Flashback to F.B.I. Chief’s ’93 Firing by Bill Clinton

The Federal Bureau of Investigation was established in 1908 when the Justice Department created an agency to conduct investigations for it. The first leaders of the F.B.I., known then as chief examiners, were appointed by the attorney general. That custom remained until 1972, when the F.B.I. director, J. Edgar Hoover, died in office after overseeing the bureau for 48 years.

In the years before Hoover’s death, a new confirmation process for the F.B.I. director was developed. After Hoover, the director was nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. In 1976, it became law that the director would be limited to a 10-year term.

In its 109-year history, only one F.B.I. director had been fired — until Tuesday, when President Trump fired James B. Comey. In July 1993, President Bill Clinton fired William S. Sessions, who had been nominated to the post by President Ronald Reagan in 1987. Mr. Clinton said his attorney general, Janet Reno, reviewed Mr. Sessions’s leadership and concluded “in no uncertain terms that he can no longer effectively lead the bureau.”

Mr. Sessions had been cited for ethical lapses, including taking free trips on F.B.I. aircraft and using government money to build a $10,000 fence at his home. Mr. Sessions was asked to resign, and was fired when he refused to do so. “Despite the president’s severe tone, he seemed to regret having to force Mr. Sessions from his post,” The New York Times wrote about his dismissal.

Similarly, Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey on the recommendation of his attorney general, Jeff Sessions. (No relation to William S. Sessions.) There are no United States statutes that discuss the president’s authority to remove the F.B.I. director.

The termination of Mr. Comey also brought to mind for many the so-called Saturday Night Massacre. On Oct. 20, 1973, President Richard Nixon, seeking to fire Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor leading the Watergate investigation, accepted the resignations of Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William D. Ruckelshaus after they refused to take action. Robert Bork, the solicitor general, complied with the president’s order to fire Mr. Cox. Mr. Nixon also abolished the special prosecutor’s office.

But Mr. Nixon did not fire the director of the F.B.I.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/us/politics/fbi-director-firing-saturday-night-massacre.html?_r=0

So all you people that want to talk about Trumps firing of Comey, you have to look at the first  other firing by BILL CLINTON!!!   

So all you people that want to talk about Trumps firing of Comey, you have to look at the first  other firing by BILL CLINTON!!!   

You really are a pathetic poster. You believe the Sessions firing, where he basically stole from the department, a crime, as the HEAD of the FBI, is comparable to a flippant firing by a capricious President, because he "Didn't do a good job.."

The head of the FBI isn't a McDonald's Drive-Thru worker kid....

To even compare Watergate and a potential Russian Connection is absurd.

Watergate was a third-rate wiretapping scandal that lead to the President's ouster.

If Trump is guilty of any financial connection to any politically connected individual in Russia it is a First-Rate threat, not to finding out what another party thinks about you or says about you, but to National Security.

Much like the Right's insistence Obama was a Muslim, which was laughably fallacious.

Well now it is coming back to bite them in the as*.