
One of the most critical facts to emerge in the wake of Donald Trump's outrageous firing of FBI Director James Comey is that Comey was becoming increasingly concerned over "possible evidence of collusion" between Trump associates and the Russians.

Donald Trump's despotic and abusive firing of now-former FBI Director James Comey is turning out to be a colossal miscalculation.

The White House's audaciously false narrative about the reasons for Comey's dismissal has opened floodgates of reporting from administration sources. Those sources are telling a very different story about how Comey's firing came to be than the official White House line, which has changed several times since the firing was announced on Tuesday.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Comey was becoming "increasingly occupied" with the investigation that indicated possible evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia:

Mr. Comey started receiving daily instead of weekly updates on the investigation, beginning at least three weeks ago, according to people with knowledge of the matter and the progress of the Federal Bureau of Investigation probe. Mr. Comey was concerned by information showing possible evidence of collusion, according to these people.


Many other reports show that the order for the firing came down from Trump to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and not the other way around. Trump's White House is now implicated in what amounts to a cover-up in plain sight. According to The Washington Post, Rosenstein threatened to resign over the White House's claim that he drove the decision to fire Comey.

That threat appears to have caused a subtle shift in the White House's messaging, which now says Trump has been considering firing Comey since "the day he was elected." The administration had previously claimed Rosenstein undertook the Comey review on his own.

However, extensive reporting, much of it from more than two dozen sources inside the White House, have contradicted that line.

It is a bad sign for Trump's White House that the cover story is falling apart so quickly. And it exposes the need for an independent special prosecutor — a fact even Republicans are starting to acknowledge.