Fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who may or may not be indicted soon, joined CNN’s Jim Sciutto on Monday as a contributor and criticized both President Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani’s “incredibly dangerous” attempt to get a foreign power, namely Ukraine, to investigate 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.
McCabe began by saying he had never seen an “American political figure, much less the president of the United States, pushing a foreign government, especially one that we have concerns about corruption issues within their own criminal justice establishment, pushing that foreign government to begin investigation of a U.S. citizen.” He called this both “incredibly dangerous” and a “questionable practice,” and left open the possibility that soliciting this investigation may have run afoul of U.S. campaign law.
“As you know, the campaign laws are very clear that you cannot seek the assistance or accept any assistance or anything of value from a foreign national or a foreign government,” McCabe continued. “In this fact pattern, which of course we don’t have all the facts because we haven’t seen the whistleblower complaint yet, but it certainly seems just based on the president’s own admissions and the other remarkable reporting that’s come out on this issue, that the president addressed this issue — not just addressed the issue with the foreign leader but also sent his personal emissary to interact with agents of that foreign leader in third-party locations, which is, again, incredibly suspicious.”
Sciutto then noted the timing of a July 25 phone call in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was pressured to investigate Biden and his son’s alleged corruption. That just happened to be the day after former Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified before Congress about the findings of his report — findings that did not include an allegation of conspiracy and, controversially, did not include an “exoneration” of Trump on the obstruction issue.
“It certainly seems like someone who has finally escaped a two-year investigation over essentially very similar allegations — allegations of conspiracy or collusion with a foreign government,” McCabe commented. “And then the very next day, after what some may consider a symbolic end to that investigation, the very next day pressuring a foreign leader for what would no doubtedly amount to assistance in his own campaign effort.”
“It’s confounding and really remarkable,” he added.
[Image via CNN/screengrab]
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