Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on Monday blasted President Donald Trump over reports that the President had tried to get the president of Ukraine to investigate his 2020 Democratic rival, Joe Biden.
“This is not something I have ever seen before,” McCabe told CNN host Jim Scuitto. “In fact, it’s remarkable to have an American political figure, much less the President of the United States, pushing a foreign government, especially one that we have concerns about corruption issues within their own criminal justice establishment, pushing that foreign government to begin an investigation of a U.S. citizen.”
“It’s really incredibly dangerous and a questionable practice,” he added.
McCabe also expressed skepticism over the Department of Justice’s reason for not allowing Congress to see a whistleblower’s complaint, which reportedly details Trump’s call to the Ukrainian president.
The Justice Department and acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire have refused to allow Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson to hand over the complaint, telling Atkinson he was not “authorized” to do so and that the complaint was not a matter of “urgent concern.”
“Quite frankly, I cannot agree with the Justice Department’s interpretation of the law in question,” McCabe told Sciutto.
“Nowhere in the statute does it explicitly give the DNI the authority to review or rescind the IG’s determination of urgency and credibility,” he said later on. “So it’s an odd theory that I think DOJ is pointing to here.”
McCabe himself is currently being targeted by the DOJ, whose prosecutors are likely to issue an indictment against the former top FBI official sometime in the near future.
Per Politico, McCabe’s lawyers are preparing for such an indictment by highlighting Attorney General Bill Barr’s double standards in regards to filing criminal charges without “evidence of an underlying crime,” which Barr had cited as the reason for not charging President Donald Trump with obstruction of justice following Robert Mueller’s investigation.
McCabe has been in Trump’s crosshairs repeatedly, with the President accusing the former FBI official of “treason.”
Watch McCabe below:
McCabe: Trump's attempt to get Ukraine to investigate Biden is "really incredibly dangerous" pic.twitter.com/9UaYu7eqDb
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) September 23, 2019
Andrew McCabe doesn't buy the DOJ's excuse for not allowing Congress to see the whistleblower's complaint pic.twitter.com/ZNnuvawqTL
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) September 23, 2019
He’s right, but his chiming in right now may be seen as an attempt to get attention away from his own situation.
Everything McCabe said has the benefit of being true, but McCabe is playing this correctly. If they indict him it will look even more political.
“In fact, it’s remarkable to have an American political figure, much less the President of the United States, pushing a foreign government, especially one that we have concerns about corruption issues within their own criminal justice establishment, pushing that foreign government to begin an investigation of a U.S. citizen.”
Not just an American citizen, the former Vice President.
And not just pushing to conduct an investigation, but pushing for a result when an investigation has already been conducted and found nothing.
And not just pushing for a foreign government to conduct an investigation, but doing so when we’ve already got the FBI, presumably one of the best investigative agencies in the world.
If it weren’t for double ones, Barr wouldn’t have any standards.