Proper presidential control, and distance, from the FBI

“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America,” begins Article II of the Constitution. It’s pretty straightforward. The president is the boss of the executive branch. The executive branch is an extension of him. What power it has, he delegates it.

There is no fourth branch of government, so every federal official or employee outside of the court system and Congress works for the president. While civil service laws protect most low- and mid-level employees, the higher-level officials serve mostly at the pleasure of the person sitting in the Oval Office.

As a constitutional matter, then, President Trump has every right to fire an FBI director, a special counsel, his attorney general, or a deputy attorney general. What’s more, he is no more required to give a reason than when he was firing contestants on The Apprentice. None other than James Comey, the FBI director Trump fired, has made that clear. “I have long believed,” Comey wrote, “that the president can fire an FBI director for any reason, or for no reason at all.”

So far, so clear. But can and should are two different things.

Firing Comey was a mistake. Trying to fire special counsel Robert Mueller was a mistake. Threatening to fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions because he recused himself from the Russia investigation was a mistake. These were bad moves by the president, not simply because they have brought him legal and political blowback but because they trammel the independence the president should allow to law enforcement agencies.