Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has confirmed that Justice Department officials in 2017 discussed whether the 25th Amendment could be invoked to remove President Trump from office.
CBS's Scott Pelley revealed Thursday that, in an interview with McCabe set to air on 60 Minutes Sunday, he goes on the record about the 25th Amendment talk. "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, summarizing the McCabe interview.
These meetings reportedly came in between Trump's firing of former FBI Director James Comey and the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Pelley notes that McCabe is the first source to go on the record to confirm The New York Times' reporting in September that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed getting Cabinet officials to declare Trump unfit to serve as president. According to Pelley, McCabe says they were "counting noses" and discussing which Cabinet members "would be with us."
That Times report also said Rosenstein suggested wearing a wire to secretly record Trump, and McCabe confirms this in the 60 Minutes interview. McCabe additionally tells CBS he began an FBI investigation into Trump because he was afraid he would be "removed quickly."
This interview comes ahead of a new book McCabe is set to publish, in which he writes, according to an excerpt published by The Atlantic, that Trump is a "deliberate liar who will say whatever he pleases to get whatever he wants."
