by Jerry Dunleavy
On May 21, 2017, Andrew McCabe rebuffed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s suggestion to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation, dismissing concerns over his wife’s political campaign as irrelevant to his leadership. Declassified memos reveal McCabe’s resolve to steer the probe, even as later reports by John Durham and Michael Horowitz exposed deep flaws in the FBI’s handling of the collusion allegations.
McCabe wrote a final memo about a phone call he had with Rosenstein and then about a meeting he had with Rosenstein, Mueller, and others on May 21, 2017 — where Rosenstein suggested that McCabe should recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation, McCabe refused to do so, and Mueller declined to get involved.
The memo said that Rosenstein called McCabe to ask “if I could meet him and Special Counsel (SC) Robert Mueller,” and they agreed to meet the next day.
McCabe said the meeting was in Rosenstein’s office with Rosenstein, Mueller, Mueller prosecutor Aaron Zebley, and FBI executive assistant director Carl Ghattas (who attended at McCabe’s request).
“The DAG opened the meeting by thanking me for the work I was doing, and stating that he continued to support my staying in the position of Acting FBI Director. I assumed he meant until the permanent Director is selected. He then stated that he had the highest regard for my integrity,” McCabe wrote, before saying that Rosenstein “stated that he did not believe I had a conflicts with the Russia investigation. Despite this, he then stated that he thought I should consider recusing myself from the investigation. He said he was not ordering me to recuse, but merely suggesting that I consider it in order to ensure the credibility of the investigation. He then stated that in the past I have maintained that I did not play a role in my wife Dr. Jill McCabe’s 2015 run for Virginia State senate, but noted that there was a photograph on the internet of us wearing campaign t-shirts. He stated that this potential ‘credibility issue’ could cause some people to complain about my involvement in the investigation.”
McCabe said that “I offered to explain the entire matter to the SC.” Mueller reportedly said that “he did not want to be briefed on the matter” and that “he thought the issue might be beyond the scope of his authority as SC.” McCabe said Mueller also “stated that he would not weigh in on the recusal issue, but he wanted to let me know that he thought would likely be a witness in the investigation.”
The memo added that “I told the DAG that I did not believe he was in a position to order me, or anyone, to recuse from the Russia investigation, in light of his appointment of the Special Counsel. He repeated that he was not ordering me to recuse, but was rather suggesting that I consider it. I told him I would discuss it with FBI counsel and get back to him at a later date.”
McCabe never resigned from the investigation, and McCabe would go on to sign the June 2017 FISA renewal targeting Carter Page, though he later told Congress he would not have done so if he knew in 2017 what he knew in 2020.
But after the release of the 2018 Horowitz report — which concluded “the evidence is substantial” that McCabe misled investigators “knowingly and intentionally” — then-Attorney General Sessions fired McCabe in March 2018 just before he was set to retire. McCabe denied wrongdoing and sued the DOJ in 2019, claiming his firing was brought on due to pressure from then-President Trump.
Horowitz’s report in 2018 had detailed multiple instances in which McCabe “lacked candor” with Comey, FBI investigators, and inspector general investigators about his authorization to leak sensitive information to The Wall Street Journal that revealed the existence of an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
The Trump-era DOJ decided in early 2020 not to prosecute McCabe over his alleged dishonesty, and McCabe’s lawyers declared that “justice has been done.”
Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said in 2021 that the DOJ continued to stand by the findings by Horowitz — despite Garland reversing McCabe’s firing and settling his lawsuit against the DOJ with a payout. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, lamented to Garland in 2021 that “you allowed a disgraced former FBI official off the hook.”
McCabe denied wrongdoing, but Horowitz said he stood by his findings.
McCabe defends Trump-Russia investigation — and trashes Durham
DOJ Inspector General Horowitz’s December 2019 report found huge flaws with the FBI’s investigation, including criticizing the “central and essential” role of a dossier in the FBI’s politicized surveillance of former Trump campaign associate Carter Page.
McCabe claimed to the Senate in November 2020 that he was “shocked and disappointed” by the “errors and mistakes” in the FBI’s FISA applications against Carter Page. He told the Senate that he would not have signed the June 2017 FISA renewal against Carter Page if he knew back then what he knew a few years later.
But he had struck a different tone when he was interviewed for HBO’s Agents of Chaos — released in September 2020.
“I ultimately was given a copy of those [Steele dossier] reports. They are incredible… like things you would never imagine seeing in an intelligence report… Your gut instinct wants to be ‘this can’t possibly be true’ but at the same time you realize, well, there is enough in here that is close to what we already know,” McCabe said. “You have to have a pretty solid investigation to stand on before you go to the court and say, ‘We believe that this person may be acting as an agent of a foreign power.’ … When the Steele reporting came into our hands, there were certainly facts in that reporting that were relevant to the Carter Page application. It’s not uncommon to put information into a FISA package that you’re not 100% confident of.”
McCabe also argued on CNN in November 2020 that Trump should not declassify further information related to the Trump-Russia investigation, claiming that there was still secretive classified intelligence that could “risk casting the president in a very negative light.”
Durham’s report in 2023 concluded that Crossfire Hurricane was launched without conducting any interviews of “witnesses essential to understand the raw information” the FBI had received, as well as without using “any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence.” The report asserted that if the bureau had taken these basic steps, “the FBI would have learned that their own experienced Russia analysts had no information about Trump being involved with Russian leadership officials.”
McCabe currently co-hosts the UnJustified podcast with Allison Gill, who tweets under the name “Mueller She Wrote.” He was also hired by CNN as a contributor in 2019, and went on Anderson Cooper’s CNN show in May 2023, where he said that he “absolutely” stood by the launch and the conduct of the Trump-Russia investigation, saying Durham had “failed to come up with anything new” as he called the Durham inquiry “not a legitimate investigation” but instead a “political errand” against Trump’s perceived enemies.
Grassley and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., sent a letter to Durham in 2023 pressing him on his investigation of the Trump-Russia investigators, noting that “it seems odd that individuals [such as McCabe] would be allowed to avoid fully cooperating with your office, particularly given your authority to compel testimony and records.”
Durham said McCabe “declined to be interviewed” by him. According to Durham’s report, Strzok opened Crossfire Hurricane “immediately” and did so “at the direction of” McCabe. FBI agent Jennifer Boone said that McCabe was “heavily involved in all aspects of the investigation” into Trump and Russia, and a DOJ attorney said that McCabe was pushing the Justice Department “to get this going.”
The Durham report concluded that “the FBI was not able to corroborate a single substantive allegation contained in the Steele Reports” and that “the FISA on Carter Page would not have been authorized without the Steele reporting.”
“I don’t have any respect for that report or its author,” McCabe said of Durham and his report on a George Mason University podcast in July 2023. “It was flawed and politically motivated from the very beginning.”
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Jerry Dunleavy is the chief investigative correspondent at Just the News.
Photo “Andrew McCabe” by U.S. Embassy New Delhi. CC BY-ND 2.0.
