An explosive new book claims that now-former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe set up a meeting with the White House which was leaked shortly after and was used to the start the “obstructive” narrative in the media and quite possibly in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
McCabe requested to meet privately with then-White House chief of staff Reince Priebus in February 2017 so that he could tell Priebus that everything in a New York Times article titled, “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence,” was “bulls***.” The Federalist reports:
McCabe claimed to want Priebus to know the FBI’s perspective that this story was not true. Priebus pointed to the televisions that were going non-stop on the story. He asked if the FBI could say publicly what he had just told him. McCabe said he’d have to check, according to the book.
McCabe reportedly called back and said he couldn’t do anything about it. Then-FBI director James Comey reportedly called later and also said he couldn’t do anything, but did offer to brief the Senate Intelligence Committee on the matter later that week, suggesting they’d spill the beans publicly.
Then, according to Howard Kurtz’s new book “Media Madness”:
Now, a week later, CNN was airing a breaking news story naming Priebus. According to ‘multiple U.S. officials,’ the network said, ‘the FBI rejected a White House request to publicly knock down media reports about communications between Donald Trump’s associates and Russians known to U.S. intelligence.’
Priebus was stunned by the implication that he was pressuring law enforcement. Had he been set up? Why was the FBI leaking this information when one of its top officials had initiated the conversation?
The CNN report was authored by five different “reporters” including Evan Perez, who has deep ties to Fusion GPS, and Manu Raju, who botched a bombshell report on Donald Trump Jr. communicating with WikiLeaks. CNN reported:
The direct communications between the White House and the FBI were unusual because of decade-old restrictions on such contacts. Such a request from the White House is a violation of procedures that limit communications with the FBI on pending investigations.
The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway noted how this story was a solid example of how anti-Trump government officials might have planted stories in the media “to overly compliant journalists and other members of the ‘resistance,'” which led to the media’s “Russia collusion” and “obstruction” narratives.