When President Trump decided to fire James Comey, he didn't share his plan with his vice president or press secretary


Neither Vice President Mike Pence nor White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer were accurately informed in advance about President Trump's plan to fire FBI Director James Comey, weekend reports from The Washington Post and The New York Times reveal.
Pence was apparently tasked with sharing the official White House account of Comey's ouster, a story Trump himself would thouroughly undercut:
[Pence on Wednesday] went to Capitol Hill and in a brief scrum with reporters described the decision-making process that led to Comey’s dismissal as one that originated at the Justice Department and moved up to the chain of command to the president for action. This wasn’t a statement made in passing. Four different times he pointed to the Justice Department as the catalyst and cited Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein’s memo critiquing Comey’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state as being critically influential. Everyone now knows there was much more to the sequence of events ... [The Washington Post]
"Pence has prided himself on being a truth-teller," the Post story notes, a difficult reputation to maintain when the president publicly repudiates his remarks.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Spicer's situation was different. Citing "a half-dozen West Wing officials," the Times reports he was deliberately kept in the dark in advance of the firing because the president did not trust the discretion of the White House communications staff:
[Trump] has been especially critical of Mr. Spicer, they said, openly musing about replacing him and telling people in his circle that he kept his own press secretary out of the loop in dismissing Mr. Comey until the last possible moment because he feared that the communications staff would leak the news. [The New York Times]
As the Post comments, this week demonstrates that "Trump established a White House with few clear lines of authority, competing power centers and, as it turned out, fighting factions" plagued by poor communications. Read more of that analysis here.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
-
The genetic secrets of South Korea's female free-divers
Under The Radar Unique physiology of 'real-life mermaid' haenyeo women could help treat chronic diseases
-
Democrats: How to rebuild a damaged brand
Feature Trump's approval rating is sinking, but so is the Democratic brand
-
Unraveling autism
Feature RFK Jr. has vowed to find the root cause of the 'autism epidemic' in months. Scientists have doubts.
-
Qatar luxury jet gift clouds Trump trip to Mideast
speed read Qatar is said to be presenting Trump with a $400 million plane, which would be among the biggest foreign gifts ever received by the US government
-
Trump taps Fox News' Pirro for DC attorney post
speed read The president has named Fox News host Jeanine Pirro to be the top federal prosecutor for Washington, replacing acting US Attorney Ed Martin
-
Trump, UK's Starmer outline first post-tariff deal
speed read President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Kier Starmer struck a 'historic' agreement to eliminate some of the former's imposed tariffs
-
Fed leaves rates unchanged as Powell warns on tariffs
speed read The Federal Reserve says the risks of higher inflation and unemployment are increasing under Trump's tariffs
-
Denmark to grill US envoy on Greenland spying report
speed read The Trump administration ramped up spying on Greenland, says reporting by The Wall Street Journal
-
Supreme Court allows transgender troop ban
speed read The US Supreme Court will let the Trump administration begin executing its ban on transgender military service members
-
Hollywood confounded by Trump's film tariff idea
speed read President Trump proposed a '100% tariff' on movies 'produced in foreign lands'
-
Trump offers migrants $1,000 to 'self-deport'
speed read The Department of Homeland Security says undocumented immigrants can leave the US in a more 'dignified way'