Imagine if James Comey decided he wasn’t going to step down and immediately filed a lawsuit. He had been appointed to a 10-year term, after all, and it was to one of the most non-partisan jobs out there, head of the FBI. Trump couldn’t fire him, could he?

Evidently, he could. Well, there was never any question he could. The president can fire anyone within the executive branch, as Comey found out and as Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer, and H.R. McMaster found out. When you are appointed on a political whim, you can be fired on a whim, whether political or not.

MSNBC had legal analyst Hayes Brown explained the devastatingly simple dynamic while interviewed, the boards for the military schools are within the Defense Department, which is within the executive branch:

“I don’t think there’s much he can do. He’s threatened to take legal action, but as another columnist with MSNBC has pointed out, the law that gives the president the ability to appoint people to these boards also has nothing that says he can’t remove people from the boards before the end of their 3-year term.”

A lot of folks are making a big deal about the fact that these are traditionally non-partisan boards, if you have been appointed and there is an administration changeover then you stay on,” he continued. “But this is very weird situation. I mean, hyper-partisan crackpots in the form of president Trump appointed hyper-partisan crackpots to a lot of these boards. If you’re going to appeal to norms, then the fact is that the norm was already broken in their appointment in the first place

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