FBI/JAMES COMEY/MIKE PENCE/RUSSIA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Vice President Mike Pence has once again delivered the White House line, in the face of growing contradictory evidence, on a charged topic related to Russia’s possible connections to the Trump campaign.
In meetings on Capitol Hill and in interviews, Pence has said this week that Trump fired FBI director James Comey on the recommendation of deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein.
‘Let me be very clear that the President’s decision to accept the recommendation of the deputy attorney general and the attorney general to remove Director Comey as the head of the FBI was based solely and exclusively on his commitment to the best interests of the American people and to ensuring that the FBI has the trust and confidence of the people this nation,’ Pence told reporters Wednesday [5-10-17].
But Trump said in an interview with NBC on Thursday that he’d planned to fire Comey no matter what Rosenstein told him. ‘I was gonna fire regardless of recommendation,’ Trump told Lester Holt. ‘Regardless of recommendation I was going to fire Comey.’
People close to the White House say that Pence knew the president was thinking about firing Comey before he met with Rosenstein on Monday. Trump, these people said, was frustrated with Comey’s testimony and the growing Russia investigation scrutiny into his campaign. He also disliked Comey’s testimony last week on Capitol Hill, particularly the FBI director’s use of the word ‘nauseous’ to describe the election process.”
-Matthew Nussbaum, Josh Dawsey, and Tara Palmeri, “In interview, Trump contradicts Pence on Comey,” Politico, May 11, 2017 1:58pm