- President Donald Trump reportedly asked the deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe who he voted for during an Oval Office meeting last year.
- McCabe took over the FBI after Trump fired Comey in May. He told Trump he did not vote in the 2016 election.
- The meeting between Trump and McCabe resembled the one-on-one time that the president had with Comey after his inauguration. During the meeting, Comey said that Trump asked him for his loyalty and requested that the FBI back off of his then-national security adviser Michael Flynn, who the FBI was investigating.
- Comey later said he rebuffed Trump’s request, which he confirmed during congressional testimony he gave last June.
- The revelation potentially adds another wrinkle to the federal investigation of ties between Trump associates and Russian influence in the 2016 election.
Following former FBI director James Comey’s ouster in May, President Donald Trump reportedly met with then-acting director Andrew McCabe and asked him who he voted for during the 2016 US presidential election, current and former officials cited by the Washington Post said in a report published on Tuesday.
McCabe, who reportedly said he did not vote in the election that year, found the question to be “disturbing,” according to one for official.
Trump and McCabe later met again in the Oval Office, where the president interviewed McCabe for the role of FBI director, though The Washington Post notes that Trump had no intention of hiring McCabe for the job, due in part to his anger over McCabe’s wife’s failed run for Senate in Virginia.
Trump has accused the campaign of McCabe’s wife, Jill, of taking donations from Hillary Clinton. The donations is question actually came from the Virginia Democratic Party and a super PAC aligned with Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who is a Clinton supporter. She received no donations from Clinton herself.
Hallmarks of the Trump-Comey meeting
The conversation between Trump and McCabe loosely resembled the one-on-one time the president spent with James Comey shortly after taking office. He summoned Comey to the White House for a private dinner, during which he asked Comey for his loyalty.
Comey, who at the time was leading the Russia investigation, later said he was baffled by the request, but said he did not oblige. He said Trump also asked him to drop the bureau’s investigation of his then-national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Comey said during congressional testimony last year that he recorded memos of the early private meetings with Trump out of concern for the nature of the encounters.
Railing against law and order
Though Trump ran his 2016 presidential campaign on a “law and order” platform, he has railed against top law-enforcement officials during his entire first year in office.
The interactions between McCabe and Trump, just like those previous encounters with Comey, are also part of a broader effort in which Trump has apparently sought to wrangle top law-enforcement officials who have proximity to the Russia investigation.
During his first year in office, Trump has publicly rankled Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia probe. He taunted McCabe on social media, scolded White House general counsel Don McGahn for not intervening in the investigation.
More recently, Sessions has pressured the Trump-appointed FBI director Christopher Wray to remove McCabe. Political observers have speculated that Sessions was acting on Trump’s wishes to shake up the FBI. Wray reportedly threatened to resign over the White House’s alleged meddling.
As reported by Business Insider