REUTERS/Carlos Barria
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an interview with Reuters in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., April 27, 2017.
President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday night amid an active FBI investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election, and whether the Trump campaign was involved.Trump fired Comey unexpectedly, one day after former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates testified before Congress that she had warned the White House about former national security adviser Michael Flynn's contact with Russia's ambassador during the transition.
Yates' testimony came days after Comey reiterated during an open Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that the FBI was still "conducting an investigation to understand whether there was any coordination between the Russian efforts and anybody associated with the Trump campaign."
"The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax," Trump tweeted on Monday night. "When will this taxpayer funded charade end?"
The FBI and Congress are pursuing separate probes into Russia's election interference. Those probes include an examination of whether Trump and his campaign team tacitly or explicitly facilitated Moscow's hacking and disinformation campaigns that targeted Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign.
It is unclear exactly how Comey's firing will affect the FBI's investigation in the long-run. Trump could appoint a new FBI Director who wants to kill the Russia probe, which is why many Democrats and a handful of Republicans have called on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel to oversee the investigation now that Comey has been dismissed. FBI staffers will likely oversee the probe in the meantime.
The congressional investigations are bipartisan - both Democrats and Republicans have said that the motivations behind Russia's hacking campaign, and whether Trump had anything to do with it, warrant a closer look than the intelligence community was able to provide in its January report on Russia's attempt to delegitimize the election.
Here are the key questions still looming over the FBI and the congressional intelligence committees' Trump-Russia probes.
More from Natasha Bertrand:
- White House spokesperson: 'It's time to move on' from the Trump-Russia probe
- Trump's firing of Comey seems 'suicidal' - but it could 'energize' the Russia probe
- Sean Spicer calls Sally Yates a 'political opponent' in explaining why Trump ignored her advice
- James Clapper gave an intriguing answer when asked about Trump's business ties to Russia
- Republicans and Democrats basically held 2 separate hearings with Sally Yates and James Clapper