President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.
Trump and the White House released a statement that said the search for a new FBI director will begin immediately.
"Today, President Donald J. Trump informed FBI Director James Comey that he has been terminated and removed from office," the White House statement read.
"President Trump acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions," the statement said.
You can read the full statement below.
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Here’s a quick rundown of what you should know Comey and why the decision matters now.
- According to BuzzFeed News, the firing comes on the same day that the FBI sent a letter to the Senate that corrected Comey’s testimony from last week, in which he said that Hillary Clinton’s aide Huma Abedin “forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, some of which contained classified information.”
- ProPublica reported that Comey’s testimony on Abedin was inaccurate. The FBI was unsure what to do about it at the time of ProPublica’s report.
- Today, the FBI sent a letter to the Senate Judicary committee that changed the testimony to reflect that a lesser amount of emails were actually sent, and any of those with classified information were not because of forwarding, the AP reported.
- New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt said the White House and Department of Justice "had been working on firing Comey since at least last week. Sessions had been working to come up with reasons."
- Comey faced blame from both Trump and Clinton during the 2016 election, according to ABC News. Trump said Comey’s actions during the campaign helped Clinton, while Clinton blamed Comey and his late announcement of the FBI’s investigation into her email server as the reason for her loss, ABC reported.
- Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight said the aforementioned Comey letter likely cost Clinton the electoral college in the 2016 election.
- Comey told a senate panel on May 3 that he still felt “mildly nauseous” about how his decision over the letter impacted the outcome of the 2016 election, according to The Washington Post.
- Comey served under President Barack Obama as FBI director since 2013 for a 10-year term, New York Daily News reported.
- Comey served as the deputy attorney general during the George W. Bush administration. He joined the FBI with “bipartisan support,” according to The New York Times.