Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney said Wednesday he is “among those who think this is a terrific step,” speaking with Raheem Kassam on Breitbart News Daily about the firing of FBI Director James Comey.
He saw “abundant reasons” for President Trump to dismiss Comey.
“One among them is that in the past year or so, he has made a serial hashup of what is, and must be, the single most important role of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, which is to conduct investigations out of the public eye, and in a rigorous and thoroughly legal fashion,” he said.
“I think that what we saw with his serial interventions in the political process, exonerating Hillary Clinton even as he condemned her – or at least giving her a Get Out of Jail Free card by saying that no prosecutor would actually bring a case against her, when I think that was manifestly not so – on the one hand, and then deciding that, in fact, more evidence had come to light, which he had to then bring to the attention of Congress in the critical last few days of the campaign because he’d made a previous intervention, I think improperly, and then having at the very end of the campaign to say, ‘Oh, no, never mind,’” said Gaffney, tackling the formidable challenge of summing up the entire election timeline in a single sentence.
“All of this made a complete mess of both the FBI’s role in that investigation and, I think, of public confidence in it,” he said.
“But Raheem, I have to tell you, quite apart from all that and other problems we’ve seen with the Comey tenure at the FBI, the thing that I really believe – though it’s not been addressed to date by anybody – has warranted his removal for cause, for a long time, is that he has been engaging – as has his senior management team, most especially his number two, a fellow by the name of Andrew McCabe – in a really malfeasant approach to the most important internal threat facing the United States today,” he added. “As you know, we’ve talked about it many times, that is the threat posed by sharia supremacists in our country.”
“I’m not talking just about the various Islamic State operatives that he has acknowledged constitute a problem across this country, but the Muslim Brotherhood,” he explained. “Under Comey, that group has been embraced. That group has been brought in as advisers. That group has been allowed to tell us what we can know and think and say and do about the threat that they and their fellow jihadists seek to impose on us.”
“All of this is the sort of thing that I think warranted a cleaning of house. I wish President Trump had done it at the very beginning of the administration, but I’m glad that he’s begun that process now,” Gaffney declared.
Kassam asked if Gaffney believes the candidate for Comey’s replacement should support the designation of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.
“Among many things, but I think somebody should have the confidence of the American people, obviously first and foremost,” Gaffney replied. “And the confidence of the serious men and women that man that bureau and who I think have been badly led, badly served, and disabled from really doing their jobs – with respect, in particular, to this problem.”
His own proposed candidate, whom he assumed would have “the kiss of death” with tongue in cheek, was former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, who currently writes for National Review. Gaffney thought McCarthy could be counted on to pursue all investigations with vigor, “including by the way of whatever evidence – and I don’t see much of it – that Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians or the extent of the Russian involvement in that campaign.”
Gaffney called McCarthy “far and away the most serious thinker and practitioner on these various challenges of our time,” citing both his writing and his experience as the federal prosecutor who “busted and achieved the conviction of the guys who tried to blow up the World Trade Center the first time around.”
“He’s deeply knowledgeable about both the law and the threats that we’re facing, internal and foreign, and I think would be an extraordinary choice for the next FBI director,” Gaffney said.
Kassam mentioned some of the more hysterical “epic meltdown” reactions to Comey’s firing, which was, in fact, a legal, if unusual, exercise of presidential powers.
“It reminds me of the kind of whipsawing flips that we saw – speaking of fascism – when Joseph Stalin went from being Adolph Hitler’s partner in dividing up Poland and otherwise trying to make common cause with the fascists, or the Nazis in his case, of Germany, and because Germany attacked the Soviet Union, suddenly at the beginning of World War II – when all of those in the Communist Party and its friends and its admirers in this country went from being all-in for Hitler to being enemies of Hitler when Joe Stalin became one,” he recalled, riffing on “whiff of fascism” over-reactions to the Comey firing.
“It’s that kind of flip. It’s kind of mind-boggling that as recently as yesterday, I believe it’s the case that an awful lot of the Democrats thought that Comey was unfit, thought that he was making a hashup, as I have said about these investigations, should in some cases be removed. And now it’s a hint of fascism because Donald Trump has done just that,” he marveled.
“I believe this is pure politics,” Gaffney declared. “I think that it’s an effort; they’re desperately hoping that they’ll be able to breathe fresh life into this idea that there’s enough justification for an independent investigation to dog this president for the remainder of his time in office, or maybe even hound him out of office, on the basis of what has yet to be established as any real grounds at all, that he or his personnel actually were involved in colluding with or otherwise enabling the Russian interference in our election.”
Kassam noted that a mere seven hours passed between Hillary Clinton campaign chief John Podesta’s criticism of Comey on Twitter and his criticism of Donald Trump for taking action against Comey.
Looking ahead to the process of selecting a new FBI director, Gaffney said that “the temptation will be to do something very quickly.”
“They may do an interim person. That might be the best course for the moment, to find somebody who is a steady hand with long experience inside the Bureau, or at least with the confidence of people in the Bureau,” he speculated. “But it shouldn’t be anybody drawn from the top two or three ranks of the current team because I think they’ve been a disaster – especially in the area that I was talking about, the failure to understand this internal threat from the Brotherhood and so on.”
“The key thing is getting the right person. I think if it takes time to do that. Obviously, there will be a lot of thrashing about this, and the confirmation process will be – as in most of them to date – protracted, and the Democrats will cavil and all of that,” he predicted.
“But I think it is a critical institution, the Bureau, and it is important that it be restored to its rightful place as a front-line element of the first lines of defense of this country. That will take probably a serious overhaul of the management and bringing up from the ranks, I think, capable people who I believe have been as revolted by what they’ve been seeing from their senior management as I am,” said Gaffney.
“This will require Senate confirmation, and I think you can expect that this will be a sordid business,” he warned, “especially if the president resists the temptation to go with somebody that Chuck Schumer – some have taken to calling him ‘President Schumer’ – is going to be happy with. Because what Chuck Schumer is about, let’s be clear, is politicizing everything, and that would include, I suspect, the Bureau. That shouldn’t happen.”
Gaffney said Trump would be “best served by getting away from this kind of political calculation.”
“Get the best person to do the job, and get him or her in place as quickly as possible,” he recommended.
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