Andrew McCabe Duels with Lindsey Graham in Defense of Peter Strzok: ‘He Was Fair’
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe defended disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok during a tense hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, telling senators that he had acted appropriately in the course of investigating President Donald Trump.
“Do you believe Peter Strzok was fair minded when it came to the Trump campaign?” Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked McCabe at a Tuesday hearing. “My experiences working with Peter Strzok — yes, I believe he was fair in the decisions that he made and the work that he did,” McCabe replied.
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe from his role as the bureau’s deputy director in March 2018, hours before his scheduled retirement, over findings by the Justice Department’s inspector general that McCabe leaked information to The Wall Street Journal about the FBI’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation. Federal prosecutors recommended the next that McCabe be criminally charged for the leaks, but the department — under Attorney General William Barr — declined to do so.
Strzok, an FBI special agent, was removed in 2017 from then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 election after the discovery that he had exchanged anti-Trump text messages with a mistress, FBI attorney Lisa Page. Strzok was fired from the FBI the subsequent year.
After a brief exchange at Tuesday’s hearing, Graham read some of Strzok’s text messages to McCabe, including missives in which he referred to Trump as an “idiot” and “loathsome human,” before asking, “Is it your testimony under oath that you think Peter Strzok had no biases against Trump?”
“Senator, it is my testimony under oath that the work that I saw Peter Strzok do on the Crossfire [Hurricane] case and on other cases…”
Graham attempted to interject, prompting McCabe to respond, “Senator, I’m having a hard time finishing an answer. I don’t know if it’s the connection.”
“Please finish,” Graham replied.
Watch above via Fox News.
