McCabe: No one in 'Gang of Eight' objected to FBI probe into Trump

Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe said Tuesday that none of the top eight congressional leaders objected when he briefed them in 2017 on the bureau's decision to open a counterintelligence investigation into President Trump.

"The purpose of the briefing was to let our congressional leadership know exactly what we’d been doing," McCabe, who was the acting FBI director at the time, said during an interview on NBC's "Today" show.

McCabe acknowledged that he ordered the investigation, but pushed back against suggestions that he'd acted alone in doing so. He said that he consulted with his team, reviewed it with bureau lawyers and discussed it with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein before moving forward.

"No one objected," he added in the interview. "Not on legal grounds, not on constitutional grounds and not based on the facts."

The New York Times first reported last month that the FBI launched an inquiry into whether Trump was working for Russia after the president fired former bureau chief James Comey. McCabe took over as acting director after Comey's ouster.

The "Gang of Eight" consists of the top two leaders from each party in each chamber of Congress. Representatives around the time of the 2017 meeting would have included Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), then-Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Not going to happen. The new AG will be just as feckless and useless as Sessions. The Deep State does not prosecute their own. They may retire early, they may leave government employment for a cushy job in the private sector but they are not prosecuted because if you prosecute one and they start to squeal on the other traitors then it gets really bad and the Deep State has to turn to full blown murder to stop the hemorrhaging. They usually don’t kill their own but won’t hesitate to murder if necessary to protect each other.

If you get a federal government prosecuted case you can assume there were lies and illegal behavior on the part of the FBI and DOJ. Twenty years ago I could never imagine myself saying this but in the last three years the US governments Deep State has shown that there is no equal justice under the law and they are every bit as dirty and corrupt as the mafia which they prosecuted for decades.

Do not assume too much. I am entirely agnostic about what may have transpired in a Gang of 8 meeting. I don't doubt that one occurred. But exactly what was said … well, that's another story. Don't read everything we think we now know back into a McCabe meeting with the Gang of 8 way back when.

I am reasonably confident that McCabe did not tell the Gang of 8 that the basis of the FBI's concern was an entirely unverified Clinton opposition research document consisting of second and third-hand hearsay, malicious speculation and possibly deliberate disinformation produced by Russian intelligence and purchased by thinly disguised cutouts laundering Clinton/DNC money.

I am reasonably confident that McCabe did not tell the Gang of 8 that the FBI had misrepresented the Steele dossier to the FISA court, or that the FBI, John Brennan, James Clapper and other senior Obama officials were busily leaking to the press information that was both classified and knowingly false.

I am reasonably confident that McCabe did not tell the Gang of 8 that there was no credible evidence of illegal Trump-Russian collusion, so the FBI was undertaking an open-ended fishing expedition.

I am reasonably certain that McCabe did not tell the Gang of 8 that the plan was to create a crime where none existed by stirring up a hornet's nest and then tripping people up on process crimes.

I can readily believe that John McCain was played with regard to his role in passing the dossier to the FBI. McCain's ego and anti-Trump animus made him an easy mark. (Trump has committed many grotesqueries, but his utterly needless attack on McCain's POW experience may be the stupidest thing he has done, and that's saying a lot. Karma strikes again.)

Etc. ad nauseam.

I DO expect that McCabe misrepresented the Steele dossier to the Gang of 8, that he expressed concern that sketchy Russians were targeting various people connected to the Trump campaign, and that he suggested that the purpose of the investigation was to protect the president and the country from an attempted penetration. He may even have suggested that the FBI feared that the president was compromised, i.e., vulnerable to potential blackmail. He would probably have assured the Gang of 8 that the president had been, and would continue to be, appropriately briefed, and his cover story on this would have been tied to whatever Comey told the president. I.e., there is a high probability that McCabe sold the fraud to the Gang of 8, which would be culpable for not anticipating a conspiracy of this magnitude and therefore not pushing back. But that's not the same thing as being an active participant.

Perhaps this is wrong. Perhaps Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will stand up and confess that McCabe openly and honestly briefed the Gang of 8 on a criminal conspiracy to entrap the President of the United States. Which would send the entire Gang of 8 to prison. But I don't think that's what happened.

I'd like to see a transcript of the meeting. We never will, but short of that, I'd like to see all participants questioned under oath about exactly what was said.

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