i ll have more on that in just a second. but the tension in that room, right? mccabe having been flung into rung the fbi under really weird circumstances but also there testifying about it two days into it at this big intelligence committee hearing with every eye in the country staring at him trying to figure out what the heck has just happened. it was just a very tense, very difficult scene. i m going to recognize myself for five minutes. did you ever hear director comey tell the president he was not the subject of an investigation? could you speak into your microphone, please? rookie mistake. i m sorry. sir, i can t comment on any conversations the director may have had with the president. okay. rookie nervous. right? looking back at that day now, we now know that in that hearing room that day on that incredibly tense moment with all these
investigation, and i believe rushed forward to try to reach some sort of a conclusion before i could retire. joyce, is that the kind of thing that might give a grand jury pause if they heard that? you know what? yeah. i don t know that that will give a grand jury pause. and of course the grand jury wouldn t get to hear former director mccabe s side of the story. what the grand jury hears is the prosecution s side of the story and the prosecution s side of the evidence. so although a lot of the process here was very irregular, this sort of a candor finding against an agent is something that you would expect would be resolved as an employment matter, not a criminal matter. if it s true that the grand jury rejected this case, it s because the government didn t even have probable cause to move forward as opposed to the sort of proof beyond a reasonable doubt they would need at trial to convict. and let me explain and say that probable cause, what prosecutors have to prove to a grand ju
under absolutely bonkers circumstances. just 48 hours earlier. and so now the new guy, right? two days on the job. had to go do that very high-profile hearing. and he did it. it was very, very tense for everyone involved. new mexico senator martin heinrich started off his questioning to andrew mccabe that day asking mccabe about his recent interactions, his very recent interactions with president trump. when did you last meet with the president, director mccabe? i don t think i i don t think was it earlier this week? i m in a position to comment on that. i have met with the president this week but i don t really want to go into the details of that. but russia did not come up? that s correct. it did not. thank you. we ve heard in the news that claims that director comey had
you. gates and flynn have now been subpoenaed to the house intel committee, as i asked former director mccabe what do they know, he was a little cagey, but they are cooperating witnesses for the federal government. what kind of understanding could they offer the congress and if their testimony is public, what kind of public education job could they do about those contacts with russia? i m glad to hear that the house intel committee is pushing this aggressively, they should be, and quite frankly they should have started this long ago. look, flynn had close proximity within earshot if not actually in the room and participating in conversations with regard to russia, the campaign, and remember post campaign in the white house. he knows the score with regard to the relationships with russia, who s hiding conversations with russia, i think gates similarly can give us a lot of a lot more information with regard to
concept of impeachment. but sometimes you don t do the right thing because it s the winning thing. you do the right thing because it s the only thing left to do. and right now it s the only thing left to do as a matter of principle to call out this president and say, you cannot thumb your nose at the law and the constitution and create a national security threat in your very presence. let me follow-up with you on one of those. i gave you a platter of breaking news to bite on. let me follow-up where you ended. i asked former director mccabe if the kind of things that donald trump said in the oval office yesterday were the kinds of things that he had said that led andrew mccabe to open up that full field investigation into donald trump in the spring of his first year as president. he said, absolutely. was that your sense all along? and is this just a public facing outburst from the president who