Christopher Wray’s First Problem: What to Do About Andrew McCabe
Christopher Wray took the oath of office at the FBI yesterday and thus started the clock ticking on a difficult problem he’s going to have to address: the fate of his deputy, Andrew McCabe, who has been serving as acting director since President Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey.
Published by The Lawfare Institute
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Christopher Wray took the oath of office at the FBI yesterday and thus started the clock ticking on a difficult problem he’s going to have to address: the fate of his deputy, Andrew McCabe, who has been serving as acting director since President Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey.
Trump’s got a bee in his bonnet about McCabe. He’s had it for a while. During one of the conversations with Comey that the then-director memorialized at the time and revealed in his prepared testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Trump raised the question of “the McCabe thing”—apparently referencing donations provided to McCabe’s wife by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe during her run for state Senate. He raised the issue again in his interview with the New York Times, saying, “We have a director of the F.B.I., acting, who received $700,000, whose wife received $700,000 from, essentially, Hillary Clinton.”
More recently, the president has taken to attacking McCabe openly on Twitter—indeed, calling for his ouster and calling him a swamp beast:
Problem is that the acting head of the FBI & the person in charge of the Hillary investigation, Andrew McCabe, got $700,000 from H for wife!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2017
