President Donald Trump took the easiest way to solve a problem with an uncomfortable worker: fire him. 

FBI director James B. Comey was dismissed from his postilion on Tuesday, in a move that Trump said it was essential to restore "public trust and confidence" in the bureau.

The dismissal, which Comey learned from news reports while addressing F.B.I. employees in Los Angeles, came shortly after  it was revealed that Comey misstated a key fact in his Senate testimony last week in relation to the Russia investigations.

In his dismissal letter to Comey, Trump said that he appreciated the fact that the former FBI director had told him three times that he was not under investigation, an apparent reference to the FBI probe into his campaign's links with Russia, but he went on to say that "It is essential that we find new leadership for the FBI that restores public trust and confidence in its vital law enforcement mission."

The president told Comey that he was "hereby terminated and removed from office, effective immediately," going on to explain that he had come to the conclusion that the FBI chief was "not able to effectively lead the bureau."

Comey's ouster comes after it became known on Tuesday that the director had mistakenly told Congress last week that Huma Abedin, a former adviser to Democratic ex-presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, had forwarded "hundreds and thousands" of e-mails to her husband's laptop, something that never occurred, as reported in EFE.

US media reported Tuesday that some of Clinton's e-mails were sent to the computer of Abedin's husband, former New York Congressmen Anthony Weiner, when she was backing up her cellphone.

Furthermore, although Comey had told lawmakers in his testimony that some of the e-mails were classified, later the FBI said it had found no classified content in the messages recovered from Weiner's computer.

The discovery of the e-mails on Weiner's computer last October, just days before the presidential election, motivated Comey to alert Congress in a public letter that he was reopening the probe into Clinton's private e-mail server. Last week, Clinton herself blamed Comey for her election defeat for raising doubts about her handling of information just days before the Nov. 8 vote.

Comey was appointed three years ago by Barack Obama and his term expires in 2023. He was considered an independent and a free-rider, although he was registered as a Republican voter in the past, as reported in El País.

To justify his dismissal, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that the president "accepted the recommendation of the deputy attorney general and the attorney general," both of whom who had recommended Comey's "dismissal," referring to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Before being appointed FBI director, Comey served as number two in the Justice Department, between 2003 and 2005, during the administration of Republican George W. Bush. In this period, he took the media attention when he refused to renew one of the permits of the surveillance system of the National Security Agency because it did not have the approval of the Department of Justice.

His judicial career began in the late 1980s in the powerful Prosecutor's Office of the Southern District of New York, which he ended up directing. Among his most notorious performances, the investigation of the Gambino family, one of the five mafia clans that controlled the streets of New York. He also lead the accusation to the television star and businesswoman Martha Stewart for irregularities in stock market.

Between his stages in the Bush and Obama administrations, Comey was vice president of defense manufacturing giant Lockheed Martin, worked in an investment fund and was a law professor at Columbia University in New York. As reported El País.