James Comey thought he was being pranked when he heard he was fired

Former FBI Director James Comey found out he was fired on Tuesday afternoon along with millions of other people who got the news while watching television.

Comey was speaking to FBI employees in Los Angeles in a room that had TV screens in the back, and as he was talking, he saw the breaking news alert come through: Comey was fired as FBI director. He immediately thought it was a prank, and a pretty funny one at that, The New York Times reports. His staff knew it wasn't a joke, and told Comey to wrap it up and join them in a private office. He stopped, shook hands with the employees he had been addressing, and then joined his staff, who confirmed he had been fired.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.