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He’s the former Acting Director of the FBI who now says the President may be a Russian asset. This week on Firing Line.
SOT TRUMP: As number two at the FBI, during the 2016 presidential campaign Andrew McCabe investigated both Russian election interference AND Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Comey knew everything that was going on. You think McCabe didn’t tell him everything? Comey was the ringleader of this whole den of thieves/
When President Trump fired James Comey, McCabe stepped in as FBI leader, and defended his former boss
SOT McCabe at hearing: I can tell you I hold Director Comey in the absolute highest regard//You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing/
McCabe insists he did the right thing by opening a counterintelligence investigation into the President. But the President says the country’s former top cop is a liar, a disgrace, even treasonous. What does Andrew McCabe say now?
Firing Line with Margaret Hoover is made possible by The Margaret and Daniel Loeb Foundation, The Robertson Foundation, The Asnes Family Foundation, The David Tepper Charitable Foundation Inc., Marlene Ricketts, Spencer B. Haber, corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. and by Pfizer Inc.
HOOVER Welcome to firing line Andrew McCabe.
MCCABE: Thank you. It’s great to be here.
HOOVER: You were the former acting director of the FBI and the deputy director of the FBI and you were in the FBI for 21 years before you were fired just twenty six hours before you were set to retire.
MCCABE: That’s right.
HOOVER: You’ve now written a book that is called the threat how the FBI protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump. That’s a provocative title.
MCCABE: It is, it is
HOOVER: intentionally
MCCABE: Intentionally, these are provocative times.
HOOVER: Are you equating the president with terror? .
MCCABE: Not exactly but I do believe that the president is making it harder for the men and women of the FBI to protect this country every day.
HOOVER: There has been a lot of reaction to your book. Including President Trump which you must have expected. One tweet stands out in particular and it’s reads the biggest abuse of power and corruption scandal in our history. And it’s much worse than we thought. ANDREW MCCABE FBI admitted to plotting a coup. Government overthrow when he was serving in the FBI before he was fired for lying and leaking Treason! Exclamation point. You must’ve expected the president to attack you but treason.
MCCABE: You know the president’s been attacking me since October of 2016. So yes I did expect it. I. I expected it would happen and I knew it would be false. Filled with with misstatements and lies but to use the words coup and treason as I know the president and some others have you know it’s really incredibly inflammatory. It is totally false but it’s a way to attract attention to the part of the story that the president would like people to focus on rather than addressing the facts that are in the book.
HOOVER: You in the book. Write that on occasion you found yourself in the White House with the president wondering in hindsight whether you could have been more forceful or more direct with him.
MCCABE: That’s right.
HOOVER: If you were in the Oval Office with him now, hypothetically what would you say to him?
MCCABE: um, I don’t expect I’ll ever get this opportunity
HOOVER: I don’t expect you will either but would you if you did.
MCCABE: I think I would caution the president away from the relentless attacks that he’s been subjecting. The men and women in law enforcement and intelligence to over the last two years. I think what the president has said and his behavior in that regard is incredibly corrosive to the work that’s essential to the main-maintenance of a free and fair society and the one that we all wish to live in.
HOOVER: So you established yourself early in your tenure at the FBI in organized crime related to Russian organized crime.
MCCABE: That’s right.
HOOVER: And one of the early cases that you followed was, the case of the Russian Individual who fixed the Salt Lake City figure skating competition. What was that case?
MCCABE: Tokhtakhounov, fascinating case we had information that this notable Russian gangster notable Russian wise guy Homsi Tokhtakhounov had actually bribed Olympics officials to secure a gold medal for the Russian pairs figure skating team. It’s just that just a seemingly preposterous set of circumstances. But as we got down into it we realized that’s in fact what happened.
HOOVER: One of the things your book revealed which I found fascinating is that that same individual Tokhtakhounov was later indicted in connection with a money laundering scheme and a gambling circle that he operated out of Trump Tower.
MCCABE: That’s right. That’s right. 2013
HOOVER: What do you make of that now?
MCCABE: I think it captures so well this this. Strange and incredible arc to my career that I began investigating Russian organized crime and as I got to the very end of my career these same characters these same figures were re emerging from my past. In the context of investigating potential Russian influence in the 2016 election.
HOOVER: You worked alongside Jim Comey very closely.
MCCABE: Very close.
HOOVER: Was he a good boss?
MCCABE: Jim Comey was a very good boss. I think Jim Comey was a very good director of the FBI. I learned a lot. Working for Jim Comey. And I value his contributions to the organization.
HOOVER: Are you still in touch with him.
MCCABE: I am not in touch with Jim today.
HOOVER: Why?
MCCABE: You know Jim and I were very close. You know professional associates. We weren’t really friends outside of work. So that’s you know we we no longer work together so we don’t see each other.
HOOVER: Up until the 2016 election you had voted for Republican presidents.
MCCABE: I did
HOOVER: And you didn’t vote in 2016. And so you don’t consider yourself a Republican anymore.
MCCABE: I don’t today. You know obviously I have some some some deep concerns with the way the Republican Party has embraced this president and failed to stand up to him.
HOOVER: When you were inside the FBI Deputy Director The president tweeted “years of Comey running the FBI. His reputation in tatters worst in history” What was the reaction inside the bureau to the personal attacks against Jim Comey and then to finally his firing?
MCCABE: Very negative very negative. Jim enjoyed an incredibly positive reputation not just a reputation within the FBI but an incredibly positive relationship with FBI people. So when Jim was fired people were shocked and distressed and I don’t think anyone appreciated the negative messages.
HOOVER: Why has the FBI become such a lightning rod in terms of politics in recent years?
MCCABE: Two things I think Margaret. We found ourselves in the middle of some incredibly politically charged investigations through no intent or fault of ours or anybody else’s. But that’s the work that we do and we stepped up and did it and it was unfortunate that in those investigations People were uh
HOOVER: Which investigations are you specifically referring to ?
MCCABE: So of course the Hillary Clinton email case and then and then our efforts to investigate Russian influence in the election
HOOVER: Can I just reference as a counterpoint in the 1990s during the Clinton administration the FBI was also investigating the President of the United States and his associates. It seems the Bureau wasn’t as politicized at that time. Would you agree with that?
MCCABE: I think our entire environment is more politicized now and I think that we have been kind of caught up in that as well.
MCCABE: I don’t think —
HOOVER: So you think the FBI wasn’t as politicized in the 90s when it was investigating the president as it is now.
MCCABE: My perception as a street agent here in New York was not ever one that the FBI was driven by politics. And I can tell you that as deputy director we didn’t make our decisions based on politics based on seeking political outcomes. And I think that’s been borne out by a very extensive investigation.
HOOVER: So what about the recent political investigations has made the FBI more politicized?
MCCABE: I think our involvement in those investigations has been used by both sides for political advantage.
HOOVER: And you write in the book. About Loretta Lynch, President Obama’s Attorney General asking the FBI to refer not to the Clinton investigation as an investigation but as a matter
MCCABE: Right
HOOVER: The Obama administration politicized the FBI in your view.
MCCABE: FBI people are always very wary of the impact of politics on the decisions that we make. And so I think we are in those moments with the one that you’ve referenced the comments by Attorney General Lynch. We are quick to kind of get the hair up on the back of our neck and wonder if we are being if somebody is trying to influence the work we do for political reasons.
HOOVER: When you write a book about the FBI and as the former number one at the FBI makes such strong political assertions about the current president. Are you contributing to that politicization and that corrosion of the reputation of independence that the Federal Bureau of Investigations has had.
MCCABE: Yeah that’s a fair question. But I have to tell you that in these days I think it is absolutely so important that the people in this country get to hear from someone in the FBI to counteract the false narratives that they’ve been hearing for the last two years. If you had told me 10 years ago that it would be a regular occurrence in the media to hear the words FBI and corruption used in the same sentence I would have said you were crazy. Not possible. That is not something that happens in the FBI that I know. But these days these are concepts that the public has started to say has started to kind of treat as normal that troubles me deeply. 5
HOOVER: The kind of attacks that you discuss the FBI is under. Special Counsel Mueller is under too. The president is tweeting about him calling his investigation a witch hunt
MCCABE: right.
HOOVER: And he is not saying anything. In some ways his lack of getting in the fight with the president has elevated his stature and has underlined the fact that he is independent.
MCCABE: I agree with your principle that that in fact highlights the the integrity and the strength that Director Mueller brings to that investigation. But there is no doubt that over the last several months the general public’s perception of the work that’s happening on the Mueller team has become increasingly more negative. And why is that. I would argue and I do argue in the book that that is the result of these unrelenting attacks.
HOOVER: Do you think that Mueller will write a tell all book when it’s said and done? Or is there just a different way of being an FBI professional which just involves not engaging in the public debate and the muck?
MCCABE: I don’t know what Director Mueller will do. My experiences with him lead me to suspect that he’s not the tell all type. But Director Mueller and his family haven’t endured the same sort of personal attacks over the last two years that mine have. So I’m in a bit of a different position from Director Mueller.
HOOVER: In 1976 William F. Buckley hosted an episode of Firing Line titled subversion in the law and he had two guests were Mark Felt the person who held your job as the number two at the FBI and was later discovered to have been Deep Throat in the Watergate hearings and the other guest was a lawyer by the name of Roy Cohn who was a lawyer during the McCarthy hearings and was also a man who came to be a mentor for the current occupant of the Oval Office, Donald Trump. Let’s take a look at this clip about the politicization of the FBI.
MCCABE: OK.
BUCKLEY: You say that occasionally the the FBI errs because everybody makes a mistake. But is it is it to make simply a mistake impulsively to have added some six seven hundred times illegally. The offices of the Socialist Workers Party over a period of 30 years. Now you say you’re dealing with dangerous criminals whether they are dangerous criminals. Why was it never an arrest in the course of three years. Do you have an answer to that
FELT: I think you have to differentiate between intelligence gathering and and criminal investigations. And it seems to me that the FBI has a responsibility to find out what people of this ilk are doing. I think that when when Congress finally acts on the matter that it will seem so to them also
COHN: whose Congress take this committee that just did this hatchet job on the FBI and intelligence gathering. So the chairman of the committee is running for president at the moment and leaks out 14 separate stories from the one report in order to get headlines a couple of days before he runs in a primary. I just don’t happen to be one of those who believes the FBI should be sacrificed on an altar of politics.
HOOVER: Does the notion of the FBI being sacrificed on the altar of politics ring true to you at all?
MCCABE: I wouldn’t characterize it that way. I wouldn’t. I think this is is a remarkable clip obviously one that I’m seeing just for the first time here. it’s a great example of the fact that this is an organization of human beings. We don’t get it right all the time but we always try to get it right. We have a checkered past like every large organization. And I think that’s a testament to the fact that the FBI is an organization that learns and heals and changes when it finds that we’ve made a mistake and we need a course correction.
HOOVER: I’d like to turn to your wife who is a pediatric physician in the emergency room in Virginia
MCCABE: She is
HOOVER: And perhaps the most famous former state Senate candidate–
MCCABE: Right, right
HOOVER: — in America for in the state of Virginia. There is a picture of you wearing your wife’s campaign T-shirt and you were not involved in her campaign you didn’t go to her events. But you did put on the T-shirt that one time
MCCABE: Yeah
HOOVER: and that image got out. Did you ever think when you put the T-shirt on that that could be a problem?
MCCABE: Never. Never. So it’s the summer of 2015, and my kids swim on our local community swim team and my wife had received a box of those t shirts from our parents that morning. We were so excited by the arrival of these shirts we all put one on. Took a personal photograph that eventually made its way to the internet.
HOOVER: You’re an FBI agent. You know that no photo is ever a private photo.
MCCABE: Well, I’m an FBI agent, So I know that the Hatch Act specifies that the spouse of a candidate is perfectly free to wear a t shirt to put a sticker on their car as long as they do that activity in their private lives.
HOOVER: Should there be more guidance on behalf of the bureau to individuals like yourselves whose spouses want to become involved politically?
MCCABE: I think it’s an unbelievably rare event. It’s certainly one that was
HOOVER: bound to happen again.
MCCABE: I mean I’ll leave that up to Director Wray and the folks who run the FBI today to figure out how they’ll deal with the IG’s recommendation.
HOOVER: I understand that her race was over before you ever had any responsibility for the Clinton email investigation
MCCABE: right.
HOOVER: But the question is out of an excessive concern for optics and for the perception of impropriety. Would it have just been safer to recuse yourself from any oversight of the Clinton email investigation?
MCCABE: The standard for recusal is whether a person with knowledge of the facts would perceive that a conflict exists and the opinion I received from my ethics professionals was that no person with knowledge of the facts would draw such a conclusion. So recusal is not called for under the circumstances. It’s important also I think Margaret to understand that each time each time a senior executive recuses from a matter you have essentially deprived the organization of the leadership and the skills and the experience that you’re supposed to impart to that work. So it’s it’s not something it’s not a matter we think about lightly and that’s why we have professionals to advise us.
HOOVER: Donald Trump brought up your wife and you on the campaign trail. Let’s watch of an example of some of the things that he said.
MCCABE: Sure.
TRUMP MONTAGE CLIP: One of the closest people to Hillary Clinton. this just came out with long standing ties to her and her husband. Gave more than six hundred and seventy five thousand dollars to the wife of the deputy FBI director overseeing the investigation into Hillary’s illegal server. We need to reopen the investigation
HOOVER: What does it feel like as a, as an individual to be bullied and targeted by the president of the United States?
MCCABE: Yeah it’s horrific. It’s horrific to sit back and listen to that. To hear these lies repeated again and again to hear the president of the United States attacking my wife who has spent her entire career helping her community and to hear the president of the United States lie about her activities for his own political advantage. It’s horrific.
HOOVER: Was it harder to hear him criticize her than to the criticism of yourself?
MCCABE: Of course. This is kind of stooping to a new low.
HOOVER: I guess the follow up question is could any reasonable person also expect someone in your position to be able to objectively oversee an investigation of a person who had criticized you publicly so much.
MCCABE: I think that people should understand that that sort of objectivity and neutrality comes to our work every day.
HOOVER: Even when the president of the United States singles you out scores of times.
MCCABE: That’s right. That’s right
HOOVER: Goes after your wife. You think you would have been able to objectively oversee an investigation of him.
MCCABE: I think there were a lot of challenges to overseeing that investigation. And I think putting it in the hands of the special counsel is was the best way to handle it.
HOOVER: One of the elements that’s been reported is that you opened up a counterintelligence investigation of the president in the moments after in the days after James Comey was fired.
MCCABE: Right
HOOVER: Rod Rosenstein and you went to brief the Gang of Eight. About the appointment of a special counsel and the opening of the counterintelligence investigation.
MCCABE: That’s correct.
HOOVER: And the counterintelligence investigation became part of Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation it got sort of scooped into it.
MCCABE: That’s correct
HOOVER: You were taken out of the line of authority by Rod Rosenstein. In terms of overseeing the Russian investigation after the appointment of Special Counsel Mueller. Why was that?
MCCABE: You know that’s something that I saw in the DOJ statement in the last few days. That is not something I ever experienced while I was serving as acting director.
HOOVER: So is it not true that Rod Rosenstein removed you from the chain of command of oversight of the Russia investigation after he appointed special counsel Mueller.
MCCABE: Rod Rosenstein never communicated anything like that to me during that time.
HOOVER: What happened in that briefing when you briefed the Gang of Eight and you told them about the existence of a counterintelligence investigation into the president. Now, you write about how. At the time were you briefed them about the appointment of the special counsel. They didn’t ask any questions they were resigned. But a counterintelligence investigation into the president. That was looking at whether he was wittingly or unwittingly an agent of Russia. You say they didn’t ask you any questions.
MCCABE: I’m not going walk through the exact details that I gave the congressional leadership at the time. But I will tell you I fully briefed them on all the steps that we had taken and I received no objections.
HOOVER: Was that counterintelligence investigation in the works before Director Comey was fired.?
MCCABE: You know it’s a hard question to answer and it’s something that we debated hotly on the team from the top from the moment that we opened the cases as you know from Director Comey’s public announcement of that investigative effort we were investigating essentially the campaign. But to say you’re investigating a campaign and not investigating the president is is a very fine distinction to draw. What we determined in May, was that with the firing of Director Comey and the comments that the president made about the firing to the media and to the public. We then had undeniable circumstances and facts in our possession that led us to believe that a threat to national security might exist
HOOVER: because of the firing of director Comey?
MCCABE: It was one of several several things that we were considering not just the fact that he was fired but also the fact that we’d been asked to, to discontinue our investigation of Mike Flynn, the president’s statements and behavior in denigrating the investigation, and talking about it in the way that he does is clearly telegraphed to us that he was not happy with the work that we were doing. Then of course he takes this step to fire the director after we don’t comply with his request to stop investigating Mike Flynn. And then he goes forward and tells the American people that he was thinking about Russia when he fired the director. So it was a remarkable set of circumstances and one that we felt put us in the position to be obligated to initiate an–
HOOVER: To open a counter-intelligence into the President of the United States.
MCCABE: That’s right.
HOOVER: You write in your book that you and Rod Rosenstein had a couple of conversations whereby you were going to Rod Rosenstein and making the case proactively that he should appoint a special counsel to investigate the president.
MCCABE: That’s right.
HOOVER:You also write that Rod Rosenstein at one point said if there were one person that I could talk to right now the person I would want to talk to is Jim Comey. Anywhere in that process. Did you personally contact Jim Comey.
MCCABE: No.
HOOVER: Why.
MCCABE: I did not contact Jim Comey. And I so I didn’t follow up on Rod’s request. It was something that I thought we just shouldn’t do. Jim was no longer a member of the government. I had a conversation discussed it with my attorneys and some of my advisers.
HOOVER: So you considered reaching out to him.
MCCABE: We talked about it and all agreed that it was not something that we should do.
HOOVER: Are you more convinced or less convinced now of the president’s contacts and potential relationships and influence by the Russians.
MCCABE: You know I think the most that I can say is I am convinced that we made the right decision in May of 2017. I’m also struck by the progress that Director Mueller has made. I mean the progress of that investigation is undeniable and I anxiously await the results as I know every American does.
HOOVER: Let me ask you one question. You use this technique where you talk hypothetically in order to help articulate a position. And one of the things you say in your book is “in theory could the attorney general also have been the target of an investigation?” and you go on to delineate what Sessions did during the course of the campaign and how he– his contacts with the Russians. And then you say at the end that “if the FBI found itself in circumstances like these after delineating what Sessions had done vis a vis the Russians where the facts and our obligations under the guidelines were clear and we chose not to open a case because it might involve government officials at the highest ranks, the bureau would be guilty of dereliction of duty.” Are you telegraphing here that the FBI opened an investigation into Attorney General Sessions.
MCCABE: I am explaining what I believe the FBI has obligations would be under those circumstances.
HOOVER: Does that mean you open an investigation into Attorney General Sessions.
MCCABE: Of course I’m not going to answer that question.
HOOVER: So, I’m going to take that as a yes.
MCCABE: So you can conclude whatever you’d like from. From what I’ve written in the book.
HOOVER: Does everybody leak?
MCCABE: Do too many people leak? Absolutely. Is there too much government information unauth– what is being provided in an unauthorized fashion to the media. No question. It’s something that concerned me greatly, it concerned Jim Comey greatly.
HOOVER: Do you think you were disproportionately punished for. Sharing information that was determined not to be in the public interest.
MCCABE: I think that I was unfairly punished. I think that the results of that investigation are unlike anything I have ever seen in my experience of reviewing and understanding IG investigations and an Office of Professional Responsibility investigations over the course of my career. I love to break the report out with you here and walk through point by point on although I– (Cross talk) HOOVER: why can’t you do that?
MCCABE: Your viewers would probably be bored to death. I can’t do it because I still have a number of legal issues that I’m that I’m working my way through. I have my own lawsuit that I’ll be bringing to challenge a lot of the circumstances around the way I left the Bureau. So I’m gonna let these actions speak for themselves.
HOOVER: When you say the legal actions that are continuing, are you referring to the grand jury investigation?
MCCABE: I am, I am
HOOVER: So there is a continuing grand jury investigation into your case of having shared information with the press.
MCCABE: That’s right.
HOOVER: That you continue to be involved in.
MCCABE: That’s right. And I point out to you–
HOOVER: Is there a chance that you could be indicted.
MCCABE: I think that chance exists in any investigation but I honestly don’t believe that that will happen here. If the prosecutors follow the law and the facts I’m confident that this will be resolved beneficially.
HOOVER: What’s the best possible outcome for the end of this presidency.
MCCABE: I don’t know. You know it’s not really my it’s not my place to determine that’s a political result and we’ll get to that resolution in the way that we always do. I think the important thing to focus on now is protecting and supporting the work that Mueller is doing and understanding what he finds in his report.
HOOVER: All right. Andrew McCabe. Thank you for coming to firing line.
MCCABE: Yeah. Thank you very much. Great thanks for reading the book.
HOOVER: Thank You.
Firing Line with Margaret Hoover is made possible by The Margaret and Daniel Loeb Foundation, The Robertson Foundation, The Asnes Family Foundation, The David Tepper Charitable Foundation Inc., Marlene Ricketts, Spencer B. Haber, corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. and by Pfizer Inc.