By Dalton Webb
A current controversy and ongoing subject around the country is the recent firing of FBI director James Comey. This controversy stemmed from the FBI’s investigation of potential Russian involvement with 2016 presidential election. This event continued to raise further suspicions that President Trump and or somebody within his campaign, has ties to Russian officials. Mr. Comey is scheduled to appear at a congressional hearing on Thursday.
This all started when the former National Security Adviser, Michael T. Flynn, resigned for misleading top White House officials about his conversations with the Russian Ambassador to the United States. This caused the FBI to start an investigation into these allegations. However, in a private meeting, Trump allegedly requested Comey to shut down the investigation. This caused Comey to create notes on what was discussed in the meeting to then pass to different colleagues, creating a documentation of the meeting to surface. Then on the ninth of May, Comey was fired.
A current controversy and ongoing subject around the country is the recent firing of FBI director James Comey. This controversy stemmed from the FBI’s investigation of potential Russian involvement with 2016 presidential election. This event continued to raise further suspicions that President Trump and or somebody within his campaign, has ties to Russian officials. Mr. Comey is scheduled to appear at a congressional hearing on Thursday.
This all started when the former National Security Adviser, Michael T. Flynn, resigned for misleading top White House officials about his conversations with the Russian Ambassador to the United States. This caused the FBI to start an investigation into these allegations. However, in a private meeting, Trump allegedly requested Comey to shut down the investigation. This caused Comey to create notes on what was discussed in the meeting to then pass to different colleagues, creating a documentation of the meeting to surface. Then on the ninth of May, Comey was fired.
The aftermath of the firing caused more suspicions over the relationships between Trump’s officials and the Russians. The most recent speculated official to be under intense scrutiny is the senior advisor and the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Kushner is under scrutiny for proposing to have a secret communications channel with the Kremlin, and for having meetings with Russian officials, including the Russian ambassador. These events created questions within the general public. I then put forth some of these questions to a small group of people from Mashpee Middle High School.
When I asked my group, “Do you believe that Trump and or someone in his campaign have ties to Russia?”, I had mostly similar answers. English teacher Ms. Kelly, along with history teacher Mrs. Monteith, believe that somebody or multiple people within the Trump campaign having ties with Russia, with Mrs. Monteith presuming that there are probably documents that prove this. However, student Tia Ladd and wellness teacher Ms. Purdy, both have suspicions and consider the possibility of a correlation to not be unrealistic, but they both feel that there isn’t enough evidence to say yes or no.
I then asked the group, “Should the investigation continue?” Most of the responses were a yes. Ms. Kelly, Mrs. Monteith, and Ms. Purdy all agreed that the investigation should continue because of reasons of national security and for all possible evidence of crimes being found. Despite that, Tia Ladd thinks the investigation isn’t a major issue at the moment, and it should take a back seat from more larger and important issues.
The final question I asked to the group was if they believed that Kushner’s meetings with Russian officials might correlate to the investigation. Both Ms. Kelly and Mrs. Monteith suspect the meetings to correlate with the investigation. However, Ms. Purdy believes that it’s possible, but we don’t have enough evidence to prove that they do. Tia Ladd on the other hand, has no comment on the matter.