CNN’s legal guy Jeffery Tobin gets a jump on the stories that will be coming out from the FBI and Justice Department after the November election…
Adapted from “TRUE CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS: The Investigation of Donald Trump,” by Jeffrey Toobin. Copyright © 2020. Available from Doubleday.
In the hours after President Donald Trump suddenly fired FBI Director James Comey, on May 9, 2017, his former subordinates in the J. Edgar Hoover Building wondered if there would be more shoes to drop.
Would Trump dismiss more people? Would he shut down the investigation of his campaign’s ties to Russia? Would the President demand that the Bureau cease its investigation of Michael Flynn, Trump’s onetime national security adviser?
In response to these concerns, the FBI took extraordinary — and previously undisclosed — steps to protect its investigations.
From Comey’s first meetings with Trump, shortly after he won the presidency, the FBI director developed misgivings about his new boss’ behavior — about Trump’s demands for “loyalty,” and even more unnerving, his request that the Bureau drop its investigation of Flynn. Comey’s conversations with Trump had been so distressing that the director started writing up contemporaneous summaries of their interactions and sharing them with a handful of top officials at the Bureau. Now, suddenly, Comey was out — and the question arose of what to do with his memos about his conversations with the President.
The initial decision fell to Andrew McCabe, who was Comey’s deputy and now the acting director of the FBI. McCabe thought Trump’s behavior was sufficiently problematic to be investigated for possible obstruction of justice, and he told his team to open a criminal case.
Given the wild pace of events, McCabe couldn’t be sure how long he’d last as director, so he wanted to lock down as much evidence as possible. Most important, he told the investigating agents to place Comey’s memos in SENTINEL, the FBI’s case management software. McCabe knew that once documents were inside the system, they were virtually impossible to remove. With Comey’s memos in the system, the investigators were certain to have access to them — even if McCabe himself would eventually be gone.