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Comey’s firing unleashes uncertainty in Washington

President Trump spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the White House on Wednesday.European PressPhoto Agency

WASHINGTON — A deepening sense of uncertainty pervaded Washington as the White House on Wednesday struggled to explain President Trump’s sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey, who appeared to have been escalating his investigation of possible Trump campaign ties to Russia just days ago.

The long-term impact of Trump’s extraordinarily rare action remained unclear. In addition to the original open question — did Trump’s campaign collude with Russia to influence the 2016 election? — there is now another: How much confidence can the American public have that federal officials will, in Comey’s absence, conduct a full and fair investigation of the matter?

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Calls rang from multiple quarters Wednesday for an independent counsel or a special congressional commission to take over the investigation, but with the Justice Department deeply involved in Comey’s firing and Congress mired in a partisan morass, there seemed to be no path to establishing those sorts of independent probes.

Trump’s decision to fire Comey at least temporarily eclipsed the rest of Washington’s agenda. Senate Democrats, in protest, ground routine committee work to a halt. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the White House and chanted, “Shame!”

Trump was barely visible. “He wasn’t doing a good job,” the president said of Comey in his first comments about the firing, delivered during a brief photo opportunity at the White House. “Very simply. He was not doing a good job.”

On Capitol Hill, with a few exceptions, lawmakers retreated to their partisan corners. Democrats vociferously argued for a special counsel to be appointed, allowing for more autonomy while still operating within the Justice Department.

“I have said from the get-go that I think a special prosecutor is the way to go, but now with what’s happened it is the only way to go,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said, while also demanding a classified meeting for the entire Senate on what led to Comey’s dismissal.

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Some Republicans, most prominently Senator John McCain of Arizona, called for a select congressional committee to lead an investigation. But Senate leadership made it clear that would not happen.

“Today we’ll no doubt hear calls for a new investigation, which can only serve to impede the current work being done,” Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said on Wednesday morning.

There were multiple indications that Comey’s investigation of Trump’s former campaign aides and advisers was heating up in the days before Trump fired him.

Subpoenas on behalf of a federal grand jury have recently been issued seeking documents related to Michael Flynn, a top Trump campaign adviser and the national security adviser who was fired after lying about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

And Comey, just days ago, reportedly asked Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein for additional resources for his investigation.

Rosenstein and his boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, had met with Trump at the White House on Monday to make the case for firing Comey, the White House confirmed. Monday also was the day that Trump tweeted, “The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?”

On Tuesday, Trump justified Comey’s dismissal by citing a memo he asked Rosenstein to write — and which Sessions endorsed in his own memo — that slammed Comey’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server last year.

Trump’s actions gave those who watched Watergate unfold in the 1970s an eerily familiar feeling.

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“There was a similar sense of . . . for reasons we can’t understand, there’s a coverup going on,” said David Gergen, who had served as a White House adviser to four presidents, starting with Republican Nixon. “The only possible rationale at the time was there was something terribly suspicious. And it feels very suspicious now.”

But the White House on Wednesday vigorously denied any ulterior motive in Comey’s dismissal and continued to insist the investigation of possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia was a waste of time.

“We’d love for [the investigation] to be completed. Let’s put it behind us, let’s move on, and let’s focus on what we need to do to turn our country around,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White House press secretary, told reporters in the daily press briefing.

Sanders said that Rosenstein, who started his job two weeks ago, decided on his own that Comey was no longer fit for office. Sanders also said that Trump had been contemplating firing Comey since the day he was elected, which runs counter to White House officials repeatedly saying previously that Comey had the “full confidence” of the president.

“I have confidence in him,” Trump told Fox Business Network four weeks ago. “We’ll see what happens.”

Now Washington is awash in questions about the credibility of the White House and the Justice Department and the ability of federal officials to continue an independent probe.

Sessions — who previously recused himself from the Russian investigation, but then recommended the firing of the chief investigator into that investigation — was interviewing candidates Wednesday to replace Comey.

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House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday night defended Trump, telling Fox News, “The president made a presidential decision to remove him.”

Comey had previously acknowledged that the FBI began an investigation of ties between the Trump campaign and Russia last July.

An initial House-led investigation into possible Russian collusion was tainted after the Republican chairman, Devin Nunes, stepped aside amid reports concerning classified information. That has shifted the focus onto an investigation being conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Comey has been asked to testify Tuesday before a closed hearing of that committee.

“We’ve not heard back,” Senator Mark Warner, the committee’s top Democrat, told MSNBC. “My hope is that he will take advantage of this opportunity.”

The committee revealed Wednesday night that it had subpoenaed Flynn for documents “relevant to the committee’s investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 election.” Flynn had declined to voluntarily cooperate with an earlier request for those documents, according to the committee.

As if the day couldn’t get more bizarre, the president’s only public activity on Wednesday was a meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. With the American press shut out of the meeting, the only images that emerged were those distributed by the Russian government.

Lavrov, responding to questions about Comey shouted after an earlier meeting with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, said, “Was he fired? You’re kidding? You’re kidding?”

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Vladimir Putin, dressed in full hockey gear rinkside in Sochi, told CBS News that “We have nothing to do with” Comey. “Don’t be angry with me,” he added.

Vice President Mike Pence said the firing had nothing to do with the investigation into Russia.

“That’s not what this is about,” he told reporters at the Capitol. “The president took strong and decisive leadership here to put the safety and the security of the American people first.”


Matt Viser can be reached at matt.viser@globe.com.