House panel preparing to subpoena for McCabe memos

The House Judiciary Committee is preparing to subpoena the Justice Department for memos drafted by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe about his conversations with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a congressional source confirmed to The Hill.

The move comes after a bombshell New York Times report saying Rosenstein considered secretly recording President Trump, and discussed with senior Justice Department officials, including McCabe, about the possibility of removing Trump via the 25th Amendment.

In its reporting, the Times cited a source that described McCabe’s memos regarding Rosenstein.{mosads}

Conservatives in the House have also demanded that Rosenstein testify about the report. Some, including the House Freedom Caucus, have called for the deputy attorney general’s resignation if he does not testify on the claims made in the Times’s report.

Tonight the Freedom Caucus took an official position that Rod Rosenstein needs to come testify before the Judiciary committee within the week or he needs to resign.

— House Freedom Caucus (@freedomcaucus) September 25, 2018

Politico, which first reported that Judiciary Republicans had started preparing the subpoena, did not confirm a time frame for when it would be issued.

The 25th Amendment allows a majority of the president’s Cabinet to declare them unfit for office. Rosenstein denied the report in a statement from the Justice Department on Monday.

“Let me be clear about this: Based on my personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment,” he said, adding: “The New York Times’s story is inaccurate and factually incorrect.”

The committee announced on Friday that subpoenas for any documents withheld by the Justice Department related to Rosenstein’s comments were forthcoming.

“I intend to subpoena ‘McCabe Memos’ & all other docs that have been requested & not provided,” the Judiciary Committee’s Twitter account posted Friday.

An attorney for McCabe said Friday that the former deputy FBI chief had no knowledge of how the contents of his memos were leaked to the press.

“Andrew McCabe drafted memos to memorialize significant discussions he had with high level officials and preserved them so he would have an accurate, contemporaneous record of those discussions,” Michael Bromwich said.

“A set of those memos remained at the FBI at the time of his departure in late January 2018,” Bromwich added. “He has no knowledge of how any member of the media obtained those memos.”

Olivia Beavers contributed.