Andrew Mccabe, the Deputy Director of the FBI, has stepped down from his position in the bureau ahead of his intended near-future retirement as his feud with US President Donald Trump has been growing in recent days. Trump has been attacking the FBI and McCabe has been defending it. The clash escalated and escalated until now, the Deputy Director has quit his job and jumped ship. Frankly, many had expected McCabe to step down, since you can’t fight City Hall – so you definitely can’t fight the White House.
McCabe jumped to the defence of the FBI investigators working the case of Trump’s ties to the Russian government that may have involved a dirty collusion that affected the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election, who Trump has been targeting for Twitter outrage recently.
The President has also been personally attacking McCabe for months, including a suggestion that McCabe’s neutrality in these cases was threatened by a political donation made in 2015 by his wife. Suffice to say, this is not the President you want to get into a feud with. You never want to get into a feud with anyone who holds the power and office and title of President of the United States, but especially not this one – he’s petty, angry, and small.
Press Secretary Sanders refuses to comment on McCabe’s departure
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released an official statement, as she is always expected to do – faced with the almost impossibly difficult task of spinning whatever Trump’s been up to into something positive – saying that the Trump administration had seen the “numerous reports” coming through about McCabe quitting the FBI, but she did make vague attempts to distance the White House from his reasoning behind leaving the bureau.
She also confirmed that “none of this decision” was made by a single staffer within the White House.
Sanders also refused to make “any specific comments” about McCabe’s departure from the FBI and told the reporters in the room to direct any enquiries about the matter to the bureau itself. However, she also added that Trump “stands by” everything he has previously said about the Deputy Director and his wife.
This is typical – this President never seems to publicly regret anything. The other day, he suggested that he was open to apologising for sharing all of those racist, anti-Muslim, far-right posts from the hate group Britain First and jeopardising his entire relationship with the United Kingdom – but that didn’t stretch to actually apologising.
Despite Trump’s recent attacks on the FBI, specifically Deputy Director McCabe and all of the investigators involved in Robert Mueller’s probe into his campaign and his shady dealings, Sanders claims that he has “full confidence” in the Director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, who McCabe is leaving in charge on his own and up Slack Alley in his wake. Sanders went on to deny that Trump wants the Mueller investigation to end soon for his own personal interests – apparently, he’s not scared that he’ll get found out, but rather he just wants the FBI to shift its focus onto more important cases. Yeah, right.
Exactly why McCabe decided to quit remains unclear
The exact reason behind McCabe’s decision to step down from his post as the Deputy Director of the FBI remains fairly unclear.
Obviously it was the tensions with Trump that set it off, but he quit so suddenly and it doesn’t make sense why. The top brass at the FBI have yet to comment on his departure from the bureau and his colleagues have confirmed that he did not discuss any plans to suddenly leave the FBI with them. It’s oh so curious...
