McCabe: Trump’s ‘relentless attack’ on FBI prompted memoir

Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe says that President Trump’s “relentless attack” on the FBI and the Justice Department was one of the reasons he penned his new memoir on his time at the agency.

In excerpts of an NPR “Morning Edition” interview obtained by Reuters, McCabe argued that Trump had begun undermining America’s top law enforcement agencies in the early months of his presidency.

“I think the FBI has been under a relentless attack in the last two years,” McCabe says, according to Reuters.

{mosads}Excerpts from the interview were released as Trump himself attacked McCabe on Twitter, accusing the former FBI deputy director of telling “so many lies” in his interviews promoting the book, “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terrorism and Trump,” which releases this week.

“Wow, so many lies by now disgraced acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. He was fired for lying, and now his story gets even more deranged. He and Rod Rosenstein, who was hired by Jeff Sessions (another beauty), look like they were planning a very illegal act, and got caught,” Trump wrote Monday morning.

Wow, so many lies by now disgraced acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. He was fired for lying, and now his story gets even more deranged. He and Rod Rosenstein, who was hired by Jeff Sessions (another beauty), look like they were planning a very illegal act, and got caught…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 18, 2019

The White House also attacked McCabe’s credibility in a statement last week, accusing him of harboring a “destructive” agenda against the president.

“His selfish and destructive agenda drove him to open a completely baseless investigation into the president,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Thursday.

In the interview Monday, McCabe also threw cold water on media reports of discussions at the Justice Department about removing Trump via the constitution’s 25th Amendment, which allows top executive branch advisers to declare a president unable to function.

“His selfish and destructive agenda drove him to open a completely baseless investigation into the president,” McCabe told NPR.

Previously, McCabe had detailed conversations between himself, Rosenstein and other top Justice Department officials about the possibility of pursuing such a plan.

“Discussion of the 25th Amendment was simply … Rod raised the issue and discussed it with me in the context of thinking about how many other cabinet officials might support such an effort,” he said in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes.”