Pete Hoekstra: Dems Should Applaud James Comey's Firing

Senate Judiciary Committee member Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., questions FBI Director James Comey during an oversight hearing on May 3.

The firing comes as the FBI is conducting a counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including any possible links between Trump campaign associates and Moscow. While Comey said Clinton and her associates were "extremely careless" with classified information, he said no "reasonable prosecutor" would bring charges in the case. Comey had previously refused to acknowledge the parallel Trump investigation, and his disclosure enrages Democrats who already blamed Comey for costing Clinton the presidency.

Comey's decisions at the close of the Bureau's investigation into Trump's campaign opponent to discuss the investigation and his notification to Congress that additional e-mails had been found on a laptop belonging to the husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin had been controversial and he was questioned by lawmakers about those decisions during a subcommittee hearing about the investigation into Russian Federation.

The Democrats expressed deep skepticism about the stated reasons for Tuesday's firing, raising the prospect of a White House effort to stymie the investigations by the FBI and congressional panels. Comey's deputy, Andrew McCabe, takes over in the interim. And we've seen zero indication from Republican leaders in Congress that they want to vote to start a high-profile committee to investigation the president of their own party. Democrats may hate Comey, but for the sake of the Trump-Russia investigation, they definitely didn't want to see him go.

Comey recommended that the Justice Department does not charge Hillary Clinton, the eventual Democratic nominee for president, for her handling of classified information at the State Department.

"The handling of the Clinton email investigation is a clear example of how Comey's decisions have called into question the trust and political independence of the FBI", Grassley said in a statement. He was nominated for the post by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate. The two-page, follow-up letter said that, in fact, only "a small number" of the thousands of emails found on the laptop had been forwarded there while most had simply been backed up from electronic devices.

During a Senate hearing last week, Comey testified that, faced with whether to disclose the information about Clinton late in the campaign or hide it, he had to choose between "really bad and catastrophic" and he made a decision to "walk into the world of really bad".

Of course Trump's letter does hint at another possible motive for the dismissal, noting that Comey has assured the president, "on three separate occasions", that he's not now investigating him.

November 6, 2016: Comey tells Congress in a follow-up letter that a review of newly discovered Clinton emails has "not changed our conclusions" that she should not face criminal charges. "The American people deserve to know why Director Comey was sacked without reason and Donald Trump needs to explain himself immediately".

Before the past months' controversies, Comey, a former deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, was perhaps best known for a remarkable 2004 standoff with top officials over a federal domestic surveillance program.

That's not likely. It would take an act of Congress to set up an independent investigation as it did after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"That night was probably the most hard night of my professional life", Comey testified before Congress in 2007.