McCabe Claims Jeff Sessions Said FBI Was Better When They ‘Hired Irishmen’: ‘They Were Drunks’ But Could Be Trusted

Excerpts coming out on Thursday from the new book by former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe have been juicy news all day, although most of them focused on President Donald Trump. But the Washington Post points out that it’s not just the President under fire; former Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a gossip target too, and it’s not pretty.

“He didn’t read intelligence reports and mixed up classified material with what he had seen in newspaper clips,” the review from national security reporter Greg Miller begins. “He blamed immigrants for nearly every societal problem and uttered racist sentiments with shocking callousness.”

But that’s not a description of Trump from McCabe’s The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump, says Miller, it’s a blistering account of working with Jeff Sessions. Here’s more:

The FBI was better off when “you all only hired Irishmen,” Sessions said in one diatribe about the bureau’s workforce. “They were drunks but they could be trusted. Not like all those new people with nose rings and tattoos — who knows what they’re doing?”

It’s a startling portrait that suggests that the Trump administration’s reputation for baseness and dysfunction has, if anything, been understated and too narrowly attributed to the president.

The article recounts more startling accusations and characterizations from McCabe’s tell-all, which Miller describes as “score-settling,” most of which are, like other excerpts that came out Thursday, involve the President. But he gets back to Sessions again towards the end.

McCabe’s disdain for Trump is rivaled only by his contempt for Sessions. He questions the former attorney general’s mental faculties, saying that he had “trouble focusing, particularly when topics of conversation strayed from a small number of issues.”

The whole review is absolutely fascinating. You can read it here.

[Featured photo via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]

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