If what former G-man Andrew McCabe (shown) confessed in his interview with 60 Minutes is true, he was aware of a sub-rosa discussion in the Justice Department to remove president of the United States from office with a bogus application of the 25th Amendment to the federal Constitution.
The full interview aired Sunday night, days after CBS’s Scott Pelley confirmed that McCabe confessed knowing about the discussions.
After the news surfaced last week, left wing legal giant Alan Dershowitz said removing the president using the 25th Amendment amounted to an attack on the country. And Senator Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vowed to bring McCabe and Rosenstein before the committee for sworn testimony.
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McCabe’s Confession
McCabe told Pelley that he targeted Trump as a putative Russian asset after the president fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. McCabe believed Trump’s move showed that Russians helped put Trump in the White House and that he might actually be a Russian asset.
So he opened two investigations to find out whether his suspicions were true.
McCabe told Pelley that Trump’s own words and actions suggested he was a Russian agent, including asking Comey to stop the probe of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and asking Rosenstein to write a memorandum that justified Trump’s firing Comey. As well, McCabe noted, Trump said the probes were a “witch hunt” and tried to undermine their credibility in the public’s mind.
McCabe said he had to act quickly so Trump couldn’t stop them by firing McCabe.
After Trump fired Comey, McCabe and Rosenstein huddled for the broadcast called a “week of crisis meetings” during which Rosenstein suggested wearing a hidden device to record Trump. Rosenstein, McCabe claimed, said he could sneak the wire past security because White House guards didn’t search him. “He was not joking,” McCabe said. “He was absolutely serious.”
McCabe discussed the idea with the general counsel of the FBI, who vetoed the idea.
But McCabe also alleged, again, that Rosenstein suggested taking down the president with an unconstitutional application of the 25th Amendment, which governs the line of succession should the president be physically or mentally ill, and unable to do his job:
Rod raised the issue and discussed it with me in the context of thinking about how many other cabinet officials might support such an effort. I didn’t have much to contribute, to be perfectly honest, in that — conversation. So I listened to what he had to say…. So it was really something that he kinda threw out in a very frenzied chaotic conversation about where we were and what we needed to do next.
McCabe said Rosenstein was “very concerned about the president, about his capacity, and about his intent at that point in time.”
Rosenstein “was discussing other cabinet members whether people would support such an idea, whether or not other cabinet members shared his belief that the president was — was really concerning, was concerning Rod at that time.”
Asked Pelley, “Rosenstein was actually openly talking about whether there was a majority of the cabinet who would vote to remove the president?”
“That’s correct,” McCabe replied. “Counting votes or possible votes.”
Responding to McCabe’s admission of the possible bureaucratic coup, the Justice Department said McCabe’s story is “inaccurate and factually incorrect,” and that “the deputy attorney general never authorized any recording” and was not “in a position to consider invoking the 25th Amendment.”
Angry Over Trump Comment About Wife?
The question is whether McCabe had a personal beef with Trump because he insulted McCabe’s wife, Jill, who lost a race for state Senate in Virginia in 2015. One of her big contributors was the political action committee of former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a top associate in the Clinton mafia.
McCabe claimed Trump called his wife a “loser” in a phone conversation the day after Trump fired Comey, which again, inspired McCabe to open the investigations of Trump’s so-called Russia connections. “No man wants to hear his wife called a ‘loser,’” McCabe told Pelley.
McCabe’s personal motivations are just one question Graham will want to inquire about when he brings him before the Judiciary Committee with Rosenstein, which he promised to do on CBS’s Face the Nation.
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe after the FBI found that McCabe was dishonest about disclosing information to The Wall Street Journal to clairfy his role in the agency’s probe of the Clinton Foundation.
Photo of Andrew McCabe: AP Images
