President Donald Trump had been considering firing James Comey since the day he was elected but it was the FBI director's "going around the chain of command" last week at the Department of Justice that was the final straw, deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday.
"Director Comey made a pretty startling revelation that he had essentially taken a stick of dynamite and thrown it into the Department of Justice by going around the chain of command when he decided to take steps without talking to the attorney general or the deputy attorney general when holding a press conference and telling them that he would not let them know what he was going to say, and that is simply not allowed," Sanders said in the White House press briefing.
That led to a Monday meeting between Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to talk about the incident, which led to Rosenstein's three-page letter Tuesday that became the final straw to Comey's tenure.
Sanders downplayed the timing, saying the president had been considering firing Comey since Day 1, but that Trump wanted to give Comey a chance. But since then, there has been "an erosion of confidence," Sanders said.
"The president in recent months lost confidence in Director Comey. The DoJ lost confidence in Comey. The bipartisan intelligence made clear they had lost confidence in Comey. Accordingly the president accepted the recommendation of his deputy attorney general to remove James Comey from his position," Sanders told the media.
"I think it was an erosion of confidence," Sanders said. "I think Director Comey has shown over the last several months, and frankly the last year, a lot of missteps and mistakes, and certainly I think that, as you've seen from many of the comments from Democrat members, including Sen. [Chuck] Schumer, they didn't think he should be there. They thought he should be gone," Sanders said.
"Frankly, I think it's startling that Democrats aren't celebrating this since they've been calling for it for so long."
Sanders touted the integrity of Rosenstein, who was just confirmed by the Senate a few weeks ago by a margin of 94-6.
"Everybody across the board, has unequivocally said this guy (Rosenstein) is a man of upstanding character and essentially the gold standard at the Department of Justice," Sanders said.
"When you take an action like that, when you go around the chain of command in the Department of Justice, then you have to make steps and take action to make a recommendation to the president, and that's what he did."
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