McCabe says DOJ talked 25th Amendment, Rosenstein offer to wear wire around Trump was serious: report

Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe in a new interview reveals fresh details of the investigations into President Trump, telling CBS that there were conversations about the possibility of removing Trump under the 25th Amendment and confirming that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had offered to wear a wire around the president.

McCabe spoke to “60 Minutes” for an interview ahead of the release of his book, “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump.”

{mosads}CBS News’s Scott Pelley appeared on “CBS This Morning” Thursday to discuss his interview with McCabe, saying that McCabe told him about the efforts to figure out “what to do” with Trump during the eight days between the firing of then-FBI Director James Comey and the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller.

“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,” Pelley said Thursday. “And the highest levels of American law enforcement were trying to figure out what to do with the president.”

Pelley said that McCabe told him Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein offered multiple times to wear a wire in meetings with Trump.

The New York Times reported in September that Rosenstein proposed secretly recording Trump, a report that Rosenstein quickly denied. An unnamed Justice Department spokeswoman told the Times that Rosenstein made the offer sarcastically.

Pelley says that McCabe said that Rosenstein’s offer was serious and it happened more than once.

“McCabe … says no, it came up more than once and it was so serious that he took it to the lawyers at the FBI to discuss it,” Pelley said.

In an excerpt of the interview that aired Thursday on “CBS This Morning,” McCabe told Pelley that he ordered an obstruction of justice probe into Trump immediately after Comey’s firing in order to document and protect the investigation due to concerns it may “vanish.”

“I was very concerned that I was able to put the Russia case on absolutely solid ground, in an indelible fashion,” McCabe told Pelley. “That were I removed quickly, or reassigned or fired, that the case could not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace.”

McCabe was abruptly fired in March before an inspector general report concluded that he lied to FBI agents about his disclosures to the press. His full “60 Minutes” interview airs this Sunday.