Fired FBI official McCabe says Justice Department considered asking Cabinet to remove Trump

WASHINGTON – Former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe is speaking publicly about the investigations into President Donald Trump's Russian ties and his possible obstruction of justice, telling CBS in an interview that Justice Department officials weighed asking the Cabinet to consider invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office.

McCabe made the revelation during an interview with "60 Minutes" that is scheduled to air on Sunday.

In September, the New York Times reported that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had discussed using the 25th Amendment on Trump and that he had considered wearing a wire to record his conversations with the president. Rosenstein has strongly denied the report.

"60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley said Thursday on CBS "This Morning" that McCabe told him "there were meetings at the Justice Department in 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 those conversations took place in the time between Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey on May 9, 2017, and May 17, 2017, when Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate a potential conspiracy between Russian intelligence operatives and the Trump campaign.

On Thursday, the DOJ again denied that officials considered using the 25th Amendment.

"As to the specific portions of this interview provided to the Department of Justice by 60 Minutes in advance, the Deputy Attorney General again rejects Mr. McCabe’s recitation of events as inaccurate and factually incorrect," a spokesperson said in a statement. "The Deputy Attorney General never authorized any recording that Mr. McCabe references."

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McCabe told Pelley in an excerpt of the interview released Thursday that he met with agents looking into Russian election meddling the day after Trump fired Comey to make sure the investigation was on "solid ground" in case he was removed from his position or fired.

He said he wanted to make sure "that the case could not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace. I wanted to make sure that our case was on solid ground and if somebody came in behind me and closed it and tried to walk away from it, they would not be able to do that without creating a record of why they made that decision."

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The 25th Amendment, ratified after the assassination of President John Kennedy, outlines the procedures for the vice president to assume office. Section Four of the amendment says that the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet can rule "that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."

McCabe was fired last March by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions for "an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor ? including under oath ? on multiple occasions." Trump called McCabe's firing "a great day for Democracy," but the White House denied any role in his ouster.

McCabe denied the allegations, which have been referred for investigation to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, and blasted his firing as part of the Trump administration’s "war on the FBI."

Trump responded Thursday to the news of McCabe's interview by calling him a "disgrace to the FBI and to our Country" who was trying to pretend to be a "poor little Angel" in a tweet Thursday. He also repeated many of his past criticisms of McCabe, who he says helped start the "Russia hoax" and was biased in favor of Hillary Clinton.

Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday that "the writings of a disgraced FBI agent" won't detract from Trump's accomplishments and he said he was unaware of any talk about invoking the 25th Amendment.

"I’ve never heard any discussion of the 25th amendment by members of the government and I would never expect to," Pence told NBC News during an interview from Poland where he is attending a conference on security in the Middle East on security in the Middle East.

McCabe's "60 Minutes" interview precedes the release next week of his book, “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump."

Contributing: The Associated Press

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fired FBI official McCabe says Justice Department considered asking Cabinet to remove Trump