On Tuesday night, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) tried to imagine what would be happening right about now if the tables were turned, and Hillary Clinton had won the presidency and then fired the director of the FBI. "If this were Hillary Clinton, the Republicans would be trying to impeach her right now," he said during an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, just hours after President Trump unexpectedly fired FBI Director James Comey.
Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, called Tuesday night for "immediate emergency hearings" on Comey's firing. "The White House was already covering up for [former national security adviser] Michael Flynn by refusing to provide a single document to Congress, and now the president fired the one independent person who was doing the most to investigate President Trump and his [2016] campaign over allegations of coordination with Russia," Cummings said in a statement.
Trump has cited Comey's handling of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server as his reason for Comey's abrupt dismissal.