The NPR Politics Podcast - McCabe Fired, Trump Escalates Attacks On Mueller

Episode Date: March 19, 2018

Over the last few days, President Trump has escalated his attacks on special counsel Robert Mueller, the FBI and the Department of Justice. His personal attorney, John Dowd, called for an end to the Russia investigation. And late Friday night, Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe for "lack of candor," two days before he was set to retire with a full pension. This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional correspondent Scott Detrow and justice correspondent Carrie Johnson. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi guys, this is Jill calling from Dublin, Ireland on St. Patrick's Day. This podcast was recorded at 1.10 Eastern on Monday, March 19th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage on npr.org, on the NPR One app, and on your local public radio station. Lá é le Pádraig ffí ffáilh a díf. Happy St. Patrick's Day. All right, here's the show.

That is a great Irish accent. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. Here today to talk about events hovering in and around Robert Mueller's investigation. What happened this weekend? Well, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was fired. McCabe had been a longtime Twitter target of President Trump. Now he's out of a job just a few days shy of a key milestone. And as that played out, Trump got a lot more vocal and specific in his Twitter criticisms of the Mueller probe. What matters, what doesn't, and what could come next? We will get into it. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

And I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. Well, it's nice to see you both in person. I was on the road for so long. It's been a while since I've been in the pod studio. Looking good, Scott. It's good to have you back, man. And Carrie, let's just not even mess around and get right into it because there's a lot to talk about. So let's start with McCabe. He ran the FBI as acting director for a while last year after Trump fired Comey.

You probably heard about him because Trump and Trump allies had blasted McCabe for how he handled the 2016 investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server. Carrie, before we get into the firing and the timing and all of that, can you just refresh us on what we need to know about Andrew McCabe? Sure. He'd been in the FBI over 21 years. He was a SWAT team member in New York. He helped build prosecutions against mob figures. He then, after 9-11, pivoted to work on terrorism. He led the intergovernmental group that interrogated terrorism suspects, detainees after 9-11. And then eventually, Scott, he was promoted to become deputy director of the FBI, second in command, where he had a massive portfolio for a long time until Jim Comey was fired by surprise last May. And before we talk about the reason he was fired,

I think we need to talk about his family, his wife, his wife's political role and how that all connected because that plays a big part in all of this. His wife's a physician. She ran unsuccessfully in 2015 for a seat in the Virginia state legislature as a Democrat. And in the course of her campaigning, she got a lot of money from Virginia's governor, Terry McAuliffe, at the time also a Democrat and also the governor of Virginia. Terry McAuliffe, interestingly enough, is a close ally of both Hillary and Bill Clinton. And that campaign contribution began to be the focus of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, as Tam will remember. Right. So at the end of the campaign in that sort of October time period, all of a sudden, President Trump is

talking a lot about Andrew McCabe and this guy whose wife is in the tank for Hillary and got all this money from Hillary's people. And that's who this is all these months later. Now, McCabe at the time and to this day says that he ran his wife's run past ethics experts and lawyers at the FBI and the Justice Department. Nobody saw a conflict of interest. He was not overseeing the Clinton email probe for the large bulk of that investigation. He only moved into the headquarters of the FBI kind of late in the game. But he said that he got the all clear and that there was, in fact, no conflict of interest there. That didn't stop now President Trump from beating him up about it,

though. Yeah. And in the years since, the FBI has gone from getting a lot of attention for an investigation into Hillary Clinton to getting a lot of attention for an investigation into President Trump, Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and whether or not there was any collusion with Russia. So as we mentioned, McCabe took charge of the FBI for a while during this period after Comey was fired. Why was he fired on Friday? What exactly happened? What are the reasons being given? So interestingly enough, there was a lot of unrest in Congress about how the FBI and the Justice Department handled the Hillary Clinton

investigation in the course of the presidential campaign. Remember, Jim Comey, then the FBI director, was out there talking publicly about it, testifying, sending letters to Congress days before the election. A lot of people weren't happy about it. They asked the Justice Department Inspector General, an independent watchdog, to investigate. And last January, January 2017, the IG Michael Horowitz launched an investigation. Andy McCabe last year was interviewed as part of this big inspector general investigation. And in January of this year, the IG apparently told the new FBI director, Chris Wray, that he had uncovered something not so good about McCabe. McCabe immediately in January left the FBI and was kind of under investigation. Now, what happened last week was word came out that McCabe

was on the verge of being fired. And the reason that mattered is that this weekend, Sunday, he turned 50 years old. He had intended to take his full law enforcement pension with benefits for himself and his family on his 50th birthday Sunday. But on Friday night, just 26 hours or so before his impending retirement and the vesting of his pension, he was fired by the Justice Department, by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. And the interesting thing is that this thing that he allegedly lied about actually goes back to that same time period in late October 2016 and some reporting in The Wall Street Journal, right? FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility had uncovered a lack of candor by Andy McCabe. So in essence, they say he lied. Well, what did he lie about? Justice says he lied about authorizing people in the FBI to talk to the Wall Street Journal for a story about the FBI investigation of the Clinton Foundation in the course of the campaign. And we know that lying to the FBI is a big deal because Michael Flynn and others have already been charged with that and pleaded guilty to it in this ongoing Mueller investigation. So I imagine the FBI takes lying seriously internally when you're lying to an inspector or some other authority figure.

Very seriously. Remember that FBI agents day in and day out have to testify under oath in court. A huge part of the agency is its credibility. And you talk to people who have investigated these things over the years. The Justice Department says even over the last year or so, from March 2017 to March 2018, around 18 or 19 people have been fired in the FBI for lack of candor. And the argument is, why do you treat the deputy director any different than you do a guy on the street? Now, Tim, why do we think it was that McCabe was such a frequent target of President Trump's ire? I mean, when the reports first came out that McCabe was using vacation time essentially to get to this milestone where he was going to retire, Trump almost taunted him

saying he's trying to run out the clock. And I'm paraphrasing here, but almost asked, will he be able to make it? Was it just his involvement in the Hillary Clinton investigation? Or were there other reasons, too? And the fact that his wife ran for office and got money from Terry McAuliffe. I mean, this is something that has sort of stuck in President Trump's craw since the campaign. And it's something that they talked about a lot on Fox News that was really in the bloodstream and became a regular part of his stump speech. Then he fires James Comey and who becomes the acting director of the FBI? But the guy who President Trump has been, you know, totally bothered by because of his handling of the Hillary Clinton investigation and thinking that he must be in the tank for Hillary because of his wife. So it all goes back to then. Carrie, what do we know of McCabe's interaction with, involvement with that other

FBI investigation, the investigation that turned into the Mueller probe of Russian interference? So, of course, right after the president fired Jim Comey in May 2017, just about a week later, Robert Mueller was named special counsel to lead an investigation into Russian interference in the election and whether any Americans conspired with the Russians to help influence the election in some way. McCabe was in charge after Comey was fired, and McCabe was involved in deciding how many resources in the FBI that investigation would get and shepherding it along. The other thing that came out after his firing Scott that was very interesting is that

McCabe says he testified in December 2017 to the House Intelligence Committee behind closed doors. And within a week or so, the president started jamming him up again, started abusing him on Twitter. And McCabe got the sense that he was being penalized in some fashion for his testimony behind closed doors to the House Intelligence Committee, culminating, of course, in his firing just days before his birthday and his pension vested. McCabe also testified publicly right after Comey was fired. And, you know, the White House talking point is that Comey had lost the confidence of the rank and file. And McCabe came out and said very explicitly he contradicted the White House talking point and said, no, the rank and file

supported Comey. And that was a pretty big moment. And we also know from reporting in other outlets that I've confirmed that the president called up McCabe after Comey was fired. And the president asked McCabe why Comey was allowed to take an FBI airplane back home from Los Angeles, where he was fired back home to Virginia, when he had already been fired. And we also know that the president asked Andy McCabe to ask his wife how it felt to be a loser because she, of course, had lost that race in 2015. So this had gotten very, very personal between these two men. And while the Justice Department says that it acted on a recommendation from career lawyers in the Justice Department and career investigators and the FBI, this had gotten super personal between Andy McCabe and President Trump.

So McCabe was acting director of the FBI when President Trump said to him, ask your wife how it feels to be a loser. Yeah, I've confirmed that with somebody familiar with that conversation. And McCabe, I'm told, didn't really respond, said words to the effect of, OK, sir, and then hung up the phone. So as all this was happening and as Trump was was taking a lot of runs at him on Twitter, McCabe didn't really say anything. He was still working at the FBI. That changed after the firing. I've got a statement here that is like looks like it's like a thousand plus words. It is very lengthy. I will read just a portion of it and then ask you,

Carrie, what you think about it. For the last year and a half, my family and I have been the targets of an unrelenting assault on our reputation and my service to this country. Articles too numerous to count have leveled every sort of false, defamatory and degrading allegation against us. The president's tweets have amplified and exacerbated it all. He called for my firing. He called for me to be stripped of my pension after more than 20 years of service. And all along, we have said nothing, never wanting to distract from the mission of the FBI by addressing the lies told and repeated about us. No more. What are the highlights of the statement for you in terms of news?

McCabe says as deputy director of the FBI, he had the power to authorize conversations with reporters. He says it was no secret that FBI officials were having conversations with the Wall Street Journal in 2016 about the Clinton Foundation and other things, and he didn't see anything wrong with that. McCabe said to the extent he provided incorrect information to investigators in the inspector general's office, It was because of the chaos surrounding him and the FBI last year amidst unrelenting attack from President Trump, and that every time a misstatement came to his attention, he corrected it later. He also says this, Scott, maybe most important. He said, don't look at this and my firing as one example of one guy who said the wrong thing. McCabe says that he was fired in

no small part because he's a pawn in the White House plan to discredit the FBI, the Justice Department, and the entire special counsel investigation, the entire investigation of Robert Mueller and his team, and that this is the lens through which his firing should be viewed. One question I have about that argument is, you know, there is this inspector general's report. We haven't seen it. And he's been fired before the report came out. So is that timing suspicious, as I think he is arguing it is, or is it not suspicious? We don't have all the facts right now. We don't have this IG report.

I'm told it's coming out in the next two to four weeks. If all goes to plan, we will be able to see and read whatever McCabe is accused of and whatever his response is. Then worth noting here that McCabe's lawyer is no stranger to the process. McCabe's lawyer, Michael Bromwich, used to be the inspector general of the Justice Department himself for many, many years. And Bromwich says he's never seen a discipline process move this fast. He thinks this process was perverted or distorted in order to strip Andy McCabe of his pension before it fully vested. That said, the inspector general has repeatedly criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for taking too long with disciplinary measures for treating low level people much worse than it treats high level people. And the inspector general, one could argue, has an obligation to share negative or derogatory information with top leaders at the DOJ and the FBI when he finds it. So last question about all this, Carrie. After an election in which the

FBI investigated both of the candidates, both of the general election candidates, then you have the director of the FBI fired by the president. Then you have the deputy director fired by the attorney general. Both of these men are now engaged in very public back and forth with the president, who's not only criticizing them in personal terms, but also repeatedly criticizing the FBI as a whole. What does all this do to law enforcement and to the FBI going forward? Morale is not good. Morale has not been good since the president on Twitter accused the FBI of wiretapping Trump Tower illegally. And at the time, then FBI Director Jim Comey pressed the Justice Department to respond and deny that allegation. DOJ never responded, never denied it, and has set off this snowball gathering in force as it rolls down the mountain. And it's rolling straight at FBI headquarters. Morale is terrible. Good thing they're getting new headquarters.

Actually, they're not. Actually, they're not. And that might be. Womp. Right. Actually, yeah. That could be part of it, too. Right.

But think about this for a second. If you want to send a message to law enforcement and people who have spent their lives expecting some benefit on the back end. You jam somebody up and strip them of at least part of their pension less than two days before they were expected to retire or set to retire. And that really sends a message to men and women at the FBI and across the federal law enforcement force. It really does. OK, there is a big part of the story we have not even gotten to yet. And that's what President Trump is saying about all of this and why that matters. We will get into the president's weekend tweet storms after a quick break.

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Masterclass, producing online classes taught by masters of their craft. Each class is shot with cinematic production quality and offers on-demand lessons loaded with exclusive content. Classes include Gordon Ramsay teaches cooking, Annie Leibovitz teaches photography, Steph Curry teaches basketball, and more. NPR Politics listeners can unlock every class with the new all-access pass. Available now at masterclass.com slash politics. expected idea to help you make sense of the day's news. Listen every afternoon on NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we're back. So as all of this is happening, President Trump took, where else, to Twitter. He had a lot to say about McKay, but one weekend tweet stood out, and it was this, quote, Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big crooked Hillary

supporters and zero Republicans? Another Dem recently added, Does anyone think this is fair? And yet there is, in caps, of course, no collusion. Tam, no collusion tweets, witch hunt tweets are nothing new. And yet this one stood out. Why is that? And I want to just read another one to just a part of another one. He says, and this was Saturday night, the Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime. And then, as you say, it ends with witch hunt, exclamation point, all caps. What is notable about both of these tweets is one word, Mueller. President Trump, up until this point, has not been directly attacking Robert

Mueller. He hasn't attacked the investigation by name. He has sort of broadly referred to a witch hunt. And then the White House at times has denied that he was actually talking about the Mueller investigation. So now this is a shift. This is the president of the United States going after the person who is conducting this independent investigation. On top this is a shift. This is the president of the United States going after the person who is conducting this independent investigation. On top of all that, his lawyer, John Dowd, had some communications with you over the weekend that may shed some light on what all this means. Well, I don't know if it actually clarifies anything, but yes. President Trump's private lawyer, John Dowd, said in an email that I'll read a little of this, too.

He says, I pray that acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to the alleged Russia collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe's boss, James Comey, on and on. But so I wrote back and I was like, well, it sure sounds like you're saying that Mueller should be fired. And he's like, no, no, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying just end it on its merits in light of recent revelations. Recent revelations like the notion that the Trump organization had received a subpoena from special counsel Robert Mueller. Or reporting in the New York the Trump organization had received a subpoena from special counsel Robert Mueller? Or reporting in The New York Times that they've received questions from Mueller for the president and that the president might be talking to Mueller's team soon. No, no, no, no, not those developments. But the sort of broad discrediting of Andrew McCabe that has taken place over the last several days.

And Carrie, just because all this stuff is confusing even to us, let alone people who are not paid money to listen to podcasts about all this, can you just give us a quick refresher beyond those two things you just mentioned, where the Mueller investigation is at this point, how far it's come, what we know about the current status? Yeah, less than a year on the job. This team has indicted something like 19 people and secured five guilty pleas, I'm told, by historians and experts, among the fastest, most productive investigations in modern history. integrity or losing steam, pretty much debunked by people, including Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who supervises this investigation. As for where it's headed, lots of people still appearing before the grand jury, lots of document requests out. And as Tam mentioned, there's an outstanding series of negotiations between the Mueller team and the White House about whether

the president himself is going to appear and answer questions. And typically, one would say witch hunts, you know, I don't know what the technical term of a witch hunt is, but typically you don't... I think you're trying to hunt for a witch is the technical term. Well, yes. Does she float? But you don't have a bunch of guilty pleas and cooperating witnesses in a witch hunt. No, and you also don't have the Trump administration sanctioning some of the Russians that Robert Mueller has charged with crimes only after the Russians have been indicted by Robert Mueller. But that's where we are. So, Tam, you read one statement from one Trump lawyer over the weekend. That was not even the final word from Trump's legal team on this matter. Yes. Can you can you fill us in with the rest? Yes. So then so this was all on Saturday. Then late last night,

another lawyer, his name is Ty Cobb. He is an interesting dude. He actually works inside the White House. His title is White House special counsel. He put out a statement of his own. Now, he is not technically President Trump's lawyer. He is technically the lawyer inside the White House working on the White House cooperation with Mueller's investigation. But often he is asked, is the president planning to fire Robert Mueller? And he was asked again. So he puts out this statement and he says, in response to media speculation and related questions being posed to the administration, or maybe the president's own tweets, the White House yet again confirms

that the president is not considering or discussing the firing of the special counsel, Robert Mueller. They've said that before. They are saying it again. So statements like that from Trump's lawyers do not necessarily calm the conversation about is Trump thinking about firing Robert Mueller? What would it mean if he did? So, of course, lots of high profile Republicans were asked about this very question over the weekend. Let's listen to one from Trey Gowdy to suggest that Mueller should shut down and that all he is looking at is collusion. If you have an innocent client, Mr. Dowd, act like it. Russia attacked our country. Let special counsel Mueller figure that out. And if you believe, as we found, there's no evidence of collusion, you should want special

counsel Mueller to take all the time and have all the independence he needs to do his job. Gowdy's voice matters for a couple of reasons. He is the chair of the House Oversight Committee. He was a member of the House Intelligence Committee that had been looking into all of this. And of course, as we've noted before, he is a member of the retiring caucus, which means that he can be a lot more blunt with his views on situations than Republicans trying to run for reelection. One interesting thing to point out here, when he says we found no evidence of collusion, the we he's talking about is the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee who have prepared a report that has not yet been released yet, but that which they say says found no collusion. But when Gowdy was pressed this weekend on, well, did you talk to everybody? He said, no, just based on the evidence we have,

we found no collusion. But they were unable to talk to basically all of the people who have been indicted by or have pled out and are cooperating with Robert Mueller, all the key players. People like George Papadopoulos, a former campaign foreign policy aide, and Mike Flynn, who went on to become the national security advisor at the White House, both pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about their contacts with Russians. Let me just ask the basic question here. Based on what we know, based on what we know from history, why would it matter if Trump fired Robert Mueller? What would the repercussions be politically, legally? Well, you know, there's an example from history from 1973, when President Nixon, as the walls were closing in on him with respect to the Watergate scandal, tried to get senior Justice Department officials to fire the special prosecutor Archibald Cox. The attorney general and deputy attorney general both refused to do that. Instead, they quit

in what is now known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Eventually, they found somebody to do it, Robert Bork, who went on to become a judge and get rejected for a Supreme Court seat many years later. And the feeling is that were President Trump to press Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, to fire Robert Mueller without cause, that Rosenstein would himself quit and thus perhaps touch off yet another massacre of sorts inside the Justice Department. It matters, Scott, because the Justice Department's law enforcement apparatus is supposed to operate independent of politics. And President Trump doesn't seem to have a lot of respect for that based on his tweets, actions and statements over the last year in office. And Tam, Lindsey Graham, South Carolina senator said that that would be the

beginning of the end of Trump's presidency over the weekend, because we are a nation of laws, is what he said. A lot of Republicans have said something similar, that that would be a red line, if you will, that if Trump fired Mueller, there would be serious consequences. But they often do not lay out what those consequences would be. And there have been a couple attempts to pass a law barring Trump for firing Mueller. And those attempts seem to be going nowhere and do not seem to have the support of Republican leadership. So how do we interpret these don't do it warnings? Well, someone like Lindsey Graham is someone who you would kind of expect

to say that kind of a thing. He is he is not the Republican member of Congress who you would be looking for and say, oh, my gosh, he's pushing back against President Trump. He's sort of a usual suspect. Now, if Mitch McConnell came out to the microphones and said that forcefully, that would be different. But he hasn't done that yet. Mitch McConnell being the Republican leader in the Senate. Paul Ryan was sort of muted in a statement. The president doesn't have the power to do that. So what he would do instead is either fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions and replace Jeff Sessions with somebody who might limit the mandate or get rid of Bob Mueller. Because he wouldn't be recused, unlike Sessions. Exactly. Or try to fire or get rid of Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general and the man who's supervising Mueller. What people on the Hill have said, people like Chuck Grassley, who runs the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican from Iowa, is we don't want to be spending this year confirming a new attorney general or confirming a new deputy attorney general. I don't think the president's going to try to take steps to fire Bob Mueller, but it would not be a good idea to get rid of Jeff Sessions in this environment or get rid of Rod Rosenstein in this environment. I have another question for you, if that's OK, about Jeff Sessions and President Trump. So President Trump has made no secret of his distaste or problems with his attorney general, Jeff Sessions.

He's got beefs. He's got a lot of beefs. So many beefs. And he tweets about these beefs a lot. And then the president is tweeting, Jeff Sessions, I don't know if he did these exact words, but the president is basically sending out a big signal. They'd better fire Andrew McCabe. Big signal to the Justice Department, to Jeff Sessions. At the same time that Sessions is on the list of most endangered cabinet members. Now Sessions follows through, does something that clearly the president made it known he wanted done. So does that protect Jeff Sessions? Did Jeff Sessions do the president's bidding? Listen, you talk to Republicans and very conservative Republicans in Washington and in think tanks, and they will tell you that they believe Jeff Sessions is the most active cabinet member in fulfilling President Trump's agenda. And still he's the target of nonstop mean tweeting and bullying from the president.

I don't know what Jeff Sessions could do for the president to get over his recusal, Sessions' recusal from the Russia investigation and the appointment of the special counsel. Nothing seems to get him out of the doghouse. And so the notion that Jeff Sessions followed through on the recommendation from career lawyers and investigators in the Justice Department to get rid of the deputy FBI director Andy McCabe before his pension vested may not put him in great stead still with the White House. What it does, though, is it gives the president's critics one more opportunity to say, look at this guy. Look at how he's once again putting his fingers on the scale at the

Justice Department and law enforcement. Even if there were legitimate reasons to get rid of McCabe, President Trump's tweeting and his active campaign to do it for over a year have raised serious political questions about interference with law enforcement yet again. All right. And on that note, that is a wrap for today. We have one quick clarification from our podcast last Tuesday before we go. In that episode, we talked about Gina Haspel, the woman Trump intends to nominate to lead the CIA. Now, that exchange may have left you with the impression that Haspel was present at that black site at the time the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah took place. She was not. Gina Haspel became chief of base at that prison in Thailand after Abu Zubaydah's waterboarding.

According to ProPublica, she was present for the interrogation of another detainee who was waterboarded three times. Okay, that's it. We will be back in your feed at some point soon. Who knows? Hopefully not as many podcasts as last week. But who can say? It's only Monday. In the meantime, you can keep up with all of our coverage on NPR.org, on your local public radio station, or on NPR One. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover

the White House. And I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Hello. Just dropping in to remind you about On Point, the NPR show where we take you behind the headlines. On Point talks with newsmakers and real people about issues that matter most. Listen to On Point now on NPR One or wherever you listen to podcasts.