House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was repetitive with talking points in his support of President Donald Trump’s decision to terminate James Comey from the FBI’s directorship in a Wednesday interview with Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier for Special Report.
Ryan repeatedly referred to a loss of confidence in Comey and presidential authority over the FBI’s directorship (emphases added):
“I think that [Comey] had basically just lost the confidence of a lot of Republicans and a lot of Democrats based upon his conduct, his actions, and some of the comments that he had made. And most importantly, he had lost the confidence of the president. And it is entirely within the president’s role and authority to relieve him, and that’s what he did.
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I think people in the Justice Department lost confidence in Director Comey himself, and I think the president was looking at a situation where you had senior Justice Department officials losing confidence, and he does not want to see the FBI in disarray .. It’s obviously within this president’s authority and role to do this. I think he made an important command decision, that is a decision that is in his right to do.
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I think Director Comey was compromised. Clearly his superiors in the Justice Department felt that way, and the president made a presidential decision and removed him.
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The president saw an FBI director where people had lost confidence in him from both parties, including high senior officials at the Justice Department, and he acted, and that’s what a president can and should do.”
While noting that no evidence exists of “collusion” between Trump’s political team and the Russian state toward subversion of last year’s presidential election, Ryan accepted the premise that domestic political influence campaigns directed by the Russian government are worthy of investigatory priority.
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