heard from his supporters on the hill. it is the actual story of how work is done in an institution that is crucial to the health of this democracy. andrew mccabe gets tonight s last word. the 11th hour with brian williams starts now. tonight, increasing talk and official reporting predicting robert mueller s time is coming to an end and the special counsel investigation may soon wrap up and hand its findings over to the new attorney general. this while other investigations will continue that could be more damaging to the president. andrew mccabe, who ran the fbi after trump fired comey, says on this network today that the president and his circle display classic criminal enterprise behavior. and today in moscow putin threatens the u.s. while avoiding criticism of the american president. the 11th hour on a wednesday night starts now.
described seeing a letter president trump purportedly drafted himself as an attempt to justify the firing of former fbi director james comey may of 2017. something that i haven t discussed before and i m very careful, i have to be careful in the way that i talk about this. but i have seen the letter that the president wrote purportedly himself justifying the firing of jim comey. what does it say? in a rambling four-plus pages it goes through all the different reasons why he is firing the director of the fbi. now, i m not going to go through all those with you but i will tell you that one of them is he claims he wanted to fire the director of the fbi because of his failure to fire me. that was a letter written long before the i.g. had concluded their investigation and drawn their i believe false conclusions in that report. that letter was eventually not used to publicly explain why james comey was fired.
this is a big change for one of the focal points at this network, on this broadcast, and for millions of americans each day. what will it be like not looking at this same chain of pictures every evening? we ll have more on all of it in just a moment. but we begin with a related topic. the latest revelations from former acting fbi director andrew mccabe. earlier on this network he talked with our colleague nicolle wallace, who is among those standing by to join us, and for the first time he described seeing a letter president trump purportedly drafted himself as an attempt to justify the firing of former fbi director james comey may of 2017. something that i haven t discussed before and i m very careful, i have to be careful in the way that i talk about this. but i have seen the letter that the president wrote purportedly
as nicolle mentioned, the white house used a letter instead written by deputy attorney general rod rosenstein. but trump s focus on andrew mccabe started long before comey s firing. you may recall mccabe helped to oversee the investigation into hillary clinton s e-mail use. a wall street journal article october 2016 reported on donations from a clinton ally to mccabe s wife, who was running for a state senate seat in virginia. with a big boost from conservative media that was all candidate trump needed to hear. he zeroed in on that, referring to it during his own campaign. the man who was in charge of the investigation of hillary clinton accepted essentially from hillary clinton $675,000 that went to his wife. the man that was investigating her from the fbi, his wife runs for office and
himself justifying the firing of jim comey. what does it say? in a rambling four-plus pages it goes through all the different reasons why he is firing the director of the fbi. now, i m not going to go through all those with you but i will tell you that one of them is he claims he wanted to fire the director of the fbi because of his failure to fire me. that was a letter written long before the i.g. had concluded their investigation and drawn their i believe false conclusions in that report. that letter was eventually not used to publicly explain why james comey was fired. as nicolle mentioned, the white house used a letter instead written by deputy attorney general rod rosenstein. but trump s focus on andrew mccabe started long before comey s firing. you may recall mccabe helped to oversee the investigation into hillary clinton s e-mail use. a wall street journal article october 2016 reported on donations from a clinton ally to