Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe on Wednesday said he’s not aware whether Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein “took any action” on an alleged proposal to use the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office.
McCabe claimed last week that senior officials discussed the possibility of removing Trump under the 25th Amendment and told CBS News’s “60 Minutes” that Rosenstein had been “counting votes or possible votes” among Cabinet members whose support would be needed.
{mosads}Rosenstein has previously denied such claims. McCabe on Wednesday clarified that Rosenstein “mentioned” the topic and didn’t necessarily take action on such a plan.
“Rod brought up the 25th Amendment, mentioned it in the course of a wide-ranging and frenetic conversation. It is not something that I’m aware he took any action to pursue. I don’t know about any other meetings that included discussions of it,” McCabe said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Walking back his previous claim, McCabe added that he had “no indication” Rosenstein presented the idea to any Cabinet members or did any vote counting.
McCabe, who was fired from the FBI last year and has since become an outspoken critic of the president, is currently on a tour promoting his book “The Threat,” which details his time in the FBI and his work with officials at the White House and the Justice Department.
He’s dropped multiple bombshells on the tour, including admitting he opened an investigation into whether Trump was working on behalf of Moscow after the president fired FBI Director James Comey and claiming that none of the top eight congressional leaders objected when he briefed them in 2017. He also said that Rosenstein offered on multiple occasions to surreptitiously record conversations with the president, something Rosenstein has denied.
McCabe is currently under criminal investigation for misleading federal prosecutors in their probe into the FBI’s handling of the investigation into the Clinton Foundation.