McCabe: I TOLD ALL THE TOP POLS
Claims they knew FBI was probing prez
Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe said Tuesday that he informed Republican congressional leaders — including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and thenHouse Speaker Paul Ryan — that the bureau was investigating President Trump, and no one expressed concern.
“No one objected,” McCabe said on NBC’s “Today” show. “Not on legal grounds, not on constitutional grounds, not based on the facts.”
McCabe said he briefed the “Gang of Eight,” the bipartisan group of top House and Senate members, about the counterin- telligence probe after Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey in May 2017.
“The purpose of the briefing was to let our congressional leadership know exactly what we’d been doing,” McCabe said.
“Opening a case of this nature — not something that an FBI director, not something that an acting FBI director, would do by yourself, right?”
At that time, the Gang of Eight included McConnell, Ryan, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr (R-NC), then-House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (RCalif.) and their Democratic counterparts — Chuck Schumer of New York, Mark Warner of Virginia and Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff of California.
The lawmakers declined to comment because the briefing was classified.
McCabe said Trump’s comments about the Russia-collusion probe as a “witch hunt” and a “hoax” raised red flags at the FBI.
Trump also allegedly asked Comey to stop investigating Michael Flynn, then the president’s national security adviser.
“The president, in our view, had gone to extreme measures to potentially impact, negatively impact, possibly turn off our investigation of Russian meddling into the election and Russian coordination with his campaign,” McCabe said.
In an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday, Mc- Cabe said the Department of Justice became so concerned by Trump’s behavior around the time he fired Comey that DOJ officials discussed removing him via the 25th Amendment, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein offered to tape conversations he had with the president at the White House.
Trump called those actions “illegal and treasonous.”
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe last March after an internal investigation revealed McCabe had “lacked candor” when interviewed about leaking sensitive information to the media.