Andrew McCabe Mocks John Durham’s Investigation as ‘Political Errand’ to Avenge Trump: ‘Nothing New’

Andrew McCabe responded defiantly to John Durham’s special counsel report, trashing its legitimacy and arguing that he couldn’t find anything new to impugn the FBI.

The former FBI deputy director-turned-CNN law enforcement analyst joined Anderson Cooper on Monday night to address Durham’s assessment that the FBI shouldn’t have launched their investigation into the alleged connections between the Donald Trump 2016 campaign and the Russian government.

“I vehemently disagree with Mr. Durham’s characterizations of what we did in the report,” McCabe said. “He betrays a deep misunderstanding of not only what we knew at the time, but how we make these decisions.”

McCabe proceeded to summarize Russia’s attempts to meddle with American institutions over the past several years, and “we knew” part of their campaign involved the theft and weaponization of information to damage Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. McCabe tied this to former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos bragging to an Australian diplomat that Russia had dirt on Clinton.

So, we knew the Russians took, we knew how the Russians used it, and then we learned that the Russians offered to do exactly what they had done before they did it to the Trump campaign. So, with that information, not unverified intelligence, actual information, we opened a full investigation. And everyone who has looked at what we did, other than John Durham, determined that that decision was absolutely appropriate.

McCabe objected to Durham’s charge that the FBI used “uncorroborated intelligence,” saying that the diplomat’s tip about Papadopoulos corroborated what the FBI already knew about Russia’s operations. On Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, McCabe said their involvement in the probe was “unfortunate” because of their bias. Still, he noted that previous investigations determined neither of them was in any position to influence the investigation.

Cooper eventually asked McCabe if he was “surprised” that Durham’s report didn’t offer any new recommendations for changing the Justice Department’s procedures.

His answer:

McCabe: I’m not surprised at all because John Durham has failed to come up with anything new. Most of the report — the parts that I’ve been able to read in the last few hours — are a regurgitation of findings that were made by the inspector general. Their attempt to justify two failed prosecutions that he brought against Igor Danchenko and Michael Sussmann. There is nothing new here. And what he does present in the report though — I will give him credit for this. He’s entirely consistent with the pre-judging of this investigation that he communicated, you know, a month or so into starting it. We knew from the very beginning exactly what John Durham was going to conclude, and that’s what we saw today. We knew from the very beginning this was never a legitimate investigation. This was a political errand to exact some sort of retribution on Donald Trump’s perceived enemies and the FBI. That’s what Mr. Durham’s done.

Cooper: And you stand by the original Russia investigation?

McCabe: Absolutely. Listen, the mistakes with the Carter Page FISA were regrettable, should never have happened, and had I known about those mistakes in the packages, I never would have signed those applications. And shame on us for not knowing. But that’s all business that the IG presented to America in 2019 I think it was.

There is absolutely nothing new in this report. And I stand by the investigative decisions that we made to open the investigation first on the Trump campaign and the possibility that the Russians were trying to influence it and then later on Donald Trump himself.

Watch above via CNN.

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