President's colleagues: Comey had it coming

"This was a long time coming." Photo / Getty Images

One of James Comey's biggest problems was that he didn't understand Donald Trump, says one of the President's colleagues.

"James Comey made the mistake of thinking that just because he announced the FBI was investigating possible collusion between the Russian Government and the Trump campaign, he had unfettered job security," said Sam Nunberg, a former political adviser to Trump.

"In my opinion, the President should have fired Comey the day he was sworn in."

George Lombardi, a friend of the President and a frequent guest at his Mar-a-Lago Club, said: "This was a long time coming. There had been a lot of arguments back and forth in the White House and during the campaign, a lot of talk about what side of the fence [Comey] was on or if he was above political dirty tricks."

Dating to the campaign, several men personally close to Trump deeply distrusted Comey and helped feed the candidate-turned-President's suspicions of the FBI director, who declined to recommend charges against Hillary Clinton for what they all agreed was a criminal offence, according to several people familiar with the dynamic.

The men influencing Trump include Roger Stone, a self-proclaimed dirty trickster and longtime Trump confidant who himself has been linked to the FBI's Russia investigation; former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a Comey critic who has been known to kibbitz about the ousted FBI director with like-minded law enforcement figures; and Keith Schiller, a former New York police officer who functioned as Trump's chief bodyguard and works in the West Wing as director of Oval Office operations.

"What Comey did to Hillary was disgraceful," Stone said. "I'm glad Trump fired him over it."

In fact, it was Schiller whom Trump tasked with hand-delivering a manila envelope containing the President's termination letter to Comey's office at FBI headquarters on Wednesday. Trump's aides did not appear to know that Comey would be out of the office, travelling on a recruiting trip in California, according to a White House official.