Betting odds of Trump impeachment jump after Comey firing

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump's sudden dismissal of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday has seen the betting odds of a Trump impeachment skyrocket, bookmaking sites told AFP on Wednesday.

Opposition Democrat lawmakers have ramped up calls for an independent investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow since Trump's surprise firing of the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday.

The shocking news drew immediate comparisons to former President Richard Nixon's dismissal of the independent Watergate investigator Archibald Cox in 1973. Nixon resigned the following year after a congressional panel voted for impeachment.

By Wednesday, the odds for a Trump impeachment during his first term had risen from 2/1 to 4/6, representing a 60 percent chance, according to Lewis Davey, a spokesman for the Irish betting site Paddy Power.

"We can attribute this to the news of Comey's sacking," said Davey, adding that the current four-to-six odds were "the shortest we've been for Trump to be impeached in his first term."

Online gambling is still largely prohibited in much of the United States and so the odds likely do not reflect a significant share of American views.

The betting odds are also not probabilities for any outcome -- but do reflect the weight of money that punters have staked.

Naomi Totten of Betfair, a separate British betting platform owned by the same corporate parent as Paddy Power, said the Comey firing had customers eager to wager on a Trump downfall.

"There's someone who's looking to place a hundred thousand pounds on Trump to leave," she told AFP, a sum currently equal to about $129,000.

The unnamed gambler had already staked 30,000 pounds and was seeking to add another 70,000, but no one had so far taken that bet, Totten said.

In the hours following Comey's ouster, the odds that Trump will leave office before the year is out went from 9/1 to 3/1, according to Totten.

Since Comey's firing, bets have been lighter on whether Trump will leave before the end of his first term in January 2021, she said, "but they have been big enough to move the odds from 15/2 to even money."

The president's poll numbers have reached near record lows since his inauguration and the president's favorable rating is currently at 54.2 percent, according to the Real Clear Politics average of polls.

Trump's Republican party controls both chambers of Congress, reducing the likelihood of an impeachment.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Trump fires FBI Director Comey: White House

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump on Tuesday abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey in the fallout over Comey's probe of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's emails last year, saying Comey was no longer able to effectively lead the agency.

"It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission," Trump said in a letter to Comey released by the White House.

Trump told Comey in the letter he accepted the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions that "you are not able to effectively lead the bureau."

Comey has been embroiled in controversy surrounding his probe into whether Clinton's use of a private email server while U.S. secretary of state during President Barack Obama's first term compromised national security.

He said in July that the case should be closed without prosecution, but then declared - 11 days before the Nov. 8 election - that he had reopened the investigation because of a discovery of a new trove of Clinton-related emails.

It was a decision Democrats believe cost Clinton victory.

The White House released a memo by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about Comey's actions.

"I cannot defend the Director's handling of the conclusion of the investigation of Secretary Clinton's emails, and I do not understand his refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken," Rosenstein wrote.

Rosenstein identified several areas in which he said Comey had erred, saying it was wrong of him to "usurp" then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch's authority by announcing the initial conclusion of the email case on July 5.

Comey "announced his own conclusions about the nation's most sensitive criminal investigation, without the authorization of duly appointed Justice Department leaders," Rosenstein wrote. Comey also "ignored another longstanding principle" by holding a news conference to "release derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation."

Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee last Wednesday it made him "mildly nauseous" to think his announcement of the reopening of an investigation into Clinton's emails affected the 2016 presidential election, but he had no regrets and would make the same decision again.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and Jeff Mason; Editing by Peter Cooney)

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Senate confirms Comey to be next FBI director

WASHINGTON - Former Deputy US Attorney General James Comey, a Republican who gained fame when he refused to sanction a government surveillance initiative in 2004, won Senate confirmation on Monday as President Barack Obama's pick to head the FBI. The vote was 93-1.

Comey, 52, will replace Robert Mueller, who has led the bureau since shortly before the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The roll-call vote began minutes after Republican Senator Rand Paul lifted a hold on the nomination, which he did when the FBI met his demand by answering questions about the domestic use of drones, unmanned surveillance aircraft.

Paul said in a statement that he disagreed with the FBI's position that it does not have to get a warrant to deploy a drone, but he ended his hold because the agency responded.

Paul cast the lone vote against confirmation.

Comey served as deputy U.S. attorney general for President George W. Bush, a Republican, from 2003 to 2005. He gained a reputation for being willing to buck authority when he refused in 2004 to certify aspects of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program.

At the time, Comey was acting attorney general while then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was hospitalized with pancreatitis.

Comey's refusal prompted top White House officials to go to the hospital to get Ashcroft to sign the certification. Comey, who was in the room, said Ashcroft refused.

Comey's actions won him the support of Democrats who opposed Bush's domestic surveillance program. Comey left the Justice Department in 2005 and served until 2010 as general counsel to aerospace giant Lockheed Martin.

At his Senate confirmation hearing this month, Comey testified that he believed that the use of waterboarding, or near drowning, as an interrogation technique was torture and thus illegal.

Comey said he had made his views known when he was in the Bush administration but lost battles to stop the CIA from using so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding and sleep deprivation on enemy combatants.

The FBI has nearly 36,000 employees, including 13,785 special agents who investigate cases ranging from domestic and international terrorism to civil rights violations, drug cases, white collar crime and public corruption.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Democrat who presided over Comey's confirmation hearing, said, "If we learned nothing else since the September 11th attacks, we learned that it matters who leads our nation - at all levels of government.

"James Comey and I do not agree on every issue, but I believe he is committed to the rule of law," Leahy said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com