Andrew McCabe
The news has broken that CBS' 60 Minutes will air an interview by Scott Pelley with disgraced former FBI supervisor Andrew McCabe on Sunday. The trailers are already causing a furor. What we already know from the trailers is that McCabe discussed the idea of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump during May of 2017. Allegedly, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (DOJ), McCabe, and other FBI officials were engaged in discussions as to how many cabinet members would vote to invoke the amendment, which could remove Trump from office.
https://hotair.com/archives/2019/02/14/mccabe-better-believe-discussed-using-25th-amendment-remove-trump-comey-firing/
Frankly, I want to watch that entire interview on 60 Minutes. Already, some conservative voices are claiming that McCabe, Rosenstein and others were engaged in a conspiracy to remove a rightly-elected president from office-a coup in effect. As the above article from Hot Air rightly points out, Article 25 is reserved for members of the cabinet. It is not reserved for federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, and including the Department of Justice. Such a discussion, if it involved an actual plan with an agreement to act, could be unlawful.
I am not familiar with laws regarding subversion, but as a retired DEA agent I do know a thing or two about the conspiracy statutes, which I used during my career.
Basically, the federal conspiracy law (18 USC 371) states that if two or more people enter into an agreement to violate federal laws, and one or more of the co-conspirators commits an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy, the federal law has been broken and all are responsible. The overt act need not in itself be a criminal act. It could be any simple act such as traveling from one place to another in furtherance of the conspiracy, a purchase made, a subsequent meeting-almost any act-if it is in furtherance of the conspiracy. The federal drug conspiracy law, 21 USC 963, was the one we used in DEA. I note from the article that these meetings took place over the course of 8 days. That would certainly indicate there was both an agreement and at least one overt act involved.
I look forward to seeing the rest of the interview on Sunday.
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