He’s been fired and disrespected. His former FBI colleagues are steaming. The president who fired him is trying to put a politician into his shoes. And now it transpires that Donald Trump told two Russian diplomats that James Comey is a “nut job” he had to get rid of, apparently because he had a strange interest in Russians.
Last week, Comey turned down an offer to testify before a closed session of the Senate Intelligence Committee. But now he’s agreed to testify before an open session of the same committee. The date hasn’t been set yet; it may come after Memorial Day. The anticipation, however, will only be the more intense for what committee chair Richard Burr blandly calls Comey’s opportunity to “clarify for the American people recent events that have been broadly reported in the media.”
The big question is how much smack the president and his defenders choose to talk between now and Comey’s testimony. Calling him a “nut job” is bad enough. Confiding his disdain for Comey to Vladimir Putin’s top envoys to America is worse. Does Team Trump go for the kill or show some understanding that Comey might have the deadlier ammunition?
In the cauldron of intrigue and ever-breaking news that is Washington, D.C., in the Trump Era, Comey’s testimony could make it all boil over.
