“I wanted to make sure that our case was on solid ground and if somebody came in behind me and closed it and tried to walk away from it, they were not be able to do that without creating a record why they'd made that decision," Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said. | Alex Brandon, File/AP Photo Justice McCabe says he opened investigations into Trump to put Russia probe 'on solid ground'

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on Thursday confirmed the existence of investigations asking whether President Donald Trump was acting knowingly or unwittingly as an agent of Russia, saying in an interview that he was “very concerned” and wanted to ensure the Russia investigation was on solid footing in case he was sacked.

In an interview set to air Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” McCabe told host Scott Pelley that he took the extraordinary step of opening the investigation in May 2017, almost immediately after he took over as acting director of the FBI in the wake of Director James Comey’s firing.


McCabe’s revelation confirms a report by The New York Times last month that in the time between Comey’s firing and the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, the agency examined whether the president was doing Russia’s bidding in both a counterintelligence and criminal investigation for potential obstruction of justice.

In a clip of the “60 Minutes” interview aired Thursday on “CBS This Morning,” McCabe told Pelley that he met with the president at the White House the same day Comey was fired.

“I was speaking to the man who had just run for the presidency, and won the election for the presidency, and who might have done so with the aid of the government of Russia, our most formidable adversary on the world stage and that was something that troubled me greatly,” he said.

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As a result, he said, “I think the next day, I met with the team investigating the Russia cases, and I asked the team to go back and conduct an assessment to determine where are we with these efforts and what steps do we need to take going forward.”

McCabe said he had wanted to ensure the Russia investigation, which includes whether Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia during the election, was on “solid ground” because he feared that the White House would try to shut it down.

“I was very concerned that I was able to put the Russia case on absolutely solid ground in an indelible fashion that were I removed quickly or reassigned or fired, that the case could not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace,” he told Pelley. “I wanted to make sure that our case was on solid ground, and if somebody came in behind me and closed it and tried to walk away from it, they were not be able to do that without creating a record why they’d made that decision.”

McCabe’s claims to CBS — which included an allegation that meetings took place at the Justice Department about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office and the assertion that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein seriously considered wearing a wire to record Trump making incriminating statements — drew fierce backlash on Thursday.

The department strongly disputed McCabe’s version of events as told to “60 Minutes,” saying in a statement that regarding the portions of the interview it was provided, Rosenstein “again rejects Mr. McCabe’s recitation of events as inaccurate and factually incorrect.”

A Justice Department spokesperson said that Rosenstein “never authorized any recording that Mr. McCabe references,” and vowed that not only did the deputy attorney general believe there was “no basis” to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president, but that he was also “not in a position to consider” doing so.

“Finally, the Deputy Attorney General never spoke to Mr. Comey about appointing a Special Counsel,” the statement says, though that was never discussed in the “60 Minutes” preview aired Thursday.

The spokesperson added that Rosenstein ordered McCabe to be removed from “any participation” in the Russia investigation once Mueller was appointed special counsel.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, demanded Thursday that McCabe appear before his panel to explain the genesis of the Russia investigation as it relates to securing a warrant to surveil a former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page, and to “answer questions about what appears to be, now more than ever, bias against President Trump.”

In a statement to CBS, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called the investigations launched by McCabe “completely baseless.”

The president responded later Thursday to McCabe’s claims, writing in a series of tweets that McCabe was a “disgrace” to the FBI and the country. He also accused McCabe of playing a victim, and repeated false claims to bolster his assertion that the FBI had been corrupt when it declined to charge former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and began looking into Trump.

“Disgraced FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe pretends to be a ‘poor little Angel’ when in fact he was a big part of the Crooked Hillary Scandal & the Russia Hoax — a puppet for Leakin’ James Comey. I.G. report on McCabe was devastating. Part of ‘insurance policy’ in case I won,” Trump wrote. “Many of the top FBI brass were fired, forced to leave, or left. McCabe’s wife received BIG DOLLARS from Clinton people for her campaign — he gave Hillary a pass. McCabe is a disgrace to the FBI and a disgrace to our Country. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

McCabe was fired by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions last year just a day before he was set to retire, but he had become a favorite punching bag of the president’s long before.

McCabe helped oversee the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s private email server, a probe that has long been the subject of complaints by the president. Trump famously railed against Clinton for that investigation — which never resulted in any charges against Clinton — and cited the FBI’s handling of that case in a letter to justify Comey’s firing, though he later admitted that it was because of the Russia investigation.

Last year, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog found that McCabe inappropriately authorized the disclosure of sensitive information about the Clinton investigation to a reporter and repeatedly lied about it to investigators and Comey, a move that Sessions had argued was the basis for McCabe’s firing.

The Justice Department on Thursday referenced McCabe’s dismissal from the bureau for his dishonesty with federal authorities in its statement disputing his claims.

McCabe’s dismissal meant he was unable to collect full benefits from the FBI. The former deputy director is threatening a lawsuit in order to collect them, though McCabe’s lawyers have acknowledged that the watchdog’s findings were referred to prosecutors. He’s set to release a tell-all book next week detailing his time working under Trump.

In an excerpt of McCabe’s book published Thursday by The Atlantic, the former FBI deputy director goes into more detail about the aftermath of Comey’s firing and Rosenstein’s decision to appoint a special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation.

The president, McCabe wrote, was proud of having fired Comey and misjudged how FBI agents were reacting to Comey’s firing. The president wanted to go to the FBI’s Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters to express support for the bureau, McCabe wrote in his book, an idea that the then-acting FBI director said he didn’t feel was appropriate and hoped would not come to fruition.

Rosenstein, McCabe wrote, was “obviously upset” about Comey’s firing and the White House’s making it seem like the scheme was Rosenstein’s suggestion.

McCabe also said that he urged Rosenstein to consider appointing a special counsel, citing the uproar over how the Clinton email investigation had ended. The deputy director wrote that at that point Rosenstein was “very engaged” but “not yet convinced.”

Elsewhere in the excerpt, McCabe described meeting with the so-called congressional Gang of Eight — the House and Senate majority and minority leaders and the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees — the next week, when Rosenstein informed them of his decision to appoint a special counsel. McCabe had argued to Rosenstein that “informing Congress of the bureau’s actions” would equate to “drawing an indelible line around the cases we had opened,” he said.

McCabe said that point felt like a moment of relief for him: “When I came out of the Capitol, it felt like crossing a finish line. If I got nothing else done as acting director, I had done the one thing I needed to do.”