Alberto Gonzales, who also served as Attorney General under President George W. Bush, called the decision “an error in judgement.” Eric Holder, who served as Deputy Attorney General under President Clinton and Attorney General under President Obama, said the Director’s decision“was incorrect. It violated long-standing Justice Department policies and traditions. And it ran counter to guidance that I put in place four years ago laying out the proper way to conduct investigations during an election season.” Holder concluded that the Director “broke with these fundamental principles” and “negatively affected public trust in both the Justice Department and the FBI.”

Former Deputy Attorneys General Gorelick and Thompson described the unusual events as“real-time, raw-take transparency taken to its illogical limit, a kind of reality TV of federal criminal investigation,” that is “antithetical to the interests of justice.”

Donald Ayer, who served as Deputy Attorney General under President H.W. Bush, along with former Justice Department officials, was“astonished and perplexed” by the decision to “break[] with longstanding practices followed by officials of both parties during past elections.” Ayer’s letter noted, “Perhaps most troubling… is the precedent set by this departure from the Department’s widely-respected, non-partisan traditions.”

We should reject the departure and return to the traditions.

Although the President has the power to remove an FBI director, the decision should not be taken lightly. I agree with the nearly unanimous opinions of former Department officials. The way the Director handled the conclusion of the email investigation was wrong. As a result, the FBI is unlikely to regain public and congressional trust until it has a Director who understands the gravity of the mistakes and pledges never to repeat them. Having refused to admit his errors, the Director cannot be expected to implement the necessary corrective actions.

I set out my objections to now-former Director James Comey last year with his horribly flawed reasoning for failing to forward the Hillary Clinton case to the DOJ last year, and also in this post. I was heartened to see that the bulk of my objections were quite similar to those of the Deputy Attorney General.

We all know that President William Jefferson Clinton fired his FBI Director, William Sessions, back in 1993 for essentially political reasons. That was fine with Demorats.

Many Demorats themselves were calling for the severed head of William Comey quite recently.

Yes, two words: what changed?

We all know the answer, quite obviously. Judicial Watch’s CJ Farrell had this to say from last year.

FLASHBACK: In Sept 2016 @cjtfarrell says FBI Director Comey is complicit in the Clinton email scandal. View here: https://t.co/WQFNSmMP4tpic.twitter.com/ZgNroLveEW

— Judicial Watch ? (@JudicialWatch) May 10, 2017

Maxine Waters at least had the guts to come out and say what every other Demorat and Leftist is thinking about the situation.

From RealClearPolitics.com:

Maxine Waters: I Don’t Support Trump Firing Comey, I Would Support Hillary Clinton Firing Comey

by Ian Schwartz

NBC’s Peter Alexander grills Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Cali.) for her displeasure at President Trump firing FBI Director James Comey after she had announced in January that he has lost all credibility after attending a classified briefing conducted by the now-former director.

In March, Waters issued a press release that read Comey “advanced Russia’s misinformation campaign.”

However, in the interview Wednesday on MSNBC, asked if she would be okay with a hypothetical President Hillary Clinton dismissing Comey from his position, Waters said yes.

“If she had won the White House, I believe that given what he did to her, and what he tried to do, she should have fired him. Yes,” the California Democrat said.

“So she should have fired him but had he shouldn’t fire him. This is why I’m confused,” Alexander said to Waters.

Honesty and clarity, for once, coming from Maxine Waters in terms of her clear bias.

But it wasn’t just politicians who became unhinged over the firing of James Comey. The so-called “celebrities” did so as well.

Steven Colbert was not amused.

Liberal Crowd Surprises Colbert By Cheering The Firing Of James Comey. Colbert Shames Them By Calling Them Trump Fans pic.twitter.com/PUU7k6RN8o

— Mr. Brexit ?? ? (@KlayVolk) May 10, 2017

Neither was our favorite moonbat, Keith Olbermann.

So what really happened in the White House? What was the final straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back? I wrote back on Tuesday that Comey’s final waffling on the number of emails found in Weiner’s laptop was the kicker. Oddly enough, Dr Sebastian Gorka highlighted that same issue.

The New York Times wrote this about the White House decision.

‘Enough was Enough’: How Festering Anger at Comey Ended in His Firing

by Maggie Haberman, Glenn Thrush, Michael S Schmidt and Peter Baker

WASHINGTON — By the end, neither of them thought much of the other.

After President Trump accused his predecessor in March of wiretapping him, James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, was flabbergasted. The president, Mr. Comey told associates, was “outside the realm of normal,” even “crazy.”

For his part, Mr. Trump fumed when Mr. Comey publicly dismissed the sensational wiretapping claim. In the weeks that followed, he grew angrier and began talking about firing Mr. Comey. After stewing last weekend while watching Sunday talk shows at his New Jersey golf resort, Mr. Trump decided it was time. There was “something wrong with” Mr. Comey, he told aides.

The problem, you see, was that Donald Trump waited too long. As I believed and wrote numerous times, on January 20th at noon, President Trump should have demanded Comey’s resignation letter.

The collision between president and F.B.I. director that culminated with Mr. Comey’s stunning dismissal on Tuesday had been a long time coming. To a president obsessed with loyalty, Mr. Comey was a rogue operator who could not be trusted as the F.B.I. investigated Russian ties to Mr. Trump’s campaign. To a lawman obsessed with independence, Mr. Trump was the ultimate loose cannon, making irresponsible claims on Twitter and jeopardizing the bureau’s credibility.

The other problem was that Comey wasn’t obsessed with any independence other than his own, and not that of the bureau itself. The only person who jeopardized the FBI’s credibility was James Comey.

The White House, in a series of shifting and contradictory accounts, first said Mr. Trump decided to fire Mr. Comey because the attorney general and his deputy recommended it. By Wednesday, it had amended the timeline to say that the president had actually been thinking about getting rid of the F.B.I. director as far back as November, after he won the election, and then became “strongly inclined” after Mr. Comey testified before Congress last week.

Mr. Comey’s fate was sealed by his latest testimony about the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s efforts to sway the 2016 election and the Clinton email inquiry. Mr. Trump burned as he watched, convinced that Mr. Comey was grandstanding. He was particularly irked when Mr. Comey said he was “mildly nauseous” to think that his handling of the email case had influenced the election, which Mr. Trump took to demean his own role in history.

Director Comey was grandstanding.

At that point, Mr. Trump began talking about firing him. He and his aides thought they had an opening because Mr. Comey gave an incorrect account of how Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Mrs. Clinton, transferred emails to her husband’s laptop, an account the F.B.I. later corrected.

As I wrote on Tuesday, that element was the final straw. And yes, it did provide an opening.

At first, Mr. Trump, who is fond of vetting his decisions with a wide circle of staff members, advisers and friends, kept his thinking to a small circle, venting his anger to Vice President Mike Pence; the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II; and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who all told him they generally backed dismissing Mr. Comey.

Then President Trump finally did the right thing.

But wait; hold up on that car wash. Isn’t this the same New York Times that wrote in 1993:

DEFIANT F.B.I. CHIEF REMOVED FROM JOB BY THE PRESIDENT

By DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: July 20, 1993

WASHINGTON, July 19— President Clinton today dismissed William S. Sessions, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who had stubbornly rejected an Administration ultimatum to resign six months after a harsh internal ethics report on his conduct.

Mr. Clinton said he would announce his nominee to replace Mr. Sessions on Tuesday. He was expected to pick Judge Louis J. Freeh of Federal District Court in Manhattan; officials said Judge Freeh had impressed Mr. Clinton favorably on Friday at their first meeting.

Mr. Clinton, explaining his reasons for removing Mr. Sessions, effective immediately, said, “We cannot have a leadership vacuum at an agency as important to the United States as the F.B.I. It is time that this difficult chapter in the agency’s history is brought to a close.”

But in a parting news conference at F.B.I. headquarters after Mr. Clinton’s announcement, a defiant Mr. Sessions — his right arm in a sling as a result of a weekend fall — railed at what he called the unfairness of his removal, which comes nearly six years into his 10-year term.

“Because of the scurrilous attacks on me and my wife of 42 years, it has been decided by others that I can no longer be as forceful as I need to be in leading the F.B.I. and carrying out my responsibilities to the bureau and the nation,” he said. “It is because I believe in the principle of an independent F.B.I. that I have refused to voluntarily resign.”

It appears, according to the New York Times, that President William Clinton, a Demorat, was perfectly well within his rights and abilities to fire Director Sessions who insisted that the FBI be independent. That same newspaper now states that President Donald Trump, a Republican, is not perfectly well within his rights and abilities to fire Director Comey who insisted that the FBI be independent.

The difference? Political parties. Simply that.

James Comey, in a letter to his office the day after his firing, said the president was within his authority to fire a sitting FBI director. From TheHill.com:

Comey farewell: ‘A president can fire an FBI director for any reason’

Former FBI Director James Comey on Wednesday sent a letter to agents and friends following President Trump firing him the previous day.

“I have long believed that a President can fire an FBI director for any reason, or for no reason at all,” he wrote, according to CNN. “I’m not going to spend time on the decision or the way it was executed.”

Leftist attorney and professor Alan Dershowitz came in on the side of President Trump. From Breitbart.com: