For more than two years, Donald Trump used his megaphone to say whatever he wanted about anything or anyone. His many slanderous remarks were met mostly with silence because Republicans controlled Congress and government officials were either fighting for their jobs or the integrity of their institutions. No more.
With his forthcoming book The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is kicking off what will likely be a torrent of push-back to Trump's alternative reality show. Among some of the revelations, the book features a despondent Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein saying Trump had directed him to write the memo justifying the ouster of FBI Director James Comey.
“He said it wasn’t his idea. The president had ordered him to write the memo justifying the firing,” McCabe writes, according to The Guardian. “There’s no one here that I can trust,” added Rosenstein, who complained of suffering from insomnia at the time, according to the book.
Rosenstein allegedly made the comments at a private Justice Department meeting on May 12, 2017, several days after Trump fired Comey and the White House began using Rosenstein's memo as the basis for separation. Rosenstein appointed special counsel Robert Mueller five days later on May 17. At the time, then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer pinned the memo entirely on Rosenstein, saying, "It was all him." Rosenstein would also tell Congress that he stood by the memo, but that may not have been the whole truth.
In some ways, McCabe’s reflections on Trump’s White House are eerily reminiscent of Comey’s regarding the mobster mentality. The Guardian writes:
In his sharpest criticism, McCabe writes that after firing Comey, Trump and the White House counsel, Don McGahn, acted like mobsters by in effect offering McCabe protection in return for loyalty.
“The president and his men were trying to work me the way a criminal brigade would operate,” McCabe writes, recalling an Oval Office meeting soon after his elevation to acting FBI director.
McCabe, a 20-plus year veteran of the FBI, was ultimately fired in 2018 mere hours before he would qualify for a full complement of retirement benefits. To be clear, McCabe’s account will not be the last word on the matter either. But hold on to your hats folks—we're going to spend the next several years digging out from under the heaps of lies Trump and his administration have foisted up on our country.