‘This incredible memo details the conflicted and conniving coup effort against President Trump…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A week after the firing of FBI Director James Comey, in May 2017, then-Acting Director Andrew McCabe sought to enlist new Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein into a sting operation against President Donald Trump.
Transparency advocate Judicial Watch announced Monday that it had received McCabe’s two-page memo outlining the exchange between the top criminal-justice officials, whose ideas for ensnaring the president included Rosenstein wearing a wire into private meetings.
“This incredible memo details the conflicted and conniving coup effort against President Trump,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.
“It is astonishing and shocking McCabe thought he could have the FBI conduct a ‘counterintelligence’ operation on the president and Rosenstein thought it would be appropriate to wear a wire to secretly record President Trump in the Oval Office,” he added.
Rosenstein was new to the job himself, having been appointed after Obama’s deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, was fired for insubordination when she refused to enforce Trump’s travel ban on terrorist-harboring countries.
Immediately, the new deputy AG was handed responsibility for the looming Russia investigation since then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions had recused himself two months prior.
Rosenstein ultimately signed off—alongside Attorney General William Barr—on the final determinations of the two-year-long Mueller investigation in March 2019.
The report found no evidence of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign—despite repeated overtures from the Kremlin—and declined to prosecute claims of obstruction of justice stemming from the president’s efforts to quell the fraudulent investigation.
However, the May 16, 2017 memo drafted by McCabe revealed the extent to which the deep-state bureaucrats within the law-enforcement agency sought early-on to fight back against Trump’s executive authority.
“I explained that counterintelligence investigations of this sort were meant to uncover any the existence of any threat to national security as well as whether or not criminal conduct had occurred,” noted McCabe, who was fired a year later for leaking to the media and was reprimanded by the DOJ’s inspector general for his misconduct.
Despite his disclosure to Rosenstein of the FBI investigation, McCabe gave no clear indication in the memo (some of which remains redacted by the DOJ) that he informed him about the true nature of the already leaked Steele Dossier, which provided the basis for the probe.
That the salacious report about Trump’s alleged Russia dealings was questionably sourced, had been commissioned by the Clinton campaign and obtained through back-channel arrangements would be revealed publicly later that year, amid a probe by congressional Republicans.
Using the weight of the investigation he had thusly authorized under false pretenses, McCabe sought to recruit the man who was technically his boss into the resistance movement.
“As our conversation continued the DAG [Rosenstein] proposed that he could potentially wear a recording device into the Oval Office to collect additional evidence on the President’s true intentions,” McCabe wrote.
“He said he thought this might be possible because he was not searched when he entered the White House,” McCabe continued. “I told him that I would discuss the opportunity with my investigative team and get back to him.”
McCabe later revealed that the two also had discussed the possibility of invoking the 25th amendment to declare Trump “unfit” for the presidency.
The memo indicated that both men, like Comey, feared for their jobs—but they seemed to make no connection with their own actions being the basis for dismissal, viewing the efforts as justified.
While Rosenstein had advocated for McCabe to continue as acting director during the search for a permanent director, he related the concerns to McCabe surrounding his partisan activity—namely his support for the Democratic candidacy of his wife, Jill, in a run for the Virginia state senate.
“The DAG said it was a ‘credibility problem’ because after having told him during my May 13 interview that I played no role in her campaign and attended no campaign events, the DAG said a staffer had provided him with a photograph found on the internet of me and my wife wearing Dr. Jill McCabe campaign t-shirts,” McCabe wrote in his memo.
He maintained that this was not a violation of the Hatch Act, which regulates the political activity of government officials.
Nonetheless, the memo did not address the nearly half a million dollars in political contributions given to Jill McCabe’s campaign by then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a close Clinton ally and longtime fundraiser, while McCabe himself was overseeing investigations of both Trump and his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz later rebuked McCabe, following an investigation, for failing to recuse himself from the Clinton case until shortly before the November 2016 election.
The redacted memo from McCabe came only after a yearlong court battle with the Justice Department, which failed to respond to a preliminary request under the Freedom of Information Act.
“That the DOJ and FBI sat on this smoking gun for a year shows the need for urgent housecleaning at those agencies,” Fitton said.
Rosenstein resigned from his post in May following the conclusion of the Mueller investigation.
Currently, McCabe remains under investigation in the Justice Department for his role in the Russia hoax conspiracy, although it is unclear whether he will face prosecution.
Top partisan officials from the Obama administration have already declared they will go to bat for him should he face trial.