Comey Fallout: Today's News for May 11th

Before I get into the lede, I found the Fox News lede interesting:

Fox News:

Aetna to Completely Pull Out of ObamaCare Exchanges by 2018

Health insurance company Aetna (AET) announced Wednesday it will completely withdraw from the ObamaCare marketplace in 2018, a decision Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price perceived as a sign of continued instability in the health care sector under the Affordable Care Act.

Will this affect people nationwide? Not quite:

The company will not offer insurance plans in Delaware or Nebraska, the remaining two states where it was slated to provide coverage under the Affordable Care Act next year.

“At this time [we] have completely exited the exchanges,” Aetna said in a statement to FOX Business.

In April Aetna said it would not participate on the state exchanges in Virginia next year and last week committed to pulling out of Iowa. In 2016 the insurer sold plans across fifteen states. It trimmed that position to just four states at the outset of 2017, citing financial losses.

In 2016, this would have been a lede story for Aetna. In 2017, it is important but not quite lede material on a day with the Comey firing raging across the media. Even Fox covered it, although the Aetna lede was clearly a biased move.

On the other hand, CNN didn't even cover the Aetna story. Bias goes both ways, it seems.

Now back to today's real lede story...

CNN:

Source close to Comey says there were 2 reasons the FBI director was fired

There are two reasons why President Donald Trump fired James Comey, according to a source close to the now-former FBI director:

1. Comey never provided the President with any assurance of personal loyalty.
2. The fact that the FBI's investigation into possible Trump team collusion with Russia in the 2016 election was accelerating.

The official White House version of what happened is that deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, fresh on the job, wrote a memo expressing concern about the way Comey had handled the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

But mounting evidence suggests Comey was actually fired because of the Russian investigation.  

And the article does make a compelling case against Trump's motives here. But then the article makes an odd turn at the end:

One other point to be questioned has to do with the role of Sessions, who officially removed himself from the Russia investigation as it related to US political campaigns after it became clear he had not been forthcoming about his meetings during the presidential campaign with the Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Still, he cited his own ties to the Trump campaign as the reason for his recusal.

"I have now decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matter relating in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States," Sessions said back in March.

Except that recusal oddly does not appear to have been in effect when Sessions forwarded the letter from his deputy, Rosenstein, to the President and separately called for Comey to be fired. And it is not in apparent effect now as we're told Sessions is leading the search Comey's replacement.

What was Sessions supposed to do? "Sorry, I can't forward this letter because I recused myself." As for Sessions calling for Comey to be fired, Sessions didn't actually fire Comey, although he would have been within his rights to do it. Recusing one's self from investigations doesn't preclude hiring and firing of people who report to you, for any reason. Jake Tapper, the writer of the CNN article, should be taken out to the woodshed by his editor for that bit of speculative and sloppy reportage.

But here is what makes this story look especially bad for Trump:

New York Times:

Days Before Firing, Comey Asked for More Resources for Russia Inquiry

Days before he was fired as F.B.I. director, James B. Comey asked the Justice Department for more prosecutors and other personnel to accelerate the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election.

It was the first clear-cut evidence that Mr. Comey believed the bureau needed more resources to handle a sprawling and highly politicized counterintelligence investigation.

His appeal, described on Wednesday by four congressional officials, was made to Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, whose memo was used to justify Mr. Comey’s abrupt dismissal on Tuesday.

It is not yet known what became of Mr. Comey’s request, or what role — if any — it played in his firing.

This does look bad on the surface, but who is the one that looks bad because of it? Not Trump, assuming the second paragraph of Comey's firing letter is true:

“While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau.”

That leaves only one person: Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. If this scandal doesn't flame out, which is possible, then don't be surprised if Rosenstein is gone before the end of the year. For all the smoke around this scandal, Rosenstein is the one who clearly started the fire.