Justice Department officials discussed whether Vice President Mike Pence and enough Trump Cabinet officials would deem it necessary to remove President Donald Trump from office using the 25th Amendment, former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe said in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that will air Sunday. McCabe, who took over after Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, said the conversations occurred in the days between Comey’s firing and special counsel Robert Mueller’s appointment later that month, according to CBS correspondent Scott Pelley. McCabe is the first official to confirm prior anonymous reports that such discussions took place.

.@ScottPelley on what McCabe told @60Minutes: "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." pic.twitter.com/iVAyrEV4MF — Norah O'Donnell🇺🇸 (@NorahODonnell) February 14, 2019

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about McCabe’s interview, which was taped ahead of the release of his book. In a statement responding to the interview, the Justice Department said deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein “rejects Mr. McCabe’s recitation of events as inaccurate and factually incorrect.” Rosenstein denied New York Times reporting in September that indicated officials had talked about using the 25th Amendment to remove the president from the White House. Reports of such discussions also came up in an op-ed from an anonymous Trump administration official published in the Times earlier that month. Rosenstein also denied that he raised the possibility of wearing a wire when meeting with Trump. A source told HuffPost at the time that Rosenstein made the suggestion in a “sarcastic” manner. But according to Pelley, McCabe said the suggestion was raised multiple times and that he discussed the possibility with FBI lawyers. In an excerpt from the interview, McCabe also revealed he had opened two investigations into Trump in the days after Comey’s firing. One sought to determine whether Trump obstructed justice when firing Comey, and the other was a counterintelligence investigation to determine whether Trump won the 2016 election “with the aid of the government of Russia, our most formidable adversary on the world stage,” McCabe said. They eventually were merged into what is now Mueller’s investigation.

NEW: In his first interview since being fired, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is telling @60Minutes why he opened up investigations involving President Trump. @ScottPelley reports: pic.twitter.com/wGmtcPFyvq — CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) February 14, 2019