Article snippet: Most popular on bostonglobe.com Based on what you've read recently, you might be interested in theses stories WASHINGTON — A deepening sense of uncertainty pervaded Washington as the White House on Wednesday struggled to explain President Trump’s sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey, who appeared to have been escalating his investigation of possible Trump campaign ties to Russia just days ago. The long-term impact of Trump’s extraordinarily rare action remained unclear. In addition to the original open question — did Trump’s campaign collude with Russia to influence the 2016 election? — there is now another: How much confidence can the American public have that federal officials will, in Comey’s absence, conduct a full and fair investigation of the matter? Calls rang from multiple quarters Wednesday for an independent counsel or a special congressional commission to take over the investigation, but with the Justice Department deeply involved in Comey’s firing and Congress mired in a partisan morass, there seemed to be no path to establishing those sorts of independent probes. Trump’s decision to fire Comey at least temporarily eclipsed the rest of Washington’s agenda. Senate Democrats, in protest, ground routine committee work to a halt. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the White House and chanted, “Shame!” Trump was barely visible. “He wasn’t doing a good job,” the president said of Comey in his first comments about the firing, delivered d... Link to the full article to read more