Hillary Clinton would have fired Comey as well: Analyst

Former US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton would have fired James Comey as the head of the FBI if she had won the presidential election, says an American analyst.

New York-based political analyst and radio host Don DeBar told Press TV on Sunday that Comey was running two major investigations into both presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Clinton, and could easily used the findings to “blackmail” either one later on.

Before the election, the dismissed FBI director led a controversial probe into Clinton’s use of a personal server to exchange government emails while she was secretary of state.

After the election, he began investigating President Trump’s alleged ties to Russia as well as a series of cyber attacks against Clinton’s campaign, which Democrats claimed were conducted by Russian hackers.

“He involved himself in… a pair of investigations, one of each of the two candidates that of course he should have recused himself from because no matter who won, his job would depend on the good graces of the winner,” DeBar argued.

“So, it seems what he was doing was gathering blackmail evidence against whoever would win and he tried to play his hand with Trump,” the analyst added.

On Sunday, Trump accused Comey of “cowardly” leaking his administration secrets “far more prevalent than anyone ever thought possible.”

The raging tweet came three days after Comey’s sworn testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, where he publicly accused the president of seeking to derail the Russian probe.

He told the panel that a "friend," identified as a Columbia University law professor, was going to release to the press a memo of his conversations with Trump.  

Comey said he had hoped the releasing of the memo would pave the way for the appointment of a special counsel to handle the probe into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia, a ploy that ultimately proved successful.

Comey branded Trump a liar and said the president urged him to drop the investigation into the former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who resigned earlier this year over his contacts with Russian diplomats.

DeBar said the whole thing was blown out of proportions by media on both sides and they all tried to spin it to their liking.

“I don’t believe there is any actual legal danger for the Trump administration, I don’t know if there is any political damage because there has been the same effort being put into this as been put into a string of things” before the November vote, he noted.

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