Coziness between President Trump and Rep. Devin Nunes, then-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, led Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe to want him barred from sensitive meetings with lawmakers about counterintelligence activities — to no avail.
The pair was surprised to see Nunes, R-Calif., present at a meeting for FBI officials to brief the so-called “Gang of Eight” — leaders of both parties in the House and Senate, as well as the chairs and co-chairs of the House and Senate intelligence committees. McCabe and Rosenstein planned to tell lawmakers the bureau had opened a counterintelligence investigation into Trump after he fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017.
That’s according to McCabe’s book, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump, recounting his short but tumultuous tenure leading the FBI after Comey’s ouster. McCabe himself was later fired, in March 2018, over his leaks to the media.
Nunes had said he was effectively recusing himself from the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election due to suspicions of improper information flow between the Trump White House and the congressman.
“Nunes was suspected of having surreptitiously been given intelligence by presidential aides during a nighttime rendezvous at the House, information that was then publicized,” McCabe writes. “Look who’s here, I said to Rod. Rosenstein understood. He went to talk to Nunes, pulled him aside. Came back, told me, Nunes is staying, he says he’s not recused from this, he refuses to leave.”
And it worked.
“I look at Rod,” McCabe writes. “Rod said, At the end of the day it’s his recusal, it’s his choice, I can’t enforce it. We can’t kick him out of the room.”
Nunes’ office on Tuesday did not immediately respond to a request for comment about McCabe’s assertions.
