Watergate reporter Bob Woodward is cautioning the media to "see what the evidence is" before comparing President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey with President Richard Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre."
In an interview for The Washington Post's blog "The Fix," Woodward said his first reaction to news of Comey's firing Tuesday was "wow" – "and my second reaction was, 'but of course.' There's a certain logic to it."
"Trump says it's about the email investigation," he said. "As many people have said, that doesn't seem quite plausible. That's like settling an issue that is gone, and in many ways Trump won, because he won the presidency."
Trump "doesn't like" the FBI's investigation of Russia's meddling in the 2016 election, and possible collusion with the Trump campaign, Woodward said.
"It's clearly a legitimate investigation," he said. "We'll see. Some people think it's a cover-up already. Others think there's no evidence, and let's see."
"The Saturday Night Massacre was a giant, seismic event in Watergate," Woodward said, noting "by the time you got to the point where Nixon fired the special prosecutor, there were voluminous accusations against Nixon, and there was a path to getting the evidence, getting the tapes" that showed an "illegal obstruction of justice."
"In the Trump case, there's a lot of suspicion — genuine, well-founded suspicion," Woodward said, but "no comparable evidence trail."
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