Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is engaging in an all-out war of words with President Donald Trump, blasting the commander in chief’s personal attacks against him.
Appearing on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday, McCabe responded to Trump’s apparent attempt to insult him on Wednesday by labeling him “a poor man’s J. Edgar Hoover.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” McCabe told host George Stephanopoulos. “You know, it’s not the first time that I’ve had to listen to the president say bizarre and untrue things about me, so it’s unfortunate that this is getting a little routine.”
McCabe, ousted from his post last March just a day shy of his planned retirement, released his memoir, “The Threat” last week, in which he details his time in the Trump administration.
Promoting the book, McCabe has made a series of media appearances during which he has claimed that Trump’s firing of then-FBI Director James Comey in May 2017 raised serious concerns among other Justice Department officials about his fitness for office. That prompted the officials to consider invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from the presidency.
“I don’t think there’s anything sad or unfortunate about speaking truth to power and telling the story that you lived and the things you saw and heard and the reasons behind the decisions you made, and that’s what I’ve tried to do with the book,” he told Stephanopoulos.
Trump has repeatedly disparaged McCabe, accusing him on Twitter last week of spreading “so many lies” and a “deranged” story.
McCabe lost his FBI job in the wake of a Justice Department inspector general’s report that said he had misled investigators about an agency leak to the media about the federal investigation of the Clinton Foundation. McCabe has vigorously denied that allegation.