President Trump has his work cut out for him in his continued efforts to put a stop to the Russia investigation and avoid accountability for whatever exactly he and his team did or didn’t do during his rise to power.
Although his eventual Twitter statement on the matter didn’t directly reference the Russia investigation, against the backdrop of the president’s continued efforts to undercut it, Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired Deputy Director Andrew McCabe late Friday, just a short time before he was set to retire. Trump called the firing a “great day for Democracy.”
The president isn’t going to get out of accountability for his actions that easily, however.
Early Saturday, the Associated Press reported that McCabe had kept personal memos detailing, in part, his interactions with the president. Although initially the AP reported that it was unclear whether or not the memos had been transferred to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, CNN is now reporting that Mueller’s team has, in fact, received the memos. McCabe personally met with the special counsel’s team.
The memos cover, in part, four interactions McCabe said he had with the president while he served as Acting FBI Director in the time in between former FBI Director James Comey’s firing and current FBI Director Christopher Wray’s confirmation. McCabe has said that during all of the interactions, which consisted of three in-person meetings and one phone call, the president “berated him… about his wife’s failed Virginia Senate campaign,” in the description of CNN. He has also said that the president did not bring up the Russia investigation during any of those four interactions.
Besides his own interactions with the president, McCabe’s personal memos also cover conversations of his with James Comey. McCabe has previously been reported to have testified to the House Intelligence Committee that Comey briefed him about both the conversation in which the president demanded loyalty and the conversation in which the president tried to pressure Comey into ending the FBI inquiry into Michael Flynn.
McCabe has actually pointed to this testimony of his as underlying the urgency with which the Trump administration pushed him out of his position. He was going to officially retire within days, and yet, Sessions fired him Friday night anyway. One of the widely reported upon ramifications of Sessions rushing to fire McCabe is that the now former FBI official may lose part of his pension.
As for Trump’s grudge with McCabe, he’s gone after the former FBI official publicly on Twitter over his wife’s failed campaign to serve in the Virginia state Senate. In fact, in angry meltdowns last year, while McCabe was serving as Acting FBI Director, Trump called for Sessions to fire McCabe over that campaign, claiming it created conflicts of interest on his part. Trump based his reasoning on a connection of made-up dots, however.
McCabe’s memos aren’t the first memos belonging to a former FBI official to find their way to Mueller. James Comey himself created personal memos detailing the aforementioned questionable interactions with the president that have also been delivered to Mueller.
Trump has claimed in response to Comey that the former FBI Director leaked information legally barred from the public’s eye in his memos, but there’s no evidence that such is actually the case.
Featured Image via Yuri Gripas/Bloomberg via Getty Images
