[ad_1]
Breaking News Emails
Receive last minute alerts and special reports. News and stories that matter, delivered in the morning on weekdays.
By Allan Smith
Former FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe responded Sunday to President Donald Trump, describing him as a "J. Edgar Hoover of the Poor", calling the alleged insult "strange and misleading" in an interview with ABC's "This Week".
"I do not even know what that means," McCabe said. "This is not the first time I have to listen to the president say weird and wrong things about me."
"It is therefore unfortunate that it becomes a bit but a routine," he continued. "But I will say that I do not think there is anything sad or unfortunate about telling the truth to power and telling the story you have lived and the things you have seen and heard and the reasons that motivated your decisions, and that's what I've tried to say "do with the book", a reference to his recently published memoir "The Threat".
On Wednesday, Trump was invited to respond to McCabe's comments during a media blitz campaign last week to promote his new book. McCabe said he had ordered the opening of investigations to obstruct justice and counterintelligence over Trump after firing James Comey, then director of the FBI, in May 2017, and that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had discussed the possibility of removing Trump through the 25th Amendment, future conversation with the President. The Justice Department said its comment on Rosenstein was false, which McCabe contests.
McCabe also stated that he had informed congressional leaders of the counterintelligence investigation that he had opened on Trump and that "no one objected" to it.
"Well, I think that Andrew McCabe's been a fool of himself in the last few days, and he really looks like some sort of J. Edgar Hoover of a poor man," he said. Trump, comparing McCabe to the original FBI director has headed the office for five decades. "He's a – I think it's a disaster."
McCabe was sacked from his office last March, just prior to a planned retirement, following a report by an Inspector General of the Department of Justice that would have misled investigators about the situation. a leak regarding the FBI's investigation of the Clinton Foundation, which he denies. Last year, the Inspector General reported his findings to the US District Attorney for possible prosecutions, and prosecutors summoned a grand jury.
McCabe said he thought he had been fired because he had investigated more about Trump and that he was considering suing the Justice Department for his ouster.
"It will be an action against the Department of Justice primarily for the purpose of challenging the circumstances of my dismissal," McCabe said Sunday about the civil action he would soon have committed. "This follows of course from the report of the Inspector General – a report with which I strongly disagree, a report that results from a process that I think no one has ever seen before."
When asked if he felt that Trump was "inspiring" the report of the Inspector General, Mr. McCabe stated that there was "no doubt" in his mind that "Trump's clear desire had an impact on this process."
"The president was talking about withdrawing for months before I contacted the Inspector General," he said. "He perfectly explained his desires on his own Twitter feed.The Inspector General gave this result."
[ad_2]
Source link