Trump and Putin, behind the scenes

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Similarly, there’s a lot we don’t know about Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia. We know that the FBI and other agencies have been looking into any contact Trump's campaign advisers Paul Manafort, Carter Page, and Roger Stone might have had contact with the Russian government during the election. We know that intelligence agencies suspect those three might have worked the Russian officials to coordinate the release of hacked emails. We know that disgraced former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, White House senior adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions all lied about or failed to disclose communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

And we know, for a fact, that Trump fired FBI Director James Comey because he was upset by the FBI’s investigation into his Russia ties. We know that because Trump said so himself. Asked by NBC's Lester Holt why he fired Comey, Trump replied, "I said to myself, I said, 'You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should’ve won.'"

If Trump means that he fired Comey purposefully to derail or obstruct an FBI investigation, Notre Dame law professor Jimmy Gurulé writes, his actions could constitute obstruction of justice, a felony. (There’s still a sliver of a chance he didn’t; as University of Chicago law professor Aziz Huq noted, maybe Trump was just “annoyed that Comey wasn’t toeing the party line that Russia is no big thing.”) But the evidence keeps mounting. Reports that Comey had requested more funds for the Russia investigation and that grand jury subpoenas against Flynn’s business associates were issued in recent weeks suggest that the White House was concerned the investigation was going too fast.

Firing James Comey to impede an investigation isn't smoke. It's fire. - Vox