CBS: FBI Officials Discussed Using 25th Amendment to Remove Donald Trump

FBI officials met to discuss the idea of whether the 25th Amendment could be implemented to remove Donald Trump from office, CBS News confirms.

“There were meetings at the Justice Department at which it was discussed whether the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet could be brought together to remove the president of the United States under the 25th Amendment,” CBS 60 Minutes reporter Scott Pelley said. “These were the eight days from Comey’s firing to the point that Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel. And the highest levels of American law enforcement were trying to figure out what do with the president.”

Pelley interviewed former FBI acting director Andrew McCabe who is promoting a new book with details of the conversations.

“[McCabe] is the very first person involved in these meetings who has come out and spoken publicly,” Pelley said on CBS This Morning on Thursday. “They were counting noses, they were not asking cabinet members whether they would vote for or against removing the president, but they were speculating ‘This person would be with us. That person would not be,’ and they were counting noses in that effort. … This was not perceived to be a joke.”

The 25th Amendment of the Constitution details a procedure whereby the vice president and a majority cabinet members can vote to remove from office a sitting president who they deem unfit to serve. Section 4 of the 25th Amendment provides:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

The potential use of the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office due to “mental incapacity” has been a major talking point of his most vocal critics.