[anigbrowl]

So you're saying you find it plausible that Trump fired Comey an excess of administrative zeal on Comey's part might have led to Clinton's loss of the election.

I might find your position more persuasive if Trump didn't display an almost-daily disregard for administrative norms and procedures. I highly doubt that his new nominee will be told to not obstruct any ongoing investigations.

[skygazer]

That deputy AG letter seemed to imply that the reason for the firing was Comey publicly berating Clinton last July, against policy -- the act that Trump praised Comey for at the time. And lets not forget Trump hugging Comey at their first meeting after he took office.

If these were the actual reasons, they would have been triggered months ago during Trump's early firing sprees. There's clearly an unnamed (but obvious) proximal cause.

[MaysonL]

A tweet from cstross: "In iterated prisoner's dilemmas, Trump ALWAYS defects. Take note."

[losvedir]

> So you're saying you find it plausible that Trump fired Comey an excess of administrative zeal on Comey's part might have led to Clinton's loss of the election.

Yes, that is the stated reason: http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/politics/fbi-dire...

edit: better source

[anigbrowl]

I'm saying that I don't find the stated reason plausible, not least because most of the reasons offered in the letter were known many months ago. Comey could have been invited to submit his resignation back in January if Trump were worried about the appearance of impropriety. I don't want to turn this into a political slanging match but the appearance of propriety seems to be pretty far down his list of concerns.

[losvedir]

I agree it's fishy, but "plausible" isn't a high bar to clear. I do think it's plausible. Regarding the timing, the request came from the Deputy Attorney General who started two weeks ago.

It's possible Trump waited until now to assign the request to him to write up, but it just doesn't seem like something he'd do. He's an impulsive blowhard and if he wanted to fire Comey I'd practically expect it over Twitter, not via some covert, deniable request to the Deputy AG.

This obviously rests heavily on our respective prior beliefs. All I can say is I will heavily reconsider my position if a bad AG is nominated. I think you should, too, if it turns out, say, the now-acting AG remains in office for the rest of Trump's turn, which seems like a reasonably positive outcome to me.

[dllthomas]

Do you mean,

"Yes, [I believe that it is plausible because it] is the stated reason [and that alone is sufficiently convincing]"

or

"Yes, [in case those in the audience didn't catch it,] that is the stated reason [if you can believe it!]"

?

[losvedir]

The latter, but probably without the exclamation point.