“Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade on Thursday questioned if former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe opening a probe into President Trump could be viewed as a “coup” attempt.
“Are they trying to overthrow the government? Was this a coup?” Kilmeade asked Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
{mosads}Nunes did not directly respond to the question, but he accused the FBI of opening “a counterintelligence investigation into a political party based on dirt and opposition research from another political party.”
“It is something we should never do in this country,” he said. “Every American should be outraged by this. This has been buried by the mainstream media for years now. This has gone on two years. It is absolutely absurd.”
The exchange came just hours after CBS aired a segment of an interview with McCabe in which the former official said he ordered an obstruction of justice probe into Trump immediately after ex-FBI Director James Comey’s firing.
McCabe, who spoke with “60 Minutes” ahead of the release of his book, “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump,” said that he took the step in order to document and protect the Russia investigation due to concerns it may “vanish.”
“I was very concerned that I was able to put the Russia case on absolutely solid ground, in an indelible fashion,” McCabe said. “That were I removed quickly, or reassigned or fired, that the case could not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace.”
McCabe also said that top Justice Department officials discussed forming an effort to invoke the 25th Amendment to force Trump out of office following Comey’s dismissal in May 2017.
Trump hit back Thursday, referring to McCabe as a “disgraced” official who “pretends to be a ‘poor little Angel’” after the interview surfaced.