Midway through a nearly 40-minute discussion with fired Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe on Wednesday, the hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe finally asked the disgraced official about being fired from the Bureau for lying multiple times. However, as McCabe attacked the Inspector General report detailing his wrongdoing, anchor Joe Scarborough worried that the FBI chief turned media darling may have been “railroaded” by a conspiracy involving the Trump White House.

“Talk about the leak,” Scarborough requested nearly 20 minutes into the otherwise softball exchange. Even as he asked the question, the host downplayed McCabe’s offense: “It happens, public figures do it all the time, the FBI does it all the time, the CIA does it all the time. Take us into your thought process. Why did you leak that information and why did you not tell the truth about it to investigators later?”

McCabe predictably denied any guilt: “When I served as deputy director, I was one of two people in the FBI who had the authority by FBI policy to interact with the media and to decide what information, as an organization, we shared with the media....that is not activity that any right-thinking, well-informed person would characterize as illegal.”

Moments later, he blasted the FBI Inspector General:

I would love, Joe, to sit here with – take out that report and lay it open on the table and go through point by point how I disagree with all of the conclusions in that IG report. And I will tell you this, I, at no time ever, intentionally misled Director Comey, the Inspector General or the FBI inspectors investigating another media issue. The fact is, that report, and I have been reading investigative reports for 21 years, is not like – is not the product of any investigation that I’m familiar with.

Rather than push back on McCabe’s attempt to discredit the independent findings, Scarborough joined in, fretting: “Do you think you were railroaded?” The host even offered a conspiracy theory: “Were people trying to please the President in the conclusions they reached?”

McCabe eagerly seized on the idea:

There’s no question what conclusion the President desired from that investigation. He made it clear in his own Twitter account and the IG delivered the result that he was demanding. Do I know there was direction? I can’t say that today, but I hope that we get to that point with the civil lawsuit I’ll be filing.

Painting his guest as the victim, Scarborough followed up: “Do you think, when history is written, when the report is laid bare, that you will be vindicated and the IG questions will then turn to the IG’s decision?” McCabe affirmed: “I do.”

Fellow co-host Mika Brzezinski went a step further, suggesting that the FBI Inspector General should be investigated for holding McCabe accountable for his dishonesty: “Should they be investigated? Should the IG be investigated?”

In response, McCabe mused: “You know, that’s a really good question. They are overseers right?...It’s less clear who oversees the overseer.” He then seemed to offer instructions to House Democrats to pursue the matter: “You know, that’s probably a responsibility that falls back to Congress. I don’t think Congress has distinguished itself in terms of oversight in the last two years, we’ll see what happens going forward.”

Not only did Morning Joe lavish an astonishing amount of air time on McCabe, but the MSNBC show actually helped him dismiss serious questions about his credibility.

Here is a transcript of the February 20 exchange: