Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe said Tuesday it is possible President Donald Trump is a Russian asset.
“Do you still believe the President could be a Russian asset?” asked CNN’s Anderson Cooper during an interview with McCabe on “Anderson Cooper 360.”
“I think it’s possible. I think that’s why we started our investigation, and I’m really anxious to see where (special counsel Robert) Mueller concludes that,” McCabe said.
It’s another bombshell comment from McCabe, which comes days after he outlined on Sunday to CBS the reasons top US officials decided to open a counterintelligence probe and obstruction of justice investigation into the President.
McCabe is promoting his new book, “The Threat,” which paints a stark portrait of his time at the bureau under Trump, describing in vivid detail his version of interactions with top officials at the White House and Justice Department. The book was released Tuesday and became an instant best-seller.
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway responded to McCabe’s comments on CNN’s “Cuomo Prime Time,” saying McCabe’s comment is “hardly dignifying with a response.”
“He’s a liar and a leaker,” Conway said.
The former acting FBI director went on the record in that “60 Minutes” interview confirming some previous reports about Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein: That he raised the idea of wiring himself to surreptitiously record interactions with the President, and mused about which Cabinet officials might support an effort to invoke the 25th Amendment to oust Trump from office. Rosenstein has previously said that comment was mischaracterized.
When asked whether he thought someone should wire up to record conversations with the President, McCabe said, “Absolutely not.” He added that it was “an incredibly invasive and potentially precedent-setting thing to do,” and also said he didn’t think it was necessary. He said it would only be necessary to capture evidence of intent, and “we didn’t need to do that in this case, we knew what the President intended.”
McCabe took over as the leader of the FBI when Trump fired James Comey in May 2017. McCabe was pilloried throughout his time leading the department and was eventually fired in 2018, just days shy of his announced retirement date. He’s under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors in Washington, DC, for misleading investigators in their probe of the FBI’s handling of the investigation of the Clinton Foundation.
