Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has have walked back his commitment to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the matter of Russian interference in the 2016 election citing concerns about COVID.
McCabe’s attorney wrote a letter to committee chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) informing him about the former bureau chief’s decision to pull out of the hearing.
“It has been reported that at least two members of your Committee–Senators Mike Lee and Thom Tillis–have tested positive for Covid-19, and it may well be that other members of the Committee and staff who plan to attend the hearing will test positive between now and then, or may have been exposed to the virus and may be a carrier. Under these circumstances, an in-person hearing carries grave safety risks to Mr. McCabe, me, and senators and staff who would attend,” McCabe’s attorney wrote.
The timing of McCabe’s concern about a vulnerability to COVID has raised some suspicions among those on the Right side of then aisle. McCabe stepped down from his post in January of 2018, in the face of the release of an Inspector General’s report that stated McCabe “made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor – including under oath – on multiple occasions.”
NEW #Russia #Durham: McCabe declines to testify next week @senjudiciary citing "manifest danger” of Covid-19 among Committee members + “McCabe is eager to testify voluntarily…at a future date when it is safe” McCabe conditions : in-person, not Zoom @CBSNews @LindseyGrahamSC pic.twitter.com/6OdyTcOa8T
— Catherine Herridge (@C__Herridge) October 3, 2020
In a 2017 interview by the House Intelligence Committee, McCabe admitted his team was unable to substantiate many of the claims made in the Steele Dossier, the document the FBI used to achieve FISA warrants to surveil Trump adviser Carter Page as part of the FBI’s undercover investigation “Crossfire Hurricane.”
“I will not sit here and tell you that I can vouch for all the content of the Steele reporting. We can’t prove all of it,” McCabe said to the House interviewer. “Nevertheless, with appropriate caveats…I think it was appropriate to put it in the FISA package.”
Graham announced in September that McCabe agreed to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggesting that new revelations were forthcoming.
“There’s a day of reckoning coming,” Graham told reporters. “Just stay tuned, and there’s more coming. There’s something else coming…”
