Susan Page

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The 2016 campaign apparently isn't over yet.

Six months after Election Day, President Trump's stunning decision to fire FBI Director James Comey thrust questions about the campaign that put Trump in the White House back at center stage. Democrats and a handful of Republicans are pressing demands that a special prosecutor be appointed to pursue an independent investigation into Russian meddling in the election, including whether Trump associates colluded with them.

Now the issue of what Moscow did and who may have helped — for months an annoying background noise for Trump — has become the loudest clamor in the capital. The president's action, taken after tweets dismissing the investigation and demanding it be shut down, has ignited a firestorm of criticism, drawn comparisons to Richard Nixon, and sparked talk of a constitutional crisis. At least for now, it is likely to complicate and delay the administration's governing agenda, from health care to tax cuts.

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What it will not do is squelch the appetite for investigation.

If anything, scrutiny now expands to include the decision to fire Comey. And critics note that Trump already has fired two other officials who happened to be involved in potentially troublesome investigations — former acting attorney general Sally Yates, an Obama administration holdover who had reported concerns about Flynn to the Trump White House, and U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, another holdover whose investigations touched Trump associates.

"EVERYONE who cares about independence & rule of law in America should be "troubled by the timing and reasoning" of Comey firing. Period," Bharara tweeted Tuesday night. He was quoting Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C.

The fury of the reaction seemed to surprise the White House, given Democrats' criticism of Comey for his public accounts of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of State. Clinton herself last week blamed Comey and the Russians for costing her the White House.

After Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer told reporters he wondered whether investigations into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia were "getting too close for the president," Trump derided him as "Cryin' Chuck Schumer."

"The Democrats have said some of the worst things about James Comey, including the fact that he should be fired, but now they play so sad!" he tweeted Wednesday morning. He retweeted a link to a Drudge Report story headlined, "10 SCANDALS ON DIRECTOR'S WATCH." The president predicted that "Republican and Democrat alike" eventually "will be thanking me."

Still, in one more sign that the White House may be misjudging the optics involved, the president was scheduled to meet at the White House Wednesday morning with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

"It's time to move on," White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Fox News.

That's not likely to happen.

After the rockiest opening months of any modern president, and the lowest approval ratings, Trump on Day 110 created his biggest controversy to date. Comey is just the second FBI director ever to be fired. (William Sessions was the first, ousted by Bill Clinton after allegations of financial improprieties.) Trump is the first president to fire a law-enforcement official investigating him since Richard Nixon ordered aides to fire Archibald Cox, the special Watergate prosecutor.

"Nixon, in his memoirs, said that the 'firestorm' that met the Saturday Night Massacre was the first glimpse that he had of how the acid of Watergate had eaten away at his presidency, and eroded his powers," says John Farrell, author of an acclaimed new biography, Nixon: A Life. "It is conceivable that Americans have become so cynical as to shrug all this off, as Trump hopes, but I tend to believe that this ongoing drip, drip, drip will have a corrosive effect on the Trump presidency, similar to that of Watergate on Nixon."

In 1974, Nixon would resign in the face of impeachment. The Nixon Library and Museum posted a wry tweet Tuesday night: "FUN FACT: President Nixon never fired the Director of the FBI #FBIDirector #notNixonian."

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