As Mueller probe intensifies, so do Trump attacks on Comey

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The Republican attacks that accompanied the firing of FBI Director James Comey have sharply intensified in the past two weeks, with broadsides delivered on Twitter, public statements and even from the White House podium.

Comey, who in June said President Donald Trump and the White House had lied about him and the law- enforcement agency he led, has been repeatedly accused of delivering false testimony, of prematurely exonerating Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server and of leaking details about his private conversations with the president.

The attacks, which come as Congress and federal investigators probe the circumstances of his dismissal, appear clearly designed to undercut the credibility of a veteran lawman whose testimony and vivid first-person accounts loom as central to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Though Trump’s lawyers over the summer had been mulling ways to undermine the legitimacy of Mueller’s investigation, the stepped-up salvos suggest White House officials and Trump’s legal team see Comey – who, despite enjoying support from within the FBI, also received bipartisan criticism for his handling of the Clinton probe – as a more vulnerable target for attack.

Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s lawyers, told The Associated Press that he did not consider Comey to be a “credible witness” and that there were multiple reasons for Comey’s firing.

But there’s also no question that attempts to sully Comey’s reputation, and to characterize him as a rogue and ineffective leader, are also aimed at undercutting any potential obstruction of justice allegations arising from the May 9 firing and at planting the idea that the dismissal was the culmination of legitimate performance concerns – not an effort to railroad the Russia probe.