James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has been fired by Donald Trump. Credit:Bloomberg "It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission." In a separate letter released at the White House, spokesman Sean Spicer said that the President informed the director that he has been "terminated and removed from office". "The President has accepted the recommendation of the Attorney-General and the deputy Attorney-General regarding the dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation," Spicer told reporters in the briefing room. The FBI is one of our nation's most cherished and respected institutions and today will mark a new beginning for our crown jewel of law enforcement," Trump said in the statement.

FBI director James Comey speaks during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in Washington, DC, in June. Credit:Bloomberg Officials at the FBI said they were not immediately aware of Comey's dismissal. Memos released by the White House show that Rod Rosenstein, the newly sworn-in deputy Attorney-General, recommended Comey be fired over how he disclosed the investigation into Clinton. President Donald Trump has sacked FBI boss James Comey. Credit:AP On October 28, less than two weeks before Election Day, Comey notified Congress that new Clinton-related emails had been found on a laptop belonging to disgraced congressman Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

Days later, investigators obtained a search warrant to examine about 3000 messages on the device that were work-related. Hillary Clinton's emails found on a computer belonging to the husband of her senior aide Huma Abedin derailed Mrs Clinton's presidential campaign. Credit:AP Of those, Comey said, agents found a dozen that contained classified information, but they were messages investigators had already seen. Comey broke with long-standing tradition and policies by discussing the case and chastising the Democratic presidential nominee's "careless" handling of classified information. Then, in the campaign's final days, Comey announced that the FBI was reopening the case, a move that earned him widespread criticism from Democrats - including Clinton - who say it was a major factor that contributed to her presidential election defeat to Trump in November.

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a post on Twitter that Comey "should be immediately called to testify in an open hearing about the status of Russia/Trump investigation at the time he was fired". Comey misstated key findings: FBI Earlier in the day, the FBI notified Congress that Comey misstated key findings involving the Clinton email investigation during testimony last week, saying that only a "small number" of emails had been forwarded to Weiner, not the "hundreds and thousands" he had claimed in his testimony. The letter was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, more than a week after Comey testified for hours in defence of his handling of the Clinton probe. "This letter is intended to supplement that testimony to ensure that the committee has the full context of what was reviewed and found on the laptop," FBI assistant director Gregory Brower wrote.​

In defending the probe at last week's hearing, Comey offered seemingly new details to underscore the seriousness of the situation FBI agents faced last year when they discovered thousands of emails from Abedin on Weiner's computer. "Somehow, her emails were being forwarded to Anthony Weiner, including classified information," Comey said, adding later, "His then-spouse Huma Abedin appears to have had a regular practice of forwarding emails to him for him I think to print out for her so she could then deliver them to the secretary of state." At another point in the testimony, Comey said Abedin "forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, some of which contain classified information". Neither of those statements is accurate, people close to the investigation said. Tuesday's letter from the FBI to Congress said "most of the emails found on Mr Weiner's laptop computer related to the Clinton investigation occurred as a result of a backup of personal electronic devices, with a small number a result of manual forwarding by Ms Abedin to Mr Weiner".

The letter also corrected the impression Comey's testimony had left with some listeners that 12 classified emails were among those forwarded by Abedin to Weiner. "Investigators identified approximately 49,000 emails which were potentially relevant to the investigation," the letter said. "All were reviewed with a particular focus on those containing classified information. Investigators ultimately determined that two email chains containing classified information were manually forwarded to Mr Weiner's account." Ten other emails chains that contained classified information were found on the laptop as a result of backup activity. The letter also clarified some of the figures Comey gave regarding ongoing terrorism probes. The issue of Comey's misstatements was first reported by ProPublica.

At the hearing, the statements about Abedin's email practices were immediately seized on by Republican Senator Ted Cruz and others, who demanded to know why Abedin wasn't charged with a crime. Comey said it was difficult finding evidence those involved in Clinton's use of private email knowingly engaged in wrongdoing, and that traditionally the Justice Department has not prosecuted such cases without some indicator of intent. Comey's incorrect comments about Abedin surfaced again this week at a different Senate hearing, when Cruz pressed former director of national intelligence James Clapper jnr to say how he would handle an employee who "forwarded hundreds or even thousands of emails to a non-government individual, their spouse, on a non-government computer". Clapper said such conduct "raises all kinds of potential security concerns". At the hearing last week, Comey said it made him "mildly nauseous" to think his decisions might have affected the outcome of the presidential election, but insisting that he had no regrets and would not have handled it differently. Comey's public comments about the Clinton case have been a source of public debate since he first announced last July that he would not recommend charges against anyone in connection with her use of a private server for government business.

At the time, he called the use of the server "extremely careless" but said it did not rise to the level of a crime. The misstatements in testimony aren't the first time Comey has overstated a key fact in a high-profile probe. A year ago, while speaking at a security forum in London, he miscalculated the price the FBI had paid for a technique to crack into a locked iPhone belonging to one of the dead suspects in a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California. At the event, he said the cost of the phone hacking tool was "more than I will make in the remainder of this job, which is seven years and four months, for sure". Based on Comey's salary, his comment strongly implied the bureau paid at least $US1.3 million to get into the phone, which belonged to Syed Rizwan Farook. Farook and his wife killed 14 people during a December 2015 terrorist attack.

People close to that case said the FBI actually paid about $US900,000. A long-time prosecutor who served as the deputy attorney general during the George W. Bush administration, Comey came into office with widespread bipartisan support. Comey sacked to shut down probe: Beazley ​Former ambassador to the US Kim Beazley believes Trump sacked Comey to shut down the investigation into his campaign's links with Russia. The former federal opposition leader, who served as ambassador from 2010 to 2016, told a post-budget breakfast in Brisbane he was not surprised by the move.

"Certainly the inquiry the FBI is currently conducting into the relationship of Trump's campaign team, maybe Trump himself, and the Russians is such that it may have reached the point where somebody would want to be able to appoint an FBI director to suppress the investigation," Beazley said on Wednesday.​ The Washington Post, The New York Times, AAP