Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said President Trump is on the precipice of retaliating against his political foes using the Justice Department.
“There’s absolutely nothing to stop it, and I think we saw that again today in his comments in the Oval Office when the president, after talking about how bad he felt for Roger Stone, then rebounded into talking about how insistent he is that James Comey and I be prosecuted and thrown in jail,” McCabe told CNN on Wednesday.
“We know this president makes his desires known to the agencies, to the agency heads, through his public statements on Twitter. We know that. We’ve seen that, of course, in this case. I saw it in my own case, when in December of 2017, he claimed that he was racing me to my retirement,” he said. “So that’s the way that he works. For him to step back now and say that he had no influence on the Roger Stone decision whatsoever is utterly preposterous.”
McCabe, who is now a CNN contributor, spoke after the Justice Department intervened on Tuesday to pursue a more lenient punishment for longtime GOP operative Roger Stone after Trump called prosecutors’ initial seven-to-nine-year guidance for Stone a “miscarriage of justice.” Trump denied interfering with his tweets, but Democrats are gearing up for investigations into the Justice Department’s conduct with the Stone matter after the four prosecutors who dropped from the case.
Last week, Trump ousted two prominent witnesses in the House impeachment investigation last week, less than two days after he was acquitted by the Senate on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
The president recalled Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, from his post and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who was on the National Security Council staff, was escorted out of the White House by security guards. Vindman’s twin brother was also removed from his position on the National Security Council. Trump said Vindman, who raised concerns about the July 25 call in which the president pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate the Bidens, could face disciplinary action from military officials.
On Wednesday, Trump complained about his former adviser Roger Stone being treated “very badly” compared to former FBI officials whom Trump has repeatedly attacked, claiming they were biased against him during the Russia investigation. Among those he named was McCabe, who oversaw the investigation.
McCabe was fired from Justice Department in March 2018, less than two days before he was set to retire, prompted by a DOJ inspector general report that found he misled then-FBI Director James Comey and investigators about leaks to the media regarding the Hillary Clinton email investigation and an investigation into the Clinton Foundation that had not yet been made public.
More than a year and a half after Inspector General Michael Horowitz sent a criminal referral to federal prosecutors in Washington, the Justice Department denied McCabe’s appeal to avoid criminal charges. But it does not appear a grand jury has returned an indictment, and the case looks to be in limbo despite a judge’s protestation. McCabe sued the Justice Department for wrongful termination in August.
The origins of the Russia investigation are being reviewed by U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was assigned by Attorney General William Barr. With Democrats crying foul over concerns that Barr is empowering Trump to seek revenge on his political rivals, the House Judiciary Committee announced on Wednesday that the attorney general will testify before the panel at the end of March.
