Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe appeared Monday on NPR’s “Morning Edition” to discuss his firing from the Bureau and the investigation into leaking information to The Wall Street Journal.
NPR host Steve Inskeep asked McCabe multiple times about the investigation and lying under oath, which McCabe dodged each time by blaming the “ongoing legal issues” that he is “handling.”
Partial transcript of the exchange as follows:
INSKEEP: At what point did it become apparent to you that you were under investigation?
MCCABE: That’s a really complicated question, Steve. And I’m afraid it’s one that I’m not going to be able to answer for you because of the current legal matters that are still underway.
INSKEEP: You’re not going to give me a date. I guess we can note there is an inspector general’s report that said that in 2017, people within the bureau began asking questions of you about your interactions with the media, what disclosures of information you would authorize to The Wall Street Journal.
MCCABE: Yeah.
INSKEEP: What can you say about the questions you were asked and the answers you gave?
MCCABE: I have many things that I would like to say about the conclusions and the recommendations of the IG report, and I can’t go through each one of those points with you today because of the current ongoing legal issues and the civil lawsuit that I will be bringing against the Department of Justice. But I will say this. I, at no time, ever intentionally misled the FBI Inspection Division, the Office of Inspector General or, ever, any director of the FBI – not ever. This is not an investigative report like any I have ever seen. An investigative report is a clear and unbiased presentation of all the evidence, and this is none of that.
INSKEEP: You think it was biased.
MCCABE: I do. I do.
INSKEEP: Why would it be biased against you?
MCCABE: I do. Well, I think that’s pretty clear, Steve. I think the president has a long and well-established history of attacking the people who say things he doesn’t like.
INSKEEP: But this was an independent inspector general, right?
MCCABE: It’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be. I don’t believe they were independent or fair in the process of this investigation or in its result.
INSKEEP: The essence of their case against you is that you had authorized information to be leaked to The Wall Street Journal. You were asked about it three times under oath and sometimes recorded. And the first two times, you either denied giving the information or gave the sense that you didn’t know where the information had come from.
MCCABE: Yeah. And I – and Steve, it’s a well-formed question but not one that I can answer because of the legal issues that I’m currently still handling.
INSKEEP: One more along those lines — you said, I never intentionally misled anyone. Do you, then, acknowledge that, without intent, you made statements that misled people?
MCCABE: I’m not acknowledging anything beyond what I’ve already told you.
McCabe shared that he was going to file a lawsuit, but would not reveal any other information.
“You’ll see when the lawsuit is filed,” he told Inskeep. “I don’t want to get in front of that. And I’ll let the complaint speak for itself.”
(h/t Newsbusters)
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
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