New director: You can’t stop the FBI
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THE FBI’s new acting director, Andrew McCabe, assured senators yesterday that he will alert them to any effort to interfere with the investigation into Russia’s election meddling and possible ties with Donald Trump’s campaign.
President Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday has led Democrats and others to raise concerns about the future of the investigation.
But McCabe, speaking publicly for the first time since his former boss was fired, said there has been “no effort to impede our investigation.”
“You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing,” he said. He also said he would not inform the White House about developments in the investigation.
McCabe responded to questions from the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, Mark Warner of Virginia, who said he thought Comey’s dismissal was directly related to the Russia investigation.
Days before he was fired, Comey requested more resources to pursue his investigation, US officials have said, fueling concerns that Trump was trying to undermine a probe that could threaten his presidency.
It was unclear whether word of the Comey request, put to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, ever made its way to Trump. But the revelation intensified the pressure on the White House from both political parties to explain the motives behind Comey’s departure.
Trump is the first president since Richard Nixon to fire a law enforcement official overseeing an investigation with ties to the White House. Democrats quickly accused Trump of using Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation as a pretext and called for a special prosecutor into the Russia probe. Republican leaders brushed off the idea as unnecessary.
Defending the firing, White House officials said Trump’s confidence in Comey had been eroding for months. They suggested Trump was persuaded to take the step by Justice Department officials and a scathing memo, written by Rosenstein, criticizing the director’s role in the Clinton investigation.
“Frankly, he’d been considering letting Director Comey go since the day he was elected,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, a sharply different explanation from the day before, when officials put the emphasis on new Justice complaints about Comey.
Trump’s action left the fate of the Russia probe deeply uncertain. The investigation has shadowed Trump from the outset of his presidency, though he’s denied any ties to Russia or knowledge of campaign coordination with Moscow.
Trump, in a letter to Comey dated Tuesday, contended that the director had told him “three times” that he was not personally under investigation. The White House refused to provide any evidence or greater detail. Former FBI agents said such a statement by the director would be all but unthinkable. McCabe told senators he could not comment on conversations between Comey and the president.
Sanders, speaking on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” said: “I have heard that directly from him (Trump), that that information was relayed directly to him from Director Comey.” On NBC’s “Today,” Sanders said she would defer to the president himself for any additional details.
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