Comey firing only the beginning

Published 12:57 pm Thursday, May 11, 2017

The fallout in Washington, and beyond, over this week’s firing of FBI leader James Comey by President Donald Trump, will likely continue for some time. But it is not because anyone on either side of the political spectrum is that upset Comey lost his job.

It’s more about how this happened and what it means.

Trump was right, after all, that Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email issue late in the 2016 presidential election was highly questionable, having a direct impact on results. And Comey seemingly allowed too much information regarding any Russia probes to continually leak into the public realm, creating the illusion that our trusted national investigations bureau can’t be trusted at all.

Email newsletter signup

But Donald Trump seems to think he is still CEO of a company rather than President of the United States. And that’s why his firing of Comey isn’t going so well, with fallout expected to continue.

The President clearly did not have a communications plan in place and many staffers learned of the firing the same way we did — through social media, news alerts and text messages. Staffers were unprepared to answer questions about the move and obviously did not have a strategy for shaping the agenda of how and why beyond the President’s short explanation.

Now, in Washington and beyond, there are more questions than anybody seems to be able to answer. And that means that Comey’s firing isn’t the end of anything.

It’s only the beginning.