Donald Trump.
Chris
Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images
President Donald Trump reportedly asked then-acting FBI
Director Andrew McCabe to ask his wife about how it felt to be
a loser in a phone call after the president fired FBI Director
James Comey.
NBC News reported on the phone call after McCabe
departed the FBI on Monday.
President Donald Trump vented to then-acting FBI Director Andrew
McCabe and mocked his wife in a phone call immediately following
the president's firing of FBI Director James Comey, NBC News reported Monday.
McCabe, who went on to become deputy director of the bureau, left
the FBI on Monday.
Multiple people familiar with the call told NBC News that Trump
called McCabe after becoming furious about footage that showed
Comey boarding a government-funded plane after Trump fired him.
Comey was informed of his firing while at an event in Los Angeles
and later boarded a plane back to Washington, DC.
In the call, Trump demanded to know why Comey was allowed to take
such a flight, the sources said. McCabe told the president that
he was not asked to authorize the flight but would have if he
was.
That was when Trump reportedly turned silent for a moment and
then suggested to McCabe that he ask his wife about how it feels
to be a loser, an apparent reference to Dr. Jill McCabe's failed
bid for a Virginia Senate seat in 2015. She ran as a Democrat.
McCabe responded, "OK, sir," and then Trump hung up the phone.
Both the White House and FBI declined to comment on the phone
call to NBC News.
News of McCabe's
departure was confirmed by multiple outlets on Monday.
A CNN
producer and Fox News described
sources as saying McCabe was told Monday morning to step down and
that he was being "removed" from the FBI.
White House distances itself from McCabe's FBI exit
Andrew
McCabe
Thomson
Reuters
Trump, who has repeatedly criticized McCabe in recent
months, ignored questions shouted at
him about the report during a lunch with
United Nations Security Council ambassadors, a Bloomberg reporter
said on Twitter.
Meanwhile, the White House has sought to distance itself from the
McCabe news.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said during
Monday's press briefing that Trump "wasn't a part of the
decision-making process," adding that the president stood by all
of his previous remarks about McCabe.
In the days prior to the McCabe's departure, a pair of recent
stories detailed Trump's interactions and relationship with the
deputy director.
The Washington
Post reported last
week that during an Oval Office meeting
last year — meant to be an introductory meet-and-greet session
after the president fired James Comey as FBI director in May —
Trump asked McCabe, the acting FBI director at the time, whom he
voted for in the 2016 presidential election.
A former official told The Post that McCabe found the question
"disturbing."
During the meeting, Trump reportedly made pointed remarks about
McCabe's wife and her bid for office. Her campaign
received $675,000 in
donations from the Virginia Democratic
Party and a super PAC operated by Terry McAuliffe, the former
governor who is a close friend of Hillary Clinton.
Months after the Virginia election, McCabe became the FBI deputy
director, and he later helped lead two investigations related to
Clinton, including into her use of a private email server as
secretary of state, though he later recused himself from those.
Also last week, the news website Axios, citing three sources,
reported that FBI Director Christopher
Wray threatened
to resign after Attorney General Jeff
Sessions pressured him, at Trump's urging, to fire McCabe.
Axios also reported that Sessions
was pressuring Wray to oust James
Baker, a former general counsel for the bureau.
McCabe had become Trump's favorite target
U.S.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions with McCabe
Alex Wong/Getty Images
Trump has for months taken aim at McCabe on Twitter, often
falsely claiming that McCabe was investigating Clinton while his
wife was accepting campaign donations linked to her.
Last month, Trump, apparently quoting a Fox News segment,
tweeted: "FBI's Andrew McCabe, 'in addition to his wife getting
all of this money from M (Clinton Puppet), he was using,
allegedly, his FBI Official Email Account to promote her
campaign. You obviously cannot do this. These were the people who
were investigating Hillary Clinton.'"
Earlier, he went after McCabe and
Comey, tweeting:
"How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge,
along with leakin' James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton
investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be
given $700,000 for wife's campaign by Clinton Puppets during
investigation?"
Trump also referred to
a Post
report saying McCabe planned to retire in
early 2018, when he is eligible for full pension benefits.
"FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire
with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!" Trump
tweeted.
The move also came just a day after Wray viewed a Republican memo
that alleged surveillance abuse by McCabe, Comey, and Deputy
Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Fox News reported.
The White House has pushed for McCabe's exit for weeks now,
claiming that he is emblematic of systemic, anti-Trump bias
within the Justice Department. But opponents say the attacks
against DOJ leaders are aimed at undermining the federal probe
into Russia's influence in the 2016 election and whether the
Trump campaign colluded with Moscow.
McCabe is just the latest official to call it quits or to appear
to be forced out of the Justice Department since Trump took
office last year.
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