Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe said in an interview over the weekend that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein “offered to wear a wire into the White House,” as no one would notice.
The former acting FBI director spoke on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” saying that Rosenstein told him how he never gets searched when he goes to the White House and could thus “easily wear a recording device.”
During the controversial episode reported last year, Rosenstein maintained he never said he would record the President, while a source claimed the comments were being sarcastic. But McCabe claims that the comments were not made in jest.
“He was absolutely serious. And in fact, he brought it up in the next meeting we had,” the former acting FBI director said in the interview. “I never actually considered taking him up on the offer. I did discuss it with my general counsel and my leadership team back at the FBI after he brought it up the first time.”
The Justice Department responded to McCabe’s comments made Sunday, pointing out that Rosenstein “never authorized any recording that Mr. McCabe references.”
McCabe further said that at the time the remarks were made “in a very frenzied chaotic conversation” concerning what the next step should be and that he didn’t have much to contribute when Rosenstein discussed the effort to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the President from office.
It was reported in September that Rosenstein had raised the possibility of wearing a wire to record President Donald Trump and invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office, reports corroborated in a memo by former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
The Justice Department again denied the reports last week, saying in a statement that “as the Deputy Attorney General previously has stated, based on his personal dealings with the President, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment, nor was the DAG in a position to consider invoking the 25th Amendment.”
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