Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, now a CNN contributor, said Wednesday on his network that there must be a “significant degree of information” for federal officials to have launched a sex trafficking investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and then brief the attorney general.
Anchor Jim Sciutto said, “CNN has confirmed the existence of the investigation, as first reported by The New York Times. It’s also CNN’s reporting that Barr, then-attorney general, was briefed on this multiple times. Based on your experience, years in the FBI, if you have an investigation like this underway for that period of time. And the attorney general is briefed on it, is it a substantial investigation?”
McCabe said, “It is substantial and very serious. You know 21 years of opening and overseeing, conducting investigations, I can tell you that nobody opens a sex trafficking investigation in which the subject is a sitting member of Congress without having a significant degree of information.”
He added, “In this case, it’s likely that some of that information came from the prosecution of this associate of Congressman Gaetz, Joel Greenberg. But that’s hard to tell at this point. In any case, I can assure you the FBI doesn’t open these cases lightly and don’t get briefed to the attorney general without some significant momentum behind them.”
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