TRUMP HAD THE GALL TO ASK FBI DIRECTOR WHO HE VOTED FOR

…Deputy FBI Director, Andrew McCabe

 

A Trump-McCabe conversation is of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller.

 

Before Trump nominated a new Director of the FBI, he summoned to the Oval Office the bureau’s acting director, Andrew McCabe, for a get-to-know-you meeting.

 

Not long after the two exchanges their introductions, Trump, according to several current US officials (who spoke on the condition of anonymity), the president had asked the acting director a highly inappropriate question: “Whom did he vote for in the 2016 election?”

 

The officials also said that McCAbe had answered that he did not vote for president in the 2016 election, but that didn’t stop the president from venting his spleen at McCabe over the several hundred thousand dollars in donations that his wife, a long-time Democrat, had received for her failed 2015 Virginia state Senate bid.  The donations came from a political action committee (PAC) controlled by a very close friend of Hillary Clinton.

 

McCabe, is a highly respected FBI investigator that had only been an FBI deputy director for a little more than a year when the president fired James B. Comey.  For whatever reason, McCabe has for months been the subject of Trump’s anger, prompting his negative tweets suggesting that the Russia probe is politically motivated by Democrats sore about losing the election.

 

McCabe, who has spent more than two decades at the bureau, found the conversation with Trump “disturbing,” said one former official. Inside the FBI, officials familiar with the exchange expressed frustration that a civil servant, even a very senior agent in the No. 2 position, would be asked how he voted and criticized for his wife’s political leanings by the president.

One person said the Trump-McCabe conversation is now of interest to special counsel Robert Mueller.

 

The encounter was just another example of Trump berating a senior official, whether it’s his own Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for recusing himself from the Russia probe, or a jab at the White House counsel Donald McGahn, for not doing more to stop the special investigation.

 

As expected, both the White House and the FBI declined to comment.

 

The Oval Office meeting with McCabe happened shortly after Trump fired Comey.  Before the firing, Trump had also sought a loyalty oath from Comey and was annoyed that the FBI director would not state publicly at the time that Trump was not personally under investigation, (which he was).

 

One White House official said Trump expressed his concerns to McCabe about his politics but consented to his becoming acting FBI director on the advice of others and because “there were no immediate better choices.” Although the job had fallen to McCabe by default, Trump could have picked a different acting director. The Justice Department interviewed four people other than McCabe for the post.

 

The concern Trump has about McCabe’s politics is that his wife, Jill McCabe, received nearly $500,000 in donations from a political action committee controlled by ­then-Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, a close friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton who had also chaired Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2008 run for president.  At the time of those donations, Andrew McCabe was assistant director of the FBI’s Washington field office, and he recused himself from investigations involving Virginia political figures. A lawyer by training who specialized in counterterrorism work, McCabe became Comey’s deputy in 2016, by which time the election his wife had lost, it had been over for three months.

 

Now, a year into his presidency, it is clear that Trump still harbors a deep dislike of McCabe. Another White House official said Trump frequently complained about the FBI official, labeling him a Democrat. Over the past seven months or so, Trump has tweeted criticisms of McCabe, falsely saying McCabe headed the Clinton investigation while his wife was taking Clinton money for her state Senate campaign.

 

When The Washington Post reported in December that McCabe planned to retire from the FBI in March once he becomes fully eligible for his pension, the president tweeted another criticism of McCabe, again mentioning the campaign donations to his wife.  In addition, the president has been criticizing the FBI and saying it was in “tatters” and needed a shake-up in its staff.  A claim seriously denied by the leadership at the agency.

 

When asked by the press whether there needs to be a staff shake-up at the FBI, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: “We have 100 percent confidence in Director Wray. If anybody will make that decision, it’s the director. We’ll leave that in his hands.”

 

As usual, a whole new and different story coming out of the White House.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2018