Lisa Monaco:

Well, I don't think there's any merit to that contention. This is an investigation that was begun after the president fired James Comey.

This was an investigation that — and the special counsel, of course, was appointed by Rod Rosenstein, President Trump's deputy attorney general, and a career prosecutor himself. So, you know, none of that really stands up.

And I think, Judy, what this shows is really a pattern of an effort to distract from the special counsel's investigation and the results that he and his team are putting forward. And it also shows something else, which I think is very damaging to the institutions of the Department of Justice and FBI, which is the president not observing the longtime norm of having a wall between law enforcement and Justice Department decisions both on cases and in personnel matters, as was the case with the action against Andy McCabe on Friday night, not observing that wall between the White House and the Justice Department.

And the reason you want to observe that wall is so there is no question, no taint or cloud over decisions made at the Justice Department. And, unfortunately, that's now what we have. The minute the president started tweeting and publicly calling for Andy McCabe's ouster, there's now a taint over any Justice Department decision that follows from that.