--- title: James Comey Fired: Why Firing Is Compared to Richard Nixon description: Trump's dramatic termination of FBI director James Comey has historical echoes to Richard Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre canonical: https://time.com/4773388/donald-trump-james-comey-fired-richard-nixon-saturday-night-massacre/ author: Tessa Berenson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-05-10T00:27:56.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T04:50:15.791Z article:section: Politics og:title: Why Everyone Is Comparing James Comey's Firing to Richard Nixon og:description: There are some similarities og:url: https://time.com/4773388/donald-trump-james-comey-fired-richard-nixon-saturday-night-massacre/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt07c5faa044285b4e/6988ccd68fd2ee5ac8356ffb/comey-nixon.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: comey-nixon og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why Everyone Is Comparing James Comey's Firing to Richard Nixon twitter:description: There are some similarities twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt07c5faa044285b4e/6988ccd68fd2ee5ac8356ffb/comey-nixon.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why Everyone Is Comparing James Comey's Firing to Richard Nixon  by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/)  ## Tessa Berenson May 10, 2017 12:27 AM UTC  Bao Dandan—Getty Images; CQ Roll Call/Getty Images  by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/)  ## Tessa Berenson May 10, 2017 12:27 AM UTC When President Trump [fired FBI Director James Comey](http://time.com/4773210/donald-trump-fires-fbi-director-james-comey/) Tuesday, people were quick to cry Nixon. “This is Nixonian,” Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) said. “This is nothing less than Nixonian,” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) echoed. “Not since [Watergate](http://time.com/4534375/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-emails-watergate/) have our legal systems been so threatened and our faith in the independence and integrity of those systems so shaken,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Ct.). Trump’s dramatic decision does have historical echoes to Nixon’s presidency: Trump fired Comey, who was overseeing an investigation into his campaign’s possible ties to Russia. President Nixon also fired someone investigating him. In 1973, in what would become known as the [Saturday Night Massacre](http://time.com/4697223/trump-nixon-comparisons/), Nixon ordered the firing of Archibald Cox, a special prosecutor looking into the burglary at the tip of the iceberg of the Watergate scandal. Both Nixon’s attorney general and deputy attorney general resigned in protest, and the “massacre” marked a key step in the scandal that led to his resignation less than a year later. But, as the Richard Nixon Presidential Library pointed out on Twitter, the comparison doesn’t track all the way. “FUN FACT: President Nixon never fired the Director of the FBI #FBIDirector #notNixonian,” the library tweeted Tuesday evening. > [](https://twitter.com/NixonLibrary/status/862083605081862145) The last president to actually cut the FBI Director was Bill Clinton, who fired William Sessions in 1993 amid ethical concerns. But it hasn’t been since Nixon that a president terminated a person investigating him. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4773388/donald-trump-james-comey-fired-richard-nixon-saturday-night-massacre/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4773388/donald-trump-james-comey-fired-richard-nixon-saturday-night-massacre/"},"headline":"Why Everyone Is Comparing James Comey's Firing to Richard Nixon","datePublished":"2017-05-10T00:27:56.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T04:50:15.791Z","description":"There are some similarities","url":"https://time.com/4773388/donald-trump-james-comey-fired-richard-nixon-saturday-night-massacre/","keywords":["FBI","White House","James Comey","onetime"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt07c5faa044285b4e/6988ccd68fd2ee5ac8356ffb/comey-nixon.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Tessa Berenson","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt07c5faa044285b4e/6988ccd68fd2ee5ac8356ffb/comey-nixon.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"comey-nixon","caption":"comey-nixon","creditText":"Bao Dandan—Getty Images; CQ Roll Call/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/fbi/","name":"FBI"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4773388/donald-trump-james-comey-fired-richard-nixon-saturday-night-massacre/","name":"Why Everyone Is Comparing James Comey's Firing to Richard Nixon"}}]}] ```