Was Comey's firing about the Russia investigation? @SarahHuckabee tells @WillieGeist: "Absolutely not" #morningjoe https://t.co/9WEpb06Ft7
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) May 10, 2017
A White House spokeswoman early Wednesday rejected the suggestion that President Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey was related to the investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election.
“Absolutely not,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders said during an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“There’s no evidence of any collusion,” she added, referring to one of the probe’s purposes — to discover if there was any coordination between Trump’s campaign and Moscow to influence the outcome of the election.
{mosads}Sanders was further pressed about the president’s past praise of the former FBI director and why he decided to fire him.
“I think that it’s very simple. He has the person that the FBI director reports to give him a very strong, very compelling recommendation that Comey needs to go,” she said.
“He followed the recommendation of that individual and made the decision to fire James Comey,” she said, referring to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein.
Trump on Tuesday fired Comey, the man who had been leading the investigation into potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The dismissal came in a signed letter from Trump to Comey that said it was time for a “new beginning” at the nation’s “crown jewel of law enforcement.”
The move shocked Washington and sparked outrage from Democrats, who said Trump was trying to shut down the FBI’s investigation.