Justice Department discussed forcing Donald Trump out of office, former FBI chief admits

The Justice Department discussed forcibly removing Donald Trump from office, the FBI's former acting director admitted Thursday.

Andrew McCabe, who was the deputy director of the FBI until last year, made the shocking admission during a television interview with CBS.

According to the network, Mr McCabe admitted that senior officials at Mr Trump's Justice Department considered using the 25th amendment to remove the president.

The officials were "counting noses" to work out how many members of Mr Trump's cabinet, including the Vice President Mike Pence, would vote in favour of the move.

Mr Trump and other prominent Republicans have reacted furiously to the comments. "Disgraced FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe pretends to be a 'poor little Angel' when in fact he was a big part of the Crooked Hillary Scandal & the Russia Hoax," Mr Trump tweeted. "Many of the top FBI brass were fired, forced to leave, or left ...McCabe is a disgrace to the FBI and a disgrace to our Country."

McCabe also claimed in September that Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General, considered wearing a wire in meetings with Mr Trump. Mr Rosenstein denied the allegation when it was published in the New York Times in September.

It has previously been reported that there were discussions around invoking the 25th amendment, whereby the cabinet decides a president can no longer do his job, but this is the first time an official who was involved has confirmed it on the record.

Mr McCabe said his concerns also prompted him to open an investigation into Mr Trump himself out of fear that the FBI's investigation into Russian collusion in the 2016 election would be jeopardised if he were fired.

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

The former acting director of the FBI said he directed counterintelligence and obstruction of justice probes of the president a day after meeting with him in May 2017, days after Mr Trump had fired James Comey, the FBI's director.

"I was speaking to the man who had just run for the presidency and won the election for the presidency and who might have done so with the aid of the government of Russia, our most formidable adversary on the world stage," he said. "And that was something that troubled me greatly."

Mr McCabe served as acting director of the FBI after Mr Comey's dismissal but was fired himself in March 2018 by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who cited an internal investigation that found Mr McCabe leaked information to reporters and misled investigators about his actions. Mr McCabe said he was targeted over the Russia probe.

Mark Meadows, a Republican congressman and ally of Mr Trump, said: "Rod Rosenstein has no business working at the Department of Justice, and if these latest reports are true, he should not only resign immediately but come before Congress and answer questions".

A spokeswoman for the Justice Department pushed back on Mr McCabe's comments yesterday saying: “The deputy attorney general again rejects Mr McCabe’s recitation of events as inaccurate and factually incorrect.”

The spokeswoman added that as Mr Rosenstein “has stated, based on his personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment, nor was the deputy attorney general in a position to consider invoking the 25th Amendment.”

A spokesman for Mr McCabe later issued a statement saying: "To clarify, at no time did Mr McCabe participate in any extended discussions about the use of the 25th Amendment, nor is he aware of any such discussions. He was present and participated in a discussion that included a comment by Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein regarding the 25th Amendment. "