President Trump appears to have boundary issues where the FBI is concerned, as mounting reports indicate his desire to influence the bureau. He may have even obstructed justice (although that determination is up to Special Counsel Robert Mueller) while pressuring former FBI Director James Comey to kill the investigation into Michael Flynn. Trump, of course, then fired Comey, and it was recently reported that Trump attempted to push new FBI Director Christopher Wray (via AG Jeff Sessions) to fire his deputy director, Andrew McCabe, until White House Counsel Don McGahn, stepped in and put an end to the tactics. Now another clue has dropped as to why Trump dislikes McCabe.
The Washington Post reports that Trump beckoned McCabe — then the acting FBI director in the wake of Comey’s firing — to the Oval Office for a “get-to-know-you meeting.” And during that conversation, Trump wanted to know who McCabe voted for in the presidential election, which prompted this response:
McCabe said he didn’t vote, according to the officials, who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about a sensitive matter.
Trump, the officials said, also vented his anger at McCabe over the several hundred thousand dollars in donations that his wife, a Democrat, received for her failed 2015 Virginia state Senate bid from a political action committee controlled by a close friend of Hillary Clinton.
That the meeting happened in the first place was already an unusual move for a president, and Comey even told the Senate that Trump conversed with him nine times within a few months, whereas he only had contact with Obama twice within eight years. Yet Trump apparently began making the same moves on McCabe and grew aggressively political with him. The president’s disgust only increased when McCabe contradicted his tweet-claim that Comey had “lost the confidence of almost everyone” in the FBI.
The Post‘s report also sheds more light on why Trump slammed McCabe on Twitter while calling him indicative of “the swamp” because McCabe declined to file criminal charges over Hillary Clinton’s private email server. Indeed, it’s no wonder that Comey, who once tried to blend in with curtains to avoid Trump, pointedly testified to the Senate that he tried to tell Trump that the FBI and the executive branch shouldn’t rub elbows. Yet Trump demanded “loyalty.”
(Via Washington Post)