Senator Lindsey Graham (R, S.C.) on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., December 12, 2018. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) demanded Thursday that former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe appear before the panel to address “bias against Trump” within the Department of Justice.

Graham’s call for McCabe to testify came hours after CBS aired an interview clip in which McCabe claimed he’d discussed the prospect of recruiting cabinet members to declare President Trump unfit for office with top DOJ officials shortly after the president fired FBI director James Comey in May 2017.


“After Mr. McCabe’s 60 Minutes interview, it is imperative that he, and others, come before the Senate Judiciary Committee to fully explain how and why a FISA warrant was issued against Carter Page and answer questions about what appears to be, now more than ever, bias against President Trump,” Graham said in a statement issued Thursday.

In the statement, Graham referenced a longstanding concern among conservative lawmakers that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant authorizing the surveillance of then-Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was obtained through FBI officials’ misleading a federal judge regarding the partisan source of the evidence against Page.

During a 60 Minutes interview set to air Sunday, McCabe seemed to confirm to CBS’s Scott Pelley a September New York Times report that then-deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein offered to secretly record the president in order to obtain evidence of his unfitness for office, which he could then provide to cabinet members reluctant to invoke the 25th Amendment.



“There were meetings at the Justice Department at which it was discussed whether the vice president and a majority of the cabinet could be brought together to remove the president of the United States under the 25th Amendment,” said Pelley, describing the interview Thursday on CBS This Morning. “These were the eight days from Comey’s firing to the point that Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel. And the highest levels of American law enforcement were trying to figure out what to do with the president.”

McCabe also denied Rosenstein’s explanation that any suggestion of recording the president was meant in jest. “This was not perceived to be a joke,” he told Pelley.

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