Why Comey’s firing inevitably will yield a political circus in Washington

A summer full of huge news events may have driven Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign and related matters off the front page. Nevertheless, it seems increasingly likely that at some point, America will face a spectacle without precedent: an attempt to hold accountable a president who has all but admitted to seeking to obstruct justice by firing the director of the FBI — a president whose apparent primary defense may be he didn’t know this was wrong.

A Sept. 1 report in The New York Times showed Mueller has new evidence that President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on May 9 because Comey wouldn’t publicly clear him of wrongdoing in his probe of Russian attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor. This was no bombshell because the president had already said as much in a May 11 interview with NBC in which he talked of how frustrated he was with Comey for taking seriously “a made-up story” about Russia helping him in the election.

It simply never seems to have occurred to Trump how transgressive it was for him to try to impede an FBI investigation involving his campaign, family members and aides because of his personal pique. Whether this pique was because he genuinely believed that he was innocent or because he feared what Comey might find — such as, oh, his son and son-in-law meeting in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer who had promised dirt about Hillary Clinton — will matter to some Trump partisans. But a president of the United States should be held to a high standard, and not have his wrongdoing explained away. It’s wrong for a president to obstruct justice. It must be taken seriously.

Yet without new and stronger evidence of Trump improprieties — or strong gains by Democrats in 2018 in both the House and Senate — his removal from office seems unlikely. The likely result will be a political circus akin to what America witnessed in 1998 and 1999, when congressional Republicans sought to oust Democratic President Bill Clinton for alleged perjury and obstruction of justice while knowing that even if he were impeached by a majority of the House, he would never be convicted and removed from office by two-thirds of the Senate.

Americans should hope that when congressional Democrats seek to oust Trump, his administration behaves as Clinton’s did: by emphasizing its determination to get things done and to not be distracted by congressional inquiries. Americans should also hope that when Mueller reports on his findings, our institutions will do their part, as warranted, and not shy from holding Trump accountable in a meaningful way.

Unfortunately, Americans have reason to fear that Trump will lash out over and over at lawmakers and anyone who thinks he must be held accountable in a meaningful way. This will further divide our nation and make it close to impossible to get anything done on our many pressing orders of business, only starting with health care, tax and immigration reform. Here’s hoping the president can restrain himself — after finally grasping he is responsible for the storm coming his way.

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