https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...18f6849a004_story.html?utm_term=.ee573ac0a35f
How Trump's anger and impatience prompted him to fire the FBI director
Trump was angry that Comey would not support his baseless claim that President Barack Obama had his campaign offices wiretapped. He was frustrated when Comey revealed in Senate testimony the breadth of the counterintelligence investigation into Russia's effort to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election. And he fumed that Comey was giving too much attention to the Russia probe and not enough to investigating leaks to journalists.
In the weeks leading up to Comey's firing, Trump administration officials had repeatedly urged the FBI to more aggressively pursue leak investigations, according to people familiar with the discussions. Administration officials sometimes sought to push the FBI to prioritize leak probes over the Russia interference case, and at other times urged the bureau to investigate disclosures of information that was not classified or highly sensitive and therefore did not constitute crimes, these people said.
Over time, administration officials grew increasingly dissatisfied with the FBI's actions on that front. Comey's appearances at congressional hearings caused even more tension between the White House and FBI, as Trump administration officials were angered that the director's statements increased, rather than diminished, public attention on the Russia probe, officials said.
Trump and some of his advisers did not fully anticipate the ferocious reaction — in fact, some wrongly assumed many Democrats would support the move because they had been critical of Comey in the past — and were unprepared to contain the fallout.
