The New York Times reported, "Senior White House and Justice Department officials had been working on building a case against Mr Comey since at least last week, according to administration officials. Mr Sessions had been charged with coming up with reasons to fire him, officials said."

If this is true ‒ that US Attorney-General Jeff Sessions was charged by President Trump (no one else would have the authority) to figure out reasons to fire FBI director James Comey ‒ then the question hanging over the presidency is: What was the real reason? If the reason was not that Trump, after all that talk about "locking up" Hillary Clinton and praise last October for Comey's letter reintroducing the Clinton email investigation into the campaign, suddenly realised Comey had behaved improperly under Justice Department rules, then the rationale is a lie. The letters from Sessions and Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein are therefore part of a pretext for firing the FBI director engaged in an investigation of the president and his campaign's conduct.

Former ambassador and White House ethics lawyer Norman Eisen explains, "The reasons given by the president and White House for the firing are clearly pretextual." Eisen points out that the reasons stated in the letters for firing Comey "are contrary to the president's and Attorney General Sessions own prior statements, and... the firing was contemporaneous with the revelation of the existence of a grand jury and of subpoenas". He adds, "Clearly, the president is attempting to hamper an investigation that affects him, and those who were and are around him ‒ and brazenly lie about it."

In other words, if Sessions and Rosenstein cooked up a false reason to get rid of Comey because the president was displeased with Comey's investigation, this is nothing less than a baldfaced attempt to interfere with a legitimate investigation of the executive branch. The president has the right to fire the FBI director, so this likely would not rise to the level of a criminal offence, according to several legal experts, including former Justice Department officials, with whom I spoke. However, in the constitutional sense, a scheme to mislead the American people and prevent discovery of his possible misconduct violates his oath of office. If he is engaged in such conduct, he is no longer acting to enforce and execute the laws of the United States.