Former Governor Weicker Says Comey Firing Not Like Watergate

Former Connecticut Governor and Senator Lowell Weicker said the first four months of the Trump presidency has been, “a disaster.”

Weicker said that talks of firing an FBI director investigating the president rising to the level of the Watergate scandal is premature.

NBC Connecticut sat down with the former three term Republican Senator and one term Independent governor at his home in Old Lyme.

Weicker said his time on the commission that investigated and found evidence of wrongdoing was a journey toward his eventual decision that President Richard Nixon had not only committed crimes, but worked even harder to cover them up.

“I started out on the Watergate very much believing in Nixon’s innocence, it was only after fact after fact after fact rolled in that I came to the conclusion that this was a bad man,” Weicker said in his study. “I’m not quite there with Trump yet.”

President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey Tuesday and defended the move Wednesday, telling reporters, "Because he wasn't doing a good job, very simply.”

Comey, according to NBC News, had asked for more money and staff for his agency’s investigation into Donald Trump’s campaign and its ties to Russia.

Weicker said he can see why the episode frustrated the president.

“No chief executive wants to have people rummaging around in his backyard and that is going on and I suppose the problem with Trump is that it’s been going on for quite a while, since the moment he stepped into office, so I imagine he’s quite sensitive to the whole Russian connection, but that being said, we don’t have an answer to the Russian connection,” the former governor said.

Weicker said a special prosecutor is needed to look into the matter, separate from Congress and the White House, and said only that prosecutor could inform the American people of whether there was anything improper between Trump, his associates, and Russia.

“Until we have more explicit reason for the firing of Comey, we’re all sort of doing a guessing a game.”

Contact Us