What a bonkers two years the world has endured since Donald Trump landed in the White House, despite losing the popular vote by millions of votes. Who could forget James Comey releasing his extremely inappropriate letter to the public, alerting voters that the FBI was taking a fresh look at old emails from Hillary Clinton associates, emails that turned out to be a big nothing burger, while at the same time never revealing that Donald Trump’s campaign was under investigation for colluding with foreign enemy No. 1, Russia. Without a doubt, those actions impacted the 2016 election.
Of course, Trump had reason to believe some members of the FBI were backing him, because still-unidentified agents inside the New York FBI office were leaking like sieves to Rudy Giuliani. Comey would later go on to say he released the Clinton letter because he believed the NYC office would leak the details anyway. These events should be investigated, but that’s a whole other story.
With that in mind, Trump came into the White House with the belief Comey and others were “on his side.” Look at how he greeted Comey the first time they met. Trump warmly embraced him, despite the fact that Comey appeared to be trying to blend in to the curtains in the back of the room.
Seems clear Trump believed Comey was his guy.
What the public generally did not know at the time (despite excellent reporting from Mother Jones in October 2016) was that the FBI had begun investigating the Trump camp in (at least) July 2016 due to a series of troubling, secretive, and extensive contacts with a variety of Russians and their associates. Trump had been briefed on the investigation prior to meeting Comey. He must’ve initially believed he could schmooze Comey and others in the FBI to drop the investigation. He was wrong.
So Trump takes office and eventually discovers this Russia investigation wasn’t going away overnight, despite his charm offensive, and BOOM! He fires Comey. He tells everyone around him, including the Russians who visited the White House the very next day, that he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation, despite later releasing a letter saying he fired Comey over the handling of Clinton’s emails.
“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”
Mr. Trump added, “I’m not under investigation.”
ENTER ANDREW MCCABE, “LOSER”
Firing the head of an agency because they are investigating you and the people around you is crystal-clear obstruction of justice. Crystal-clear. Enter Andrew McCabe, who became the acting FBI director when James Comey was fired. McCabe and Trump had a contentious relationship from the start. McCabe told Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes that his first contact with Trump was when Trump called to ask him who allowed Comey to take a government plane back to Washington after he was fired. You see, Trump didn’t have the courage to fire Comey to his face. He sent his longtime personal bodyguard, Keith Schiller, to FBI headquarters with a letter, knowing that Comey was in Los Angeles; he was at the LA FBI office when news reports began to appear saying that he’d been fired. That’s how he learned he’d been fired. He’d been scheduled to speak to prospective FBI agents at a recruiting event, but instead he boarded a government flight back to D.C. McCabe said that, on his first call with Donald Trump, Trump asked about Comey’s government plane ride and wanted to make sure Comey would not be allowed back into his office to collect his personal items. Petty to the end.
Indeed, petty, vindictive Donald Trump took several digs at Andrew McCabe and his wife in their first face-to-face meeting. Dr. Jill McCabe unsuccessfully ran for state Senate in Virginia in 2015 as a Democrat, and Trump seemed intent on twisting the knife, repeatedly bringing up her campaign loss. From The Atlantic:
Toward the end of the conversation, the president brought up the subject of my wife. Jill had run unsuccessfully for the Virginia state Senate back in 2015, and the president had said false and malicious things about her during his campaign in order to tarnish the FBI. He said, How is your wife? I said, She’s fine. He said, When she lost her election, that must have been very tough to lose. How did she handle losing? Is it tough to lose?
I replied, I guess it’s tough to lose anything. But she’s rededicated herself to her career and her job and taking care of kids in the emergency room. That’s what she does.
He replied in a tone that sounded like a sneer. He said, “Yeah, that must’ve been really tough. To lose. To be a loser.”
For the record, Dr. McCabe is a highly respected, highly accomplished pediatric doctor.
Moving on to Andrew McCabe’s more troubling revelations in his book and 60 Minutes interview: McCabe said that after Comey was fired (see the video below), and feeling that he too would soon be fired by Trump, he wanted to ensure that the Russia investigation would be completed and that nobody would be able to come in and quietly make it disappear. Moreover, he said Trump’s own statements prompted the investigation. From the CBS transcript:
After Comey was fired, McCabe says he ordered two investigations of the president himself. They asked two questions. One, did Mr. Trump fire Comey to impede the investigation into whether Russia interfered with the election. And two, if so, was Mr. Trump acting on behalf of the Russian government.
Andrew McCabe: I was speaking to the man who had just run for the presidency and won the election for the presidency and who might have done so with the aid of the government of Russia, our most formidable adversary on the world stage. And that was something that troubled me greatly.
Scott Pelley: How long was it after that that you decided to start the obstruction of justice and counterintelligence investigations involving the president?
Andrew McCabe: I think the next day, I met with the team investigating the Russia cases. And I asked the team to go back and conduct an assessment to determine where are we with these efforts and what steps do we need to take going forward. I was very concerned that I was able to put the Russia case on absolutely solid ground in an indelible fashion that were I removed quickly or reassigned or fired that the case could not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace.
Scott Pelley: You wanted a documentary record—
Andrew McCabe: That's right—
Scott Pelley: —That those investigations had begun because you feared that they would be made to go away.
Andrew McCabe: That's exactly right.
When pressed by Pelley, McCabe outlined the reasons for the investigation in more startling terms: that the investigation was necessary because of a potential national security threat.
Andrew McCabe: There were a number of things that caused us to believe that we had adequate predication or adequate reason and facts, to open the investigation. The president had been speaking in a derogatory way about our investigative efforts for weeks, describing it as a witch hunt…
President Trump on Feb. 16, 2017: Russia is a ruse. I have nothing to do with Russia. Haven't made a phone call to Russia in years.
Andrew McCabe: ...publicly undermining the effort of the investigation. The president had gone to Jim Comey and specifically asked him to discontinue the investigation of Mike Flynn which was a part of our Russia case. The president, then, fired the director. In the firing of the director, the president specifically asked Rod Rosenstein to write the memo justifying the firing and told Rod to include Russia in the memo. Rod, of course, did not do that. That was on the president's mind. Then, the president made those public comments that you've referenced both on NBC and to the Russians which was captured in the Oval Office. Put together, these circumstances were articulable facts that indicated that a crime may have been committed. The president may have been engaged in obstruction of justice in the firing of Jim Comey.
Scott Pelley: What was it specifically that caused you to launch the counterintelligence investigation?
Andrew McCabe: It's many of those same concerns that cause us to be concerned about a national security threat. And the idea is, if the president committed obstruction of justice, fired the director of the of the FBI to negatively impact or to shut down our investigation of Russia's malign activity and possibly in support of his campaign, as a counterintelligence investigator you have to ask yourself, "Why would a president of the United States do that?" So all those same sorts of facts cause us to wonder is there an inappropriate relationship, a connection between this president and our most fearsome enemy, the government of Russia?
Scott Pelley: Are you saying that the president is in league with the Russians?
Andrew McCabe: I'm saying that the FBI had reason to investigate that. Right, to investigate the existence of an investigation doesn't mean someone is guilty. I would say, Scott, if we failed to open an investigation under those circumstances, we wouldn't be doing our jobs.
Scott Pelley: When you decided to launch these two investigations, was the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, onboard with that.
Andrew McCabe: Absolutely. [Emphasis added.]
Listen to McCabe in his own words, and then scroll down for even more startling revelations.
So McCabe feels his own termination is imminent, even as there is increasing evidence of Donald Trump’s obstruction and flat-out unstable, even threatening behavior. It was that behavior and Trump’s actions regarding Russia, observed by many at the FBI and in Trump’s own cabinet, that prompted more than one discussion about using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. Section 4 of that amendment states that the vice president and cabinet have the ability to remove a president who is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” McCabe says that U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein brought up the 25th amendment more than once. Take a listen.
It cannot be stated strongly enough: It is extremely disturbing that Donald Trump’s behavior in the White House was so unstable, so unfit, and so suspicious in regard to Russian interactions that high-ranking law enforcement officials began to question whether they should take action to remove him from office. Indeed, McCabe says Rosenstein offered, more than once, to wear a wire in the White House to document Trump’s attempts at obstructing justice.
After this interview aired on Sunday, Trump lashed out at McCabe and Rosenstein, calling their actions “treasonous.”
The hardworking men and women at the FBI take an oath to defend the Constitution and the rule of law, not Donald Trump. And so the Russia investigation drags on. The special counsel continues indicting and obtaining convictions of one Trump associate after another. Rosenstein had indicated he would step down after the Mueller probe wraps, but it’ll be interesting to see if Trump shows him the door after these latest revelations.