James Comey Is the Second FBI Director to Be Fired. Here’s What Happened the Other Time

President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday evening drew quick comparisons to Richard Nixon's firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the Watergate investigation in 1973. But the only other time a president has actually fired an FBI director came two decades after that, and in quite different circumstances.

William Sessions was appointed FBI Director by Ronald Reagan in 1987. By the early '90s, however, his career was in a downward spiral.