Appearing Thursday on MSNBC, fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe agreed with host Rachel Maddow that special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on alleged Trump-Russia collusion offers prosecutors a “road map” to pursue charges against President Donald Trump after he leaves office.
A partial transcript is as follows:
RACHEL MADDOW: Given your role in initiating these investigations, do you feel like this public-facing document by Robert Mueller and his office today correctly and aptly explains why those investigations were started and whether the predicate was sound?
ANDREW MCCABE: I think it does. I think it validates the decisions that we made, certainly in July of 2016 to start the initial Russia-focused investigation and then, of course, the decisions that we made in May of 2017 to include the president in the investigation, personally. […]
MADDOW: Given the timing of you leaving the FBI, your involvement of your initiation of these investigations, the fact that you’re out of the bureau now, you read this along with all the rest of us. What do you make about what’s described about the relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia during this Russia attack? Obviously, there’s a decision made by Mueller and his team, who are overt about it. Although they were identifying lots of ties, lots of links, they factually described a lot of interactions, they were unable to find anything they felt should be charged as what we’ve come to call collusion between the Russia government and the Trump campaign. That said, the factual descriptions of the Trump campaign chair offering on an ongoing basis internal campaign polling data to somebody who is assessed to be working on behalf of the Russia government and tied to Russia intelligence, who is thought to be passing that information on to somebody who is linked to the Kremlin. I mean, how do you feel about what was turned up in national security terms about links between Trump and Russia? […]
I see this essentially as a road map for prosecutors after the president has left office or for the Judiciary Committee while the president is still in office, to essentially pursue those charges in a trial after he’s no longer president or an impeachment proceedings. Is that how you read it?
MCCABE: That’s absolutely how I read it. […] What Director Mueller has done here, is he’s provided an avalanche of facts that clearly indicate obstructive activity on the part of the president. He calls it out plainly in ten different sections in that Volume II of the report.