Dem. Rep. to Andrea Mitchell: Thanks for Giving Me Idea to Offer Andrew McCabe Job

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Tony Lee

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) thanked MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell on Monday for giving him the idea over the weekend to offer fired former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe a job so he can receive his pension.

“Well, it’s your tweet, Andrea. It was your tweet that started all this,” Pocan told the MSNBC host. “I just want you to know. We saw your tweet over the weekend, and that’s what gave us the idea. So, thank you.”

Mitchell replied: “Well, that’s interesting to note. Thank you very much, Congressman.”

After Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe two days before he could retire and receive full pension benefits, Mitchell tweeted that a McCabe ally suggested “if a friendly member of Congress hired him for a week he could possibly qualify for pension benefits by extending his service the extra days.”

Pocan told Mitchell that he talked to McCabe’s representatives in the morning and is hoping to “have a personal conversation” with McCabe about his “very legitimate offer” to work on election security. He said he would “make sure that he’s on at least long enough to get the pension” while saying that President Donald Trump lacked “human decency” for axing McCable.

“It was cruel the way he did this, to fire someone literally hours before they would have got their pension. So we need to be a check and a balance in this system,” he said. “And in this case, our check is that we can make sure at least someone isn’t going to be threatened, and others threatened, that they’ll lose their pension if they do something the president doesn’t like.”

Pocan also said Trump fired McCabe to “to try to interfere with the Mueller investigation” and “wants to send a signal that anyone who crosses him, he’s not gonna just hurt you, he’s gonna hurt your family, he’s gonna hurt your future, he’s going to go after your pension.”

“When you threaten pensions, you are sending a message. It’s thug-like behavior,” Pocan continued. “We have to let people know, don’t be intimidated by someone trying to stop you from talking and doing your job, because again, that’s cruel behavior and it’s unbecoming of a president.”

Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), Tim Walz (D-MN), and Jamie Raskin (D-MD) also extended job offers to McCabe.

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