May 10, 2017

Report: Comey Thought His Firing Was a Prank and Laughed It Off

Wow.

Susan Walsh/AP

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Of all the astounding details pouring out tonight about President Donald Trump’s sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey, this bit will surely make your jaw drop.

According to the New York Times’ Michael S. Schmidt, Comey was giving a speech to his FBI team in Los Angeles when he saw the news about his firing break on televisions in the room. He hadn’t been informed yet, and at first thought he it was a joke:

In response, Mr. Comey laughed, saying he thought it was a fairly funny prank.

Then his staff started scurrying around in the background and told Mr. Comey that he should step into a nearby office.
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Mr. Comey stopped addressing the group. He proceeded to shake hands with the employees he had been speaking to. Then he stepped into a side office, where he confirmed that he had been fired. At that point, he had not heard from the White House.

Read Mother Jones’s analysis of tonight’s extraordinary developments here.

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That’s twice the impact for intrepid reporting that peels back the layers to publish the truth—and the context you need to break it all down. It’s twice the fuel for investigations on voting rights and justice, critical in this midterm election year. And it’s twice the power for exposing the chaos and corruption of a White House trying to control the narrative.

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