclusive interview with CBS News after the Justice Department dropped its case against Flynn on Thursday, said that his review of the case found Bureau investigators laid “a perjury trap” for Flynn in a January 2017 White House interview.“They didn’t warn him, the way that would usually be required by the Department, they bypassed the Justice Department, they bypassed the protocols at the White House, and so forth,” Barr stated. “These were things that persuaded me that there was not a legitimate counterintelligence investigation.”Former FBI director James Comey admitted in a December 2018 interview that he “sent” the agents to interview Flynn, adding that it was “something I probably wouldn’t have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized administration.”In its Thursday court filing, the Justice Department explained that it was “not persuaded” that Flynn’s interview, which led to his guilty plea for lying to FBI agents Peter Strzok and Joe Pientka, had proper predication and was materially relevant.Comey tweeted his disappointment, following the decision, saying "the DOJ has lost its way."> The DOJ has lost its way. But, career people: please stay because America needs you. The country is hungry for honest, competent leadership.> > -- James Comey (@Comey) May 7, 2020Barr pointed to recently-released information that showed the FBI moved to close its surveillance of Flynn after finding “no derogatory information” about the retired general’s contacts with Russians, only for Strzok to keep the case open, leading to the eventual interview.“They were closing the investigation, in December [2016], they started that process and on January 4, they were closing it. When they heard about the phone call, which the FBI had the transcripts to — there was no question as to what was discussed, the FBI knew exactly what was discussed — and General Flynn, being the former director of the DIA, said to them, ‘you listen to everything, you know what was said,’” Barr explained.“So there’s no mystery about the call, but they initially tried some theories of how could open another investigation, which didn’t fly, and then they found out that they had not technically closed the earlier investigation, and they kept it open for the expressed purpose of trying to catch — lay a perjury trap — for General Flynn,” he added. A different filing released last week showed handwritten notes from an FBI official that questioned if the goal of Flynn’s White House interview was “to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired.”Barr also did not comment on whether those that sought to entrap Flynn would face criminal charges, pointing to U.S. Attorney John Durham’s probe into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation and saying his team was “in the middle” of “looking at the whole pattern of conduct.”“I’m going to wait until all the evidence is [in], and I get their recommendations as to what they found and how serious it is. But, if we were to find wrongdoing, in the sense of any criminal act, obviously we would follow through on that,” Barr said. “But again, just because something may even stink to high heaven, and appear to everyone to be bad, we still have to apply the right standard and be convinced that there is a violation of a criminal statute and that we can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. The same standard applies to everybody.”

Former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker defended the Justice Department's decision to dismiss its case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, arguing that a corrupt FBI culture led to Flynn's entrapment.

The CBS Studios show will be based on the former FBI director's best-selling memoir.

London : Macmillan, 1896.

The Justice Department’s dropping of charges against former National Security Advisor Gen. Michael Flynn unleashed a torrent of liberal rage. Among those seething at the Trump administration was former FBI chief James Comey.
Read Full Article at RT.com

A day after the Justice Department dropped charges against Gen. Michael Flynn, President Trump is accusing Joe Biden and a host of Obama administration officials of trying to sabotage his presidency, saying “it’s all coming out.”
Read Full Article at RT.com

As an extraordinarily dedicated public servant, a talented national security and law enforcement executive, and a principled leader with extensive experience in government and the private sector, Jim Comey is uniquely qualified to serve as the next Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder released the following statement Monday night after the U.S. Senate voted 93-1 to confirm James Comey as the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Donald Trump hit back at James Comey again on Thursday morning as the fired FBI director entered a new war of words over the way the law enforcement agency operated under Comey's leadership.

Jeff Sessions was speaking ahead of the inspector general's report on the Clinton email investigation, which is expected to blame 'insubordinate' James Comey.

Former FBI boss James Comey made a series of thinly-veiled digs at Donald Trump and his response to the coronavirus pandemic in a column for the Washington Post.

British actor Kingsley Ben-Adir has been cast to play former President Barack Obama in A Higher Loyalty, a CBS miniseries based on the book by fired FBI Director James Comey.

President Trump said he would considering bringing Michael Flynn back to work at the White House and expressed confidence his former national security adviser was going to be cleared. 

James Comey joins dozens of celebrities who pledged to leave the country if Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 but are still in the United States.

Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch, who founded research firm Fusion GPS, say Steele - their employee - revealed the existence of his dossier to the press because he was angry with James Comey.

The active investigation centers on media leaks to the New York Times and the Washington Post in early 2017, describing a secret Russian document that played a role in the Clinton investigation.

On Thursday, James Comey shared a gif from the video of Mariah Carey's 2003 hit 'Obsessed' that simply showed the singer asking: 'Why are you obsessed with me?'