The firing of Comey: How costly an error?

Huge, sometimes impulsive, gambles have punctuated Donald Trump’s career, as businessman and politician.

Some have paid off spectacularly — notably the bet that he could win the presidency by boosting turnout among conservative white voters. Others bankrupted his companies, leaving him near ruin.

Few of his gambles have cost so much as the decision to fire FBI Director James B. Comey.

Good afternoon, I’m David Lauter, Washington bureau chief. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in Washington and elsewhere in national politics and highlight some particularly insightful stories.

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COMEY’S TURN IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Perhaps the most important takeaway from Thursday’s hearing was what didn’t happen. As Cathy Decker noted, Comey, under oath, openly accused Trump and the White House of having told “lies, plain and simple,” and not a single Republican senator disputed his accusation.

Instead, the Intelligence Committee chair, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), closed the hearing by lauding Comey, addressing him familiarly as Jim, and calling him “somebody that loves this country enough to tell it like it is.”

That judgment of the president’s credibility, by members of his own party, stands alone in the history of modern political scandals. Even Richard Nixon during Watergate had some outspoken Senate defenders.

In this case, by contrast, the Republican members of the Intelligence panel, who represent a fairly good cross-section of the party’s Senate caucus, served notice that Trump will have to deal with the Russia investigation largely on his own; they will offer a defense, but a muted one.

There’s a political calculus behind that posture, as one would expect with elected officials. Trump remains popular with most Republican voters, but the share of self-identified Republicans who disapprove of his job performance has moved steadily upward in polls since late April. At the same time, the share of voters who identify as Republican has edged downward.

In other words, the party, already a minority in U.S. politics, is getting smaller and somewhat less pro-Trump, leaving the president with a hard core of supporters that may not be enough to sustain the Republican congressional majority. Not surprisingly, senators are putting their own survival ahead of the president’s.

As David Cloud and Joe Tanfani reported, Thursday’s highly publicized hearing also made clear that Trump’s problems have deepened, largely as a result of the decision to fire Comey.

Before the firing, Trump wasn’t personally under investigation, although some of his associates and aides were. Comey repeated that statement at the hearing, an assurance that Trump’s lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, made much of.

Kasowitz didn’t mention Comey’s strong suggestion that the president’s status may now have changed.

The firing, itself, along with Trump’s request that Comey drop the FBI investigation into Mike Flynn, the former national security adviser, could be considered part of an effort to obstruct justice.

“I was fired in some way to change — or the endeavor was to change — the way the Russia investigation was being conducted,” Comey said.

He declined to say if he believed that Trump’s intent was to impede the investigation — the key element of an obstruction case. But he pointedly remarked that the special counsel heading the investigation, Robert Mueller III, a longtime friend of Comey’s, would be looking at that question.

“That’s a conclusion I’m sure the special counsel will work toward, to try and understand what the intention was there and whether that’s an offense,” Comey said.

(If you were skiing in the Sierras or otherwise occupied and missed Thursday’s hearing, here’s a good collection of key moments. And here’s a summary of what’s known about the broader investigation so far. Trump treated Comey with the same mix of crude seduction and veiled threats that some business executives use to harass their employees, Robin Abcarian writes.)

Obstruction was also the subtext of an Intelligence committee hearing on Wednesday at which two top officials, Dan Coats, the director of National Intelligence, and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency, refused to answer questions about whether Trump had asked them to intervene to try to derail parts of the Russia investigation.

As Cloud wrote, the two men said they were not “directed” to intervene and did not feel “pressured,” but they wouldn’t say if they had been “asked.” Neither man cited a legal basis for refusing to answer — Coats, a former senator, at one point said he did not know if he had a legal basis.

The committee ultimately could subpoena the two and demand answers. At that point, the White House would have to decide whether to claim executive privilege. Any such effort might fail; the Supreme Court has said the privilege is not intended to shield presidential misconduct.

Privilege of some variety was also the subject of a claim Kasowitz made in his brief statement after Thursday’s hearing. He asserted that Comey violated a legal privilege by telling reporters about memos he wrote on conversations with the president.

As David Savage explains, most legal experts doubt that such a privilege exists or that Comey’s release of the memos violated any law or rule.

After all, in recent decades dozens of former White House aides and other senior government officials have written tell-all memoirs recounting conversations with the presidents they served. Presidents don’t like that, but it’s not illegal.

NEW FBI CHIEF

Trump surprised much of his staff and key members of Congress on Wednesday by announcing that he had chosen Christopher A. Wray to replace Comey as head of the FBI.

Wray, a former top Justice Department official and long-time prosecutor, was also New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s lawyer in the so-called Bridgegate scandal. He seems likely to win Senate confirmation, based on the early reaction from both parties.

THE INTERNATIONAL POLITICS OF CLIMATE

Gov. Jerry Brown spent much of this week in China, being treated like the president he long hoped to be.

Brown’s purpose was to rally support for efforts to combat global warming and assert California’s leadership on the issue.

Whether states — even ones as big and wealthy as California — can fill the void left by the Trump administration’s retreat from federal climate efforts remains to be seen. But Brown’s visit garnered huge attention, both in the U.S. and in China.

As our colleague Jessica Meyers wrote from Beijing, the Chinese leaders now look to Sacramento, not Washington, for help as they try to reorient their economy away from coal and build a dominant position in the international solar energy industry.

HEALTHCARE — SENATE LEADERS MOVE CLOSER TO A VOTE

With the Senate back in session this week, deadline time is getting closer for major legislation, most notably the Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.

As Lisa Mascaro and Noam Levey wrote, the week began with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell still short of the 50 votes he needs. But as the week continued, McConnell appeared to make progress. Several centrist Republicans indicated they could support the latest version of the bill.

With 52 Republicans, and facing unanimous Democratic opposition, McConnell can afford to lose only two votes in his caucus. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in the center and Rand Paul of Kentucky on the right appear to be the most problematic votes. If all three opposed the bill, it would fail.

But there are other key senators McConnell needs to keep on board. One of the most interesting to watch is Nevada’s Republican senator, Dean Heller, who faces reelection in 2018 in a state that went for Hillary Clinton in last year’s election.

In recent statements, Heller has sounded like he’s moving closer to voting for repeal, indicating that he would back a phase-out of Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid if the reduction took place over several years.

“I support seven. I support seven,” he told reporters at the Capitol this week.

But back home, the Nevada legislature just passed a bill that could potentially expand Medicaid significantly, setting up what would be a national model of a public option for healthcare.

It’s not Medicare-for-all, as Sen. Bernie Sanders has advocated and as the California Senate has backed — a costly proposal that is probably not becoming law any time soon, as George Skelton wrote.

Instead, the Nevada plan would be built around expanding the less costly Medicaid program. The Medicaid-for-most effort would allow people who can’t otherwise get insurance to buy into the state’s Medicaid plan.

If Gov. Brian Sandoval signs the bill — he has another week to decide — it could put the state at the forefront of the national healthcare debate. It would also put the state on the road toward expanding Medicaid just as the Republican Congress wants to contract it. That would complicate Heller’s decision making at a crucial point.

REPEALING DODD-FRANK

The House took a step this week toward overturning another key part of President Obama’s legacy, voting to repeal the reforms adopted after the 2008 meltdown of financial markets.

But as Jim Puzzanghera wrote, the bill faces big obstacles in the Senate.

TRUMP HURTS HIS TRAVEL BAN

Trump’s aides successfully kept him away from Twitter during the Comey hearing. They weren’t so successful earlier in the week.

In a series of tweets about his proposed travel ban, Trump undermined arguments that the government’s lawyers had been carefully making to the Supreme Court.

As Savage reported, Trump’s claims contradicted the Justice Department’s basic argument for why the court needs to consider the case at all.

The ACLU, which has succeeded so far in keeping the travel order bottled up in court, has until Monday to file its brief with the justices. Trump’s tweets likely will be a featured item.

ALL THE PRESIDENT’S TWEETS

The White House conceded the obvious this week — Trump’s Twitter messages are official statements of administration policy.

Twitter has long been Trump’s favored means of pushing his message. We’re compiling all of Trump’s tweets. It’s a great resource. Take a look.

MORE CHANGES AT THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions continues to roll back Obama-era policies targeted by conservatives. This week’s entry, as Tanfani wrote: No more lawsuit settlements that allow corporate wrongdoers to give money to community organizations or other nonprofit groups.

The Obama administration backed such settlements as a way to steer resources to communities damaged by financial frauds, environmental pollution and other problems. Conservatives denounced them as a left-wing effort to bankroll activist groups with corporate money.

THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE INFRASTRUCTURE WEEK

Back before the week became all about Comey, White House aides had planned for Trump to spend it talking up his proposals to improve the nation’s roads, bridges, airports and other major infrastructure.

One problem with that strategy, as Noah Bierman wrote, is that the administration doesn’t yet have much of an infrastructure plan. Trump’s budget calls for spending less on infrastructure, not more. His advisors have talked about ways to reshape federal spending to leverage more private money, but those plans remain vague, and how much support they could get in Congress is uncertain.

Trump’s one firm proposal was to sign on to a bill in Congress that would turn the air traffic control system over to a semi-private entity. As Hugo Martin wrote earlier this spring, that idea, similar to how Canada runs its system, has significant support from major airlines, but has been stymied in Congress for years. One big political problem: Representatives of rural areas fear they would get shorted by a system dominated by the major carriers.

ONE THING TRUMP’S NOT DOING — TALKING TO HIS GENERALS

As Bill Hennigan reported, Trump has yet to have a meeting, or even a conversation, with the top U.S. commander in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

That’s a sharp contrast with both President Obama and President George W. Bush, who spoke frequently with their top commanders. It’s a prime example of Trump’s style of giving the military a free rein, with little direct intervention from the White House.

His approach has benefits and drawbacks. Hennigan looks at both.

LOGISTICS

That wraps up this week. My colleague Christina Bellantoni will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in national politics and the Trump administration with our Essential Washington blog, at our Politics page and on Twitter @latimespolitics.

Send your comments, suggestions and news tips to politics@latimes.com.

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David.lauter@latimes.com

@davidlauter

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