L

EXECUTIVE SESSION
PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE,
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
WASHINGTON, D.C.

INTERVIEW

OF:

ANDREW MCCABE

Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Washington, D.C.

The interview in the above matter was held in Room HVC-304, the Capitol,
commencing

a 2.43

p.m.

Present: Conaway, King, LoBiondo, Rooney, Ros-Lehtinen, Turner,
Stewart, Crawford, Gowdy, Hurd, Schiff, Himes, Speier, Quigley, Swalwell, Castro,

  

and Heck.

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Aooearances:

For the PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE:

For the FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

JAMES A. BAKER
GENERAL COUNSEL

GREGORY A. BROWER
ASSISTANT DIREGTOR
OFFICE OF CONGRESSIONAL AFFAIRS

OFFICE OF GENERAL COUNSEL

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For 1he US. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE:

SCOTT N. SCHOOLS

ASSOCIATE DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL

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Good afternoon

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all.

This is a transcribed interview of

Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
Thanks for being with us today.
For the record, l'm

senior counsel here at the House

Permanent Select Committee on intelligence for the majority. There are other
members and staff present, and they will introduce themselves as these
proceedings get underway. But before we begin, I wanted to state a few things

forthe record, rules of lhe road.
The questioning will be conducted by members and staff present. During
the course of this interview members and staff may ask questions during their
allotted time period. Some questions may seem basic. That is because we need
to clearly establish facts and understand the situation.
Please do not assurne we know any other facts you have previously

disclosed as part of any other investigation or review. And this interview will be
conducted at the Top SecreUSCl level.
We ask that you give complete and fulsome replies to questions based on
your best recollections. lf a question is unclear or you are uncertain in your
response, please let us know. And if you do not know the answer to a question or
cannot remember, simply say so.
You are entitled to have counsel present for you during this interview.

I

see that a number of folks have joined you today Deputy Director. lf at this time
those individuals could state their names for the record.
MR. BAKER: James A. Baker, general counsel, FBl.
MR. BROWER: Gregory A. Brower, assistant director for the Office of

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Congressional Affa irs.
MR. SCHOOLS. Scott Schools, associate deputy attorney general
, Office of General Counsel, FBI

MR. CONAWAY: Let me interject

here.

One or more of the lawyers with

Mr. McCabe may, in fact, be a fact witness that we will call perhaps at some later

date. So ljust

want to get that in the record, that we reserve the right to call

them, one or more of them, at a future date.

I

rhankyou.

The interview will be transcribed, There is a reporter making a record of
these proceedings so we can easily consult the written compilation of your
answers at a later

date.

Because the reporter cannot record gestures, we ask

that you answer verbally to all questions. lf you forget to do this, you might be
reminded to do

so.

You may also be asked to spell certain terms or unusual

phrases.

Consistent with the committee's rules of procedure, you and your counsel,
upon request, will have a reasonable opportunity to inspect the transcript of this
interview in order to determine whether your answers were correctly transcribed.
The transcript will remain in the committee's custody. And the committee also
reserves the right to request your return for additionalquestions should the need
arise.

The process for the interview will be as follows,

sir. The majority

will be

given 45 minutes to ask questions, and the minori$ will be given 45 minutes to ask

questions, after which time we will take a break, if you so desire. After which
period, the majority will be given 15 minutes to ask questions, and the minority will
be given 15 minutes to ask guestions. These 15-minute alternating rounds will

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continue until questioning has been completed by both sides.
Time will be kept for each portion of the interview, and warnings will be
given at the 5- and 1-minute marks, respectively.
To ensure confidentiality, we ask that you do not discuss the interview with
anyone other than your attorneys.
You are reminded that it is unlawfulto deliberately provide false information

to Members of Congress or staff.
And lastly, the record will reflect that you are voluntarily participating in this
interview, which willbe under oath.
Mr. Deputy Director, could you raise your right hand to be sworn?
Do you swear or affirm the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the

whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
MR. MCCABE: I do.
Thank you, sir
Mr. Chairman, over to you for opening remarks.
MR. CONAWAY: Mr. McCabe, thank you for being here this afternoon.

We will have a vote series 4:30-ish,4 to 4:30-ish. We will need to break, because
I think our members will like to do the

questioning. So we willjust take a quick

break to go vote and then we willcome back.
MR. MCCABE: That's perfectly fine.
MR. CONAWAY: Mr. Schiff, anything?
MR. SCHIFF: ljust want to welcome you, Mr. McCabe, and also tellyou

how much we appreciate the work of the

FBl.

I know it is not an easy time for the

Bureau, But there are a great many of us, I hope you will communicate back, that
have tremendous respect for what they do every day and we are grateful.

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MR. MCCABE: I will. Thank you, sir.
MR. SCHIFF: Thank you.
MR. MCCABE: lf I could say just one quick thing before we begin -MR. CONAWAY: ls your mike on?
lf you could just push the button on the microphone so the

green light's on, sir.
MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.

So I just wanted to say very briefly, first, my apologies for the confusion
over the scheduling last

week. I can tell you that in all of my conversations with

my staff over the last severalweeks anticipating this appearance, I have been told

the 19th, the 19th each

time.

I

don't know how we got that wrong with your folks,

but if we did, I apologize for that miscommunication.
I'd also like to say that this is actually the first time I have ever been asked

to come up to the Hillto discuss these matters. l'm looking forward to the

opportunity. I am here to provide you whatever information I possibly can about
anything that is within the scope of your investigation. I will stay here for as long

as it takes to give you the opportunity to ask whatever questions you have, and

I

willgive you the best answers I possibly can.
MR, CONAWAY: Well, thank you for that introduction. And with that, I will
turn to Mr. Gowdy for 45 minutes.
MR. GOWDY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SpecialAgent McCabe, thank you for coming, and I appreciate your service
to our country.
The committee is looking at four different pillars or areas of jurisdiction.
What did Russia do with respect to the 2016 election cycle? With whom, if

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anyone, did they do

it?

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The third tranche or pillar of jurisdiction would be the U.S.

Governmenfs response. And then fourth would be the issue of masking,
unmasking, the dissemination of classified material.
So that's kind of -- those are the foundations of our inquiry. There are
1,000 different ways to start because you are a central person for all four of those.
You would have information that crossed all four of those boundaries. So take
nothing from where I start, and I don't think the other part of it is important. I'm

going to be here as long as you are here, so we will get it all covered.
MR. MCCABE: Rogerthat.
MR. GOWDY: I think the committee is trying to understand how, if at all,

the Bureau relied on the research of Christopher Steele, particularly as it relates to
court filings. So did the Bureau rely on what has come to be known as a dossier
in any form, and if so, how?

MR. MCCABE: So very generally, sir, we did not rely on the Steele
reporting for the opening of the investigation into possible Russian influence on the
2016 election, but we did rely on that reporting in the FISA application

MR. GOWDY: When did the investigation begin? And if il were not the
dossier, what prompted it?
MR. MCCABE: The investigation began -- it was officially initiated on

I

What prompted the initiation of the investigation was information came

to us through -- from the State Department to our

and

then eventually came into headquarters at the end of
And the information that came to us was
Department by

-

had been provided to the State

That

I

!.
had met

inI

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with the individual

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- with George Papadopoulos
related that in a meeting they had with

And this
George Papadopoulos back in

I,

that Mr. Papadopoulos had made

comments to them along the lines that he was quite confident that

- that

then-candidate Trump would win the election. He was confident because, as he
stated, the Clintons had a lot of baggage and that the Trump campaign had a fair

amount of information about the Clintons.

MR. GOWDY: That initialconversation between a

I

and

--ora

somehow captured a

conversation between George Papadopoulos and whom?
MR. MCCABE: So that

actually met with

George Papadopoulos in
MR. GOWDY: Okay.
MR. MCCABE: They did not convey the substance of that meeting to the

State Department until
MR. GOWDY: What explanation, if any, was the Bureau given for the

delay in transmitting that information?
MR. MCCABE: lt's my understanding that, as you probab_ly know, the
WikiLease

- I'm sorry, the WikiLeaks release of many of the DNC email took place

in July, second or third week of July of 2016.
It's my understanding that it was the observation by the

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of that act that caused them to kind of put two and two together and

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think that they needed to bring this information to the attention of the United States
Government.
MR. GOWDY: And they did so in

f,

and they did so if I follow the

chronology from the State Department and then from the State Department to the
Bureau.
MR. MCCABE: That's

right. The State Department relayed it to our legat,

to our
MR. GOWDY: And what did the Bureau do
down

- what did the Bureau do after receiving
MR. MCCABE: So a day or so before

-

I

is the day I have

that information?

I,

which I believe was

a

Sunday, our legat relayed this information to the team at headquarters that was
working, that was nominally looking at the CD team that was looking at Russian
political influence activity, that sort of thing, and

-

MR. BAKER: CD is counterintelligence?
MR. MCCABE: Counterintelligence, l'm sorry. And so they opened a
case on potential Russian influence on the 2016 election on
paperwork was essentially

I

The

* was essentially approved.

MR. GOWDY: What is required to open a case?

MR. MCCABE: Well, a case of that nature is what we refer to as a
sensitive investigative matter, we refer to it as a

SlM. And a SIM requires that the

approval to open a case be rendered by a section chief{evel official in the
counter

-

in this case in the Counterintelligence Division at headquarters. That

section chief at the time responsible for these matters was Peter Stzok.
ln addition to the section chief approving the opening of the case, the case
had to be and was, of course, discussed with -- the predicating information had

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been discussed with myself, with Director Comey, with

others. We were aware of

the information.
It was also, I think, in the week or so after the case was officially opened we

notified the Department of Justice, which is required in a sensitive investigative
mafter.
MR. GOWDY: All

right. And then -

MR. MCCABE: l'm sorry, I left out one

step. The general counsel's office

is also required to review and concur with the opening of the SlM.
MR. GOWDY: Other than the WikiLeaks dissemination of information kind

of validating or ratifying what they had heard in
explanation from the

I,

did you ever get an

on why they didn't bother to share it before

the dissemination?
MR. MCCABE: ldid not.
MR. GOWDY: What investigative steps would you take if you opened a
matter, a sensitive matter like this

one? What

is the natural progression of that

investigation?

MR. MCCABE: Right. So the predicating information suggested that

So of course we would dedicate resources to

look into that, we would -- in the normal course of business we would review our
collection for any indicators that we thought were relevant to that

- to that topic.

!n this case, we also took the affirmative step of trying to figure out

So we went

I

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through a process of trying to figure out

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might be engaged in

this sort of activity.
MR. GOWDY: And what would be -- what was the result of that process?
MR. MCCABE: The result of that process is that we opened -- so we had
already opened the -- what we refer to as kind of the umbrella case, which was
referred to as

that was the code name for the umbrella case

We then opened

who we

believed fit that description that ljust gave you.
MR. GOWDY: And those individuals would be whom?

MR. MCCABE: Those individuals were

MR. GOWDY: We may come back to the sensitive criminal matter, but

I

want to fast forward to the application before the FISA court.
Why not seek coverage of George Papadopoulos? Why Carter Page? lt
seems that you have a history with Carter Page. You have a pretty discrete
comment by Papadopoulos.
MR. MCCABE: We did, although Papadopoulos'comment didn't
particularly indicate that he was the person that had had -- that was interacting
with the Russians.

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MR. GOWDY:

MR. MCCABE: That's right.
MR. GOWDY: So what investigate steps did you take with respect to

Papadopoulos?
MR. MCCABE:

I

MR. GOWDY: Who was the investigative lead on what you just described

for Papadopoulos?
MR. MCCABE: I don't know the answer to that.
MR. GOWDY: What division would that have been assigned to in the
Bureau?

MR. MCCABE: ltwas the Counterintelligence Division. All
the umbrella case were being managed by the Counterintelligence Division. We

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had assembled a small team of agents and analysts and support folks to help with

that effort, and that team was working essentially from headquarters in an effort to
keep what we knew as a very sensitive and potentially volatile matter kind of

cabined off to a small group of people.
MR. GOWDY: . The comment that Papadopoulos made to

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was it captured electronically? Was it - did you get a summary of it or

did you get a verbatim readout?
MR. MCCABE: lt was not captured in any way that I am aware

of.

I have

seen a written summary. l'm not sure if that written summary was provided to the
or if that was produced by the State

State Department by

That piece I don't know

Department after speaking to

MR. GOWDY: Do you know if the Bureau talked to the agent of the

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who would have had the conversation with Papadopoulos?

MR. MCCABE: We

did.

We sent a team to

I

to speak to all those

folks involved in that chain of communication.
MR. GOWDY: Was a U.S. team sent to

Are there also

Bureau agents stationed in
MR. MCCABE: Well, there are both. We have agents in

Erorking

out of our legat oflice there, but we actually sent folks from this team, on kind of
the

team, over to

I

to participate in those interviews.

MR. GOWDY: Would there have been 302s generated as a result of those
interviews?
MR. MCCABE: I expect so.
MR. GOWDY: All

right. Carter Page, I think we started off, how did the

Bureau, if at all, rely on Christopher Steele's dossier in any form as part of any

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court

filings? I assume you read the initialaffidavlt

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in support of the FISA

warrant?
MR. MCCABE: I did.
MR. GOWDY: lt seems

- and if you disagree then this is the time to tell

me -- it seems maybe about equal parts dossier and Carter Page.
MR. MCCABE: That's how I would characterize it as well.
MR. GOWDY: All

right. The dossier half of that, what steps did the

Bureau take to understand where that information came

from?

How was it

brought to the Bureau?
MR. MCCABE: So the Steele reporting came to the Bureau first to an
agent who at the time was working out of our

,

who I believe

you're speaking to tomorrow.
MS. ROS-LEHTINEN. MR. Gowdy, your questions are so clear we can
hear them well and I find it dfficult to follow the witness. Your voice trails away.

MR. MCCABE: I'm sorry. ls that better?
MS. ROS-LEHTINEN: Yes, sir.
MR. MCCABE: Sorry about that.
So the Steele reporting came first to our agent, one of our agents working

out of our

That agent had a preexisting relationship with

Christopher Steele, and he provided what I understand to be the first document in
what we now know as the Steele reporting to that agent I think some time in early
July of 2016.
He provided one document in the first week of

July.

A week or two later he

provided a second document to that agent. That reporting did not make its way
back to the team, the

, until mid- to late September of 2016

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So we didn't, in fact, at headquarters, at the

,

we didn't have

that reporting when we opened the case.
MR. GOWDY: I'm

sorry. I heard everything up tillthe cough. You didn't

hear it until?
MR. MCCABE: I'm sorry. So we didn't have the Steele reporting when
we opened the case. But we did have it, it had finally made its way to
headquarters, to the

, in about September 19th, is the best date

I

have for that.
MR. GOWDY: ls it fair to say that Steele had a history with the Bureau?

MR. MCCABE: He

did.

He did.

He had provided substantialassistance in our

I

and provided information that wenl into affidavits and was used ultimately

in support of criminal convictions in that case.
So he had a good and reliable history with us on those matlers.
The

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reporting, the first document that he sent to our agent in

was completely at his initiation. The agent in

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did not ask him to provide

reporting on any campaign matters. Steele was not tasked by the FBI to collect
on campaign matters. He had begun working on that because of other
relationships he had, and he provided that reporting to our agent in kind of an
unprompted manner.
MR. GOWDY: Was he being paid by the Bureau at the time, either for

unrelated contemporaneous work or past work?
MR. MCCABE: My understanding is no, he was not being paid at that

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time.

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He had been paid previously involving his other work, but was not paid

during the time he provided reporting on the campaign matters.
MR. GOWDY: Did Christopher Steele tell you who his employer was at the

time he approached your agent in

J?

MR. MCCABE: I don't remember

he

-

that.

I don't

remember. I don't know if

if we knew that then or not.

MR. GOWDY: There are 302s that are done, for want of a better

explanation, when a Bureau agent interviews a witness? What is a 1023?
MR. MCCABE: A 1023 is the internaldocument that captures a meeting

with a source.
MR. GOWDY: Would there be either a 302 or a 1023 that memorialized
that first interaction between Christopher Steele and, we williust say, his handler?

MR. MCCABE: lt depends. lf they met, then there should probably be
some documentation to that effect. lf Steele just attached the report to an email
and sent it to the agent, there might not

be.

I'm not -- I don't know how the report

was conveyed.
MR. GOWDY: Do you know if they rnet in person?
MR. MCCABE: I don't know

that.

I don't know the answer to that.

MR. GOWDY: What did the Bureau agent, Steele's handler, do with what

Steele gave him? Who'd he send it to?
MR. MCCABE: He struggled for a while to figure out the best place to
forward the information. I'm told that he initially reached out to his field office,
which is the New York field office, and spoke to people there.
I don't know if he actually provided the documents to people in

York field

office.

He may

the New

have. And he - basically he tried a couple of different

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places.
I think he reached out to or someone from New York reached out to the

Criminal lnvestigative Division at headquarters and essentially couldn't find a
home for the reporting until they realized that we had actually a small, kind of quiet
team at headquarters investigating foreign influence matters on the election, and
that's how the connection was ultimately made.
MR. GOWDY: At some point, the question, I assume, would be asked of

Mr. Steele: How did you come into contact with this information? What you are
giving us, how did you acquire it?
MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. GOWDY: Do you know whether the handler asked

it? Do you know

whether that question was asked once it made it to that small team that was
looking into it?
MR. MCCABE: I can't say what the handler did or didn't
the answer to

that. But I do know that the

ask.

I don't know

spent a lot of time

thinking about and asking questions along those lines.

So those were things that the team spent a lot of time trying to get to the

bottom of.
MR. GOWDY: When did they first travel to meet with Steele?

MR. MCCABE: l'm aware of a trip in
MR. GOWDY: ls that before or after the FISA application?

MR. MCCABE: lt's before the authorization of the FISA. The FISA was

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authorized on

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Octoberl

MR. GOWDY:

Okay. How much information did the Bureau have - how

was the dossier presented to lhe Bureau? You said part of the information was
given in that initialmeeting. How did the rest of it come to -MR. MCCABE:
in

I

Right. So Steele provided the first document to the agent

a week or 2 later provided the second

document. Some weeks after

that he provided an additional six documents. So that was the kind of
accumulated reporting and that was conveyed to our team.
At the same time, we received the documents from other sources. We
were aware that there were -- we started to receive media

- questions from

individuals in the media who we thought had probably had access to the
documents.

We received, I believe, a copy, some copy of the documents, I can't say
that it was the exact same compendium that we'd had already had, but some
version of the Steele reporting from Senator McCain who had come into custody of
the documents through different means presumably.
So we had kind of a few different versions. I don't know if that answers

your question.
MR. GOWDY: lt

does.

Do you

recall- I got Senator McCain's name

down -- who in the media would have either sent the information to you or
contacted you to make sure you had it?
MR. MCCABE: To the best of my recollection, by the end of the fall, we
had been contacted by numerous individuals in the media. We were surprised

that it hadn't been reported on, to be perfectly honest. I think the initial contact
may have been from a reporter with Mother Jones, but l'd have to go back and

I

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check. I don't remember

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the details.

MR. GOWDY: David Korn (ph)?

MR. MCCABE: That sounds right, but l'd have to check to be

sure.

I'm

happy to take that back.
MR. GOWDY: Did you get the sense the media was waiting to report it
until they had confirmation that the Bureau either had it or were looking into it?
MR. MCCABE: We were very concerned about

that. We were very,

very

careful about the way that we responded to the media inquiries. We didn't want to
respond in a way that would even confirm that we had it and were looking into it,
because that would become enough, reporting that we had it, not maybe opining
on whether it was true or accurate, but merely reporting that we had it would have
given folks kind of the standing to go forward and report on
would be

-

it.

We thought that

that could be disruptive and that was something that we tried to avoid.

MR. GOWDY: Who in the Bureau was authorized to talk to the media?
MR. MCCABE: So that, we have recently changed our media policy, but at
the time and still to this day, the director is of course, I am as the deputy director,
and the head of our national press office, Michael Cortin (ph), is the assislant

director over OPA.
Others can be authorized to speak to the media, but it would have to go
through a coordination process with the national press office.
MR. GOWDY: So hypothetically, if someone in your general counsel's

office talked to a reporter, would that have been approved either by you or
then-Director Comey?
MR. MCCABE: Certainly. I mean, hypothetically, I don't --MR. GOWDY: All

right.

So you have media inquiries. McCain was a

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source of either all or part of what became known as the dossier?
MR. MCCABE: I remember Senalor McCain came over and met with
Director Comey for the purpose of giving him the copy of the documents that he
had.
MR. GOWDY: All

right. So it is hard for us to put ourselves back

in that

position now, but you're in the throes of a Presidential election. You may recall
this, Director Comey got a little bit of crilicism for the way he handled the July
press conference.
MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.
MR. GOWDY: And maybe just a touch more for a letter he wrote in
October.

MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.
MR. GOWDY: So we're in the midst of a Presidentialelection and you
have some really salacious, incendiary allegations.

MR. MCCABE: That's right.
MR. GOWDY: How did the Bureau go about either corroborating or

contradicting the underlying assertions in the dossier?
MR. MCCABE: So a few ways.

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MR. GOWDY: Well, I do appreciate separating out the meat of it from

corroborative details. But some details are more significant than others, and
corroborating that somebody actually lived in New York might -- may or may not
be relevant -MR. MCCABE: Right.
MR. GOWDY: -- if it's connected to a larger assertion.
Can you give me an example of both a material fact in the dossier that you
verified and if there is one that you contradicted because of your investigation, one
on each side?
MR. MCCABE

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So it's a, as I said, a painstaking process of trying to assemble as many
facts and details around that reporting that you possibly can.
MR. GOWDY: Who is the author of the

to?
-- from the

MR. MCCABE: lt's a

team. I don't know if -

 

wouldn't say that it has one particular author. lf it does, l'm not aware of that.
But several people on the team worked on it.
MR. GOWDY: Give me some of the names of people on the team.
MR. MCCABE: John Maffa (ph) worked on

it.

Others were certainly

aware of it in working with it, Peter Strzok, Bill Priestap. And they could lead you
to additional names as well.
MR. GOWDY: At what point did the Bureau ask Steele: Why did you do

this research? For whom are you doing

it? ls anyone paying you to do it?

When did those questions come uP?
MR. MCCABE: I don't know the answer to that.
MR. GOWDY: Who would be the best person to ask?
MR. MCCABE: I think both
agent from

J,

- well, certainly your witness tomorrow, the

is a good person to ask, I think Bill Priestap probably is a good

person to ask, and Peter Strzok,
MR. GOWDY: There is a little bit of a dichotomy that I have a hard time

getting over in my own

head. lt is very, perhaps quintessentially important

whether or not the underlying assertions are true.
MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.
MR. GOWDY: Nonetheless, l'm not sure when the last time you were in a
courtroom was, but defense counsel usually spends a lot of time talking about

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bias, financial interest, stake in the outcome, and I assume there is a reason that
they spend a lot of time focused on that.
ls it a fact that you would have wanted to know who Steele was working for
in compiling that information?

MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. GOWDY: Why?
MR, MCCABE: For the reasons you just stated.
MR. GOWDY: ls it unfair for me to surmise that if I am being paid to find

dirt that I might look with more firm and vigor for the dirt than for positive
information?
MR. MCCABE: I'm

sorry. I don't follow

that.

MR. GOWDY: lf I'm being paid to do opposition research -MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. GOWDY:

-

is it reasonable that I would look with more firm and vigor

for that negative opposition research as opposed to evidence that the person is
good or had done good things?
MR. MCCABE: Certainly. And to be clear, sir, I now, of course, know

who Christopher Steele was working for and that that person had been hired or
directed by a law firm, and I have heard the reports of who initiated that process.
So those questions were

asked. ljust can't say with any clarity exactly when,

who asked that question first of the source.
MR. GOWDY: Would you have wanted to know it before you submitted

the affidavit to the FISA court?
MR. MCCABE: Yes.

MR. GOWDY: Would you have wanted to include that just to let the judge

I

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26

know the sburce, separate and aside from whether or not the information is true,

the source

-

MR. MCCABE: Right.
MR. GOWDY: -- was working for X?
MR. MCCABE:

Right. And it's my understanding we did include that.

MR. GOWDY: The fact that the source was working for Fusion GPS or
Perkins Coie or the DNC?
MR. MCCABE: I'd have to go back and check the footnote. There is an

extensive footnole that we included in the FISA

-

the initial FISA package, and l'm

sure it was also included in the renewals that explained essentially our prior
relationship with the source and the fact that he, you know, where the information
came from and that he had been essentially contracted to collect this information,

which he did outside of our direction and then provided it to us.
So the exact details of everything included in that footnote, which is about,

I

think, about a page and a half long, are pretty extensive.
MR. GOWDY: Director Comey is not here, so I'm not picking on

him. We

can talk to him some other time.
I'm fumiliar with several instances where he said the work of the dossier

was begun by a GOP donor. I'm actually not familiar with any times where he
publicly said it was later financed by the DNC.
Do you know whether he was aware of that?

MR. MCCABE: I don't

know. I couldn't speak to what Director Comey

knew.
MR. GOWDY: Did you ever have a conversation with him that this

salacious information, which may or may not be true, we are going to vet it, and

I

 I

27

that is what is most important, it came from a guy who is being paid by the DNC?
MR. MCCABE: My understanding is that we knew that the project started

as a GOP-driven effort and then ultimately was picked up by the DNC.
MR. GOWDY: And you think you learned that when?

MR. MCCABE: I don't remember when I leamed that.
MR. GOWDY: Do you know who you learned it from?
MR. MCGABE: I likely learned it from the team.
MR, GOWDY: Do you know Bruce Ohr?
MR. MCCABE: ldo know Bruce Ohr.
MR. GOWDY: Who is Bruce Ohr?

MR. MCCABE: Bruce Ohr is an official in the Department of Justice.
know Bruce Ohr from many years

ago.

I

I think Bruce was in the organized crime

section when I was doing Russian organized crime work in New York City.
MR. GOWDY

MR. MCCABE: No.
MR. GOWDY: Was he a DOJ contact on any of those cases?

MR. MCCABE: Was he a DOJ contact on those cases?
MR. GOWDY: Was he in the National Security Division where you would

checked with him?
MR. MCCABE: No.
MR. GOWDY: Have you read the 302s that the Bureau generated based
on their contact with Bruce Ohr?
MR. MCCABE: I have not.
MR. GOWDY: I want to go back to the sources and subsources and how

I

 I

28

they were -- well, we lalked to Steele, that we have established

that.

I think some

Bureau agents went and interviewed Steele.
MR. MCCABE: That's right.
MR. GOWDY:

MR. MCCABE: We spent a lot of time trying to shed light on Steele's

So does that answer your question?
MR. GOWDY: A little

bit.

But he would know for

sure. So I think what

made me pause for a second is, why did you have to work so hard, because he
could have given them to you.
MR. MCCABE: I'm not sure that he

did.

I

would have to ask the team

whether or not - if they asked him that question and what his response was.
MR. GOWDY: Would it impact your willingness to believe a source if they

MR. MCCABE: lts certainly something lwould consider, but I wouldn't say
that that's unique.

So I wouldn't write
off the information on that basis, but it's something that would give me some

concern. lt certainly makes your job tougher in terms of how you vet the
information itself.
MR. GOWDY: Forgive me for not knowing your background, but were

you

-

are you also a lawyer?
MR. MCCABE: I am, sir.

I

 I

29

MR, GOWDY: Did you litigate, did you prosecute before you came on the
Bureau?

MR. MCCABE: I spent 3 years working in a private firm as an associate.
So, no, I was not a prosecutor.
MR. GOWDY: I'm not going to ask you the questions that Senator

Kennedy asked of the guy that was up for a judgeship. But I am interested, I do
think it's important, the whole concept of what we call hearsay, and whether or not
it is allowed in court, and if not, why not.
MR. MCCABE: Right.
MR. GOWDY: And hearsay, I think, is an out-of-court statement offered to

prove the truth of the matter asserted, and there are exceptions, but there is a
reason that there is a general prohibition against simply being able to repeat what
someone else said.
MR. MCCABE: Sure.
MR. GOWDY: Because you can't confront the person who said it in the

first place.
MR. MCCABE: That's right.
MR. GOWDY: So how hard did the Bureau look for

MR. MCCABE: We

did.

We looked

hard. And lthink we made

significant progress.
MR, GOWDY: And that would be reflected

where? Again

MR. MCCABE: lt would be reflected partly in the
also be reflected in the work that we did with

in the

It would

 I

30

MR. GOWDY: And where would that work be manifest?
MR. MCCABE: That work would be captured either in the case file or in a
resutting

!

nn.

MR. GOWDY: Do you know -- and you may not -- whether that information
has been made available to our committee or if it can be made available to the

committee?
MR. MCCABE: I don't know.
I know there is some information that we were concerned about, some of

the information that we have about

- that we derived through that vetting process

And I know that was something that we conskJered, but as I understand,
that was discussed in the conversations that DOJ had with the committee in terms
of what we would provide.
MR. GOWDY:

Right. I started by saying it's all important and we should

take nothing from the order in which I pursue things.
MR. MCCABE: Understood.
MR. GOWDY: lt's just kind of the way it hits

me.

And we're going to get

around to getting all of it.
Go back with me to July of 2016.
MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MR. GOWDY: Director Comey had a press conference that was

unusual is a fair way of characterizing

it.

charging decisions.
MR. MCCABE: That's conect.

I

- I think

Most Bureau agents do not announce

 I

31

MR. GOWDY: Did you know ahead of time that he was going to have the

press conference.
MR. MCCABE: ldid.
MR. GOWDY: Did you know what he was going to say?
MR. MCCABE: I did.
MR. GOWDY: Did you help him draft his statement?

MR. MCCABE: I saw drafis of his statement. I did not

- I don't believe

I

contributed to the drafting process, but I discussed the statement with him.
MR. GOWDY: You are the deputy director of the FBl, which I think is the

number two person, if l've got that right.
MR. MCCABE: lt is.
MR. GOWDY: And there were other names that had been connected with
changes made that were not at your level, they weren't the number two person at
the Bureau.
MR. MCCABE: That's conect.
MR. GOWDY: Did you have the opportunity to make changes and

declined to do so or did you not have an opportunity to weigh in on it?
MR. MCCABE: I received the

draft. lt was distributed to me in an email.

And I did not sit down and type edits to the draft because I knew that lwould have
the opportunity to discuss it with Director Comey.
So I did not engage in editing the draft

itself. But I was a participant in

meetings in which we discussed the statement and discussed how he thought
about it and how he was composing the statement.
MR. GOWDY: What reason did he give you for taking that unusualstep of

having a press conference and making the decision himself?

I

 I

32

MR. MCCABE: There were several reasons. I remember -- I remember

when he first brought up the idea of doing it that way, it was something that
caused me great concern because it's an unusualand unprecedented way to
handle a situation. And we discussed it over a course of several weeks.
I don't want to speak for Director Comey, but I can tell you that my

perception at that tirne, which I think he would agree with, is that

- was that the

Department was going to have a very hard time, for a variety of reasons" in coming
forward with whatever their decision would have been.

And that goes back to the way that they had constructed their engagement
in the case from the very beginning. lt has to do with, you know, our concerns,

and I believe Director Comey's concerns, about the Department's credibility on the
issue, and that that credibility was challenged for a number of reasons, and that
that would put them in a particularly ineffective position to essentially announce
the end of the case.

I

 I

33

[3:30 p.m.]
MR. GOWDY: What were some of those credibility concerns?
MR. MCCABE: I think you could go all the way back to the beginning, in

which the, as I understood it, as it was explained to me when I came back to
headquarters and became involved in the case, their approach to the Attorney
General's and the DAG's involvement in the

case.

So there was this clear

acknowledgment that because of their political -- politically appointed status that
they probably should not have a role in the case, but yet they never recused
themselves from the case.
So I can tellyou that from my experience they didn't play an active role in
the case. We didn't brief the case in our lhree times a week morning briefings
with the AG and the DAG. I can't say whether they were learning about the case
and the investigative progress through other channels. I wouldn'l know

that.

But

from our perspective, they did not play a leadership role in the investigation. And
that left the leadership of the investigation of an incredibly important, sensitive
investigation to much lower levels within the department.
There were statements that the Attorney General made to the Director, the
infamous don't call it an investigation, call it a matter, that caused us some

concern. I know that it caused Director Comey concern

Five minutes.

MR. MCCABE: Should lcontinue?
I'm

sorry. And then of course there was the incident on the tarmac in

I

 I

34

Phoenix, Tucson, in Arizona, which was, you know, an additional issue that led us

to believe that the Department, and particularly the AG, were not in a position to
be taken credibly on the outcome of the case.
MR. GOWDY: Hindsight is usually pretty

good. You have got the meeting

on the tarmac. Whether that was happenstance or not, it is not a great optic.

We did not know that Altorney General Lynch had told -- or asked the Director to
refer to it as a matter and not an investigation. He knew
some

that. There have

been

- he alluded, the last time he was before us in a closed session, that he was

worried that information would be disseminated that was in the possession of
others that would undercut people's ability to believe in the objectivity of the
Department of Justice.
MR. MCCABE: That is right.
MR. GOWDY:

I
MR. MCCABE:

-

I

 5 

I

37

MR. CONAWAY: We went a couple minutes long, so we will add a couple

minutes to your 45 minutes. Adam.
MR. SCHIFF: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me start, if I could, with the

beginning of I guess a set of followup questions based on what you testified to so

far.

And then I want to get into further government response.
One of the issues that's come before the committee or been framed in the

public eye is this whole investigation began as a result of op research by
Christopher Steele. Since that opposition research was paid for by political
interests, it discredits the whole investigation. And I would like to break that down

a bit.
So let me just ask you, the

!

opening of the investigation, was that based

on the dossier or was that based on the information received about
Papadopoulos?
MR. MCCABE: lt was not based on the dossier. We didn't have the
dossier at that time at headquarters on the team that was investigating the issue.
It was based on the information that we had received about

Papadopoulos. But I

think it is also fair to say that our -- we understood at that time to some extent the
Russian cyber activity targeting the DNC, the activity targeting the RNC, we knew

of Russian interest in our electoral process.
MR. SCHIFF: But in terms of the initiation of the

I

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38

that was in no way based on the dossier because the

agency heads responsible for the initiation of that very serious investigation
weren't even aware of the existence of the dossier?
MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SCHIFF: At that stage,

Christopher Steele may or may

I

not have discussed it with an agent in

but that had never been

communicated to headqua rters.
MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SCHIFF: Let me now ask you about the information you received

about Papadopoulos, because this is I think very significant.

I
So what Papadopoulos said to the

is of keen

interest.

MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. SCHIFF: And your understanding is that parl of what was

communicated to the campaign via Papadopoulos was

MR. MCCABE: The original Papadopoulos information wasn't quite that

I

 I

39

specific. As reported to us, they said that Papadopoulos stated or suggested that

MR. SCHIFF: And this was one of the ways the Russians said they could

be helpfulto the campaign.
MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SCHIFF:

MR. MCCABE: That's correct.

MR. SCHIFF: Was that also part of what the

had said

that Papadopoulos had cornmunicated to them,

MR. MCCABE: So I don't have independent knowledge of

that.

But if

that's -So by the time the information gets into the FISA application they've also
conducted lhe interviews that I referred to earlier. So I don't know that that was
conveyed to us in the very original Papadopoulos reporting, which is what I am
most familiar with, but we of course further developed that reporting by

interviewing the

, the State Department folks involved,

that sort of thing.
MR. SCHIFF: Now I need to ask you about the parameters of your

testimony today. We don't want to interfere in the Special Counsel investigation
in any way.

I

 I

40

MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.
MR. SCHIFF: Are you permitted to testify as to what the investigation

uncovered up untilthe appointment of Mr. Mueller. or what are the parameters of
your agreed on testimony today?
MR. MCCABE: So that's my understanding as well, that I am prepared to
give you my best recollection of what we knew and what we did up until the
point

- the appointment of the Speciat Counsel.
MR. SCHIFF: And did the cooperation of Mr. Papadopoulos begin after

the appointment of Special Counsel?
MR. MCCABE: I know that we had interviewed him prior to the

appointment of the Special Counsel. I think probably you wouldn't qualify that as

cooperation. So yes, I think the cooperation began in the Special Counsel period.
MR. SCHIFF: So that the false statements began prior to the appointment
of the Special Counsel. The more truthful testimony or interviews took place
after?
MR. MCCABE:

Likely. I can't speak to exactly what he told us in the

interviews or certainly what he has told the Special Counsel. I just don't have that
level of granular knowledge.

MR. SCHIFF: And are you able to tell us, again up untilthe time that the

MR, MCCABE:

 I

4L

tell you about that.

MR. SCHIFF: But you did go back and interview the

MR. MCCABE: We did.
MR. SCHIFF: And did they provide additionaldetailto what you had
learned from the was it legat that they had initially reported to?
MR. MCCABE: That's

right. They may have, but I am not aware of that

detailtoday.
MR. SCHIFF: Because the

was that one of the reasons it was brought to your

attention, brought to the FBI's aftention?
MR. MCCABE: That's my understanding. That's what motivated the
to contact the State Department and say -- and share
the underlying Papadopoulos information. They saw the release of the Wikileaks
material and they connected that with what Papadopoulos had referred to.
MR. SCHIFF: Now, according to Papadopoulos the Russians made him
aware of this in late April that the Russians both had possession of emails
of -- Democratic emails.

MR. MCCABE: The Russians made him aware of that

-

MR. SCHIFF: Yes.

MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MR. SCHIFF: According to the plea that the professor and the Russian

emissaries made him aware that

-

 I

42

MR. MCCABE: I am not familiar with the plea documents.
MR. SCHIFF: Okay

MR. MCCABE: Right.
MR. SCHIFF: Weeks later is the meeting at Trump Tower in which the
President's son relays to other Russian emissaries that the campaign would love

to have the help of the Russians. Days after that, the Russians begin publishing
the documents. Can you tell us what investigative steps took place prior to the

appointnent of the Special Counselthat go to the Trump Tower meeting and
whether the release of the documents that began almost immediately thereafter
were related to the Russians getting the message back that the campaign would
welcome that help?
MR. MCCABE: So I don't

-

to the best of my recollection, we were not

aware of the Trump Tower meeting that you are referring to during our course of

investigation. We were certainly aware of the extensive Russian cyber activity
that we assessed was responsible for the intrusion into the DNC system and also
responsible for the release through Wikileaks and DCLeaks and ultimately

the -- our assessment that Gucifer 2.0 was in fact the Russian intelligence service
So that piece we were aware

of. Put that piece on top of the

reporting from the Papadopoulos meeting, and that's kind of
our -- that all leads to our predication of the investigation on Papadopoulos.
MR. SCHIFF: Now, your staff or you may need to tell me if this is
something we can or cannot get into, but there are

!

ls that something that we are able to discuss with
you today?

I

 I

43

MR. MCCABE: I am not aware of those products, so I wouldn't be able to
answer those questions.
MR. SCHIFF: My colleague asked you about the decision to discuss the

Clinton investigation in that press conference.
MR. MCCABE: Yes sir.
MR. SCHIFF: And you referenced also the reasons why Director Comey
thought that the Department of Justice essentially wouldn't have potentially the
credibility to make the decision to close the case given these factors.
MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SCHIFF: One of the issues you mentioned was discomfort with
calling it a matter rather than an investigation.
MR. MCCABE: That's right.
MR. SCHIFF: Was there discussion within the Bureau that at the same
time there was discomfort about referring to the Clinton investigation as a matter

there was no public acknowledgment of a matter or investigation involving the
Trump campaign?
MR. MCCABE: I don't remember making that connection.
MR. SCHIFF: And I don't mean this just in terms of the vocabulary, but

was it discussed within the Bureau that there was a decision made by the Bureau
to discuss very publicly and very openly, even to the last days of the campaign, an
investigation involving one candidate and campaign over their emails, but not to
discuss an investigation involving what many would consider a far more serious
matter involving a foreign government potenlially co-opting members of the other
campaign?
MR. MCCABE: So maybe not in the way that you are thinking. But if

I

I

 I

44

could break that out just for a second. The conversations, and that's maybe
overcharacterizing it, the comments about the oddity of referring to it - of the
Attorney General being concerned that we refer to the Clinton investigation as a
matter, not an investigation, was strange partially because the investigation had
already been publicly acknowledged. So that was a slightly different
different for us to be

in.

-

that's a

We do not typically investigate counterintelligence

matters in a way that's publicly known. ! don't think as far as the decisions to --

I

have spoken already a little bit about how we thought about Director Comey's

decision to go forward and make the announcement on July

Sth. Regarding

the

letters that came later in the case in October about the reopening and reclosing of

the case, I can't really address those because I was not included in the decisions
around those two letters.
MR. SCHIFF: Was it ever discussed, though, that

-

I am sure the Bureau

was aware of the sensitivities of discussing the Clinton investigation during a
Presidential campaign.

MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. SCHIFF: Was it also discussed in terms of the imbalance of

discussing one open investigation and leaving the country in the dark about the
other and the disproportionate impact that would have on the Presidential
campaign?
MR. MCCABE:

No.

And again, we saw the Clinton email investigation

differently because it was public before it ever came to the

FBl.

So it was a -- we

felt like we were in a different position fundamentalty in terms of our

-

the public's

knowledge of, and awareness of, and interest in that investigation. With respect

to the investigation of potentially Russian influence on the 2016 election, that was

I

 I

45

something that talking about that publicly was something that we had -- we
considered greatly. And there were many conversations in the lnteragency about
how to do that and whether or not that was a good idea and socalled inoculation

effect of if you let the public know that this is what the Russians are trying to do,
does that thwart their ability to do those things or are you creating the controversy
that they seek to create? So there was -MR. SCHIFF: Mr. McCabe, I know, and we have certainly explored the

debate over attribution and the pros and cons of making attribution to Russia.
What I am asking about is something quite different. And ljust want to make sure
that I understand. ls it your testirnony that it was never discussed whether there
was a certain basic fairness or disproportionate impact on the campaign to be
discussing an investigation involving one of the candidates but to

*

MR. MCCABE: But not the other one -MR. SCHIFF:

- the withholding from public knowledge of an investigation

of the other campaign?
MR. MCCABE:

Right. Not in any conversations that I was a party to.

MR. SCHIFF: My colleague asked you about the fact that the firm which

employed Christopher Steele had originally been hired by a GOP source and later
by a Democratic source. What did you know of Christopher Steele's reputation?

And did you know him to be a person who would report or make up information
merely because of the political point of view of his client?
MR. MCCABE: I did not know him to be that

way. What

I knew of

Steele's reputation was that he had a very good reputation.

I

We of course knew of his prior career with Foreign Service, which also

I

 I

46

goes to his credit in terms of understanding his approach to information gathering
and reporting.
And then we also of course conducted an internal source validation. So

we had our source validators from the Directorate of lntelligence came in and took
a look at all of the Steele's reporting and conducted the kind of higher level
validation we do on our important sources. And their conclusion was his reporting
was -- they believed it was credible and accurate.
MR. SCHIFF: You know, on the subject of the sources, was there an
agreement reached between the Bureau and the majority that we would not get
into questions about who the sources were out of concerns over the safe$ and

security of the sources?
MR. MCCABE: My understanding is that those conversations took place
around

MR. SCHIFF: Many of the

MR. MCCABE: That's correct, or ultimately implicated by the Steele
reporting.
MR. SCHIFF: I ask because we had another witness in today in which

they could shed light on the sources, and we got a debate about whether we
should ask those questions. So if we are not going to pursue that with the
Bureau, I am not sure that we should pursue that with others as well for the same

reason. You and I should talk further about that Mr, Chairman.
MR. CONAWAY: Again, we can take this off the record.

[Discussion off the record.]

I

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47

MR. CONAWAY: Back on the record.
MR. SCHIFF: But that was the basis of your concern with our going into
that was the livelihood of the sources of information and sub sources?
MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SCHIFF: Okay. Let me go into one very critical aspect of the
government's response to the Russian hacking. And that involves the firing of the
person charged with investigating the Russian hacking. Former Director Comey,
in testimony before the Senate Select Committee on June 8th, recounted his

interactions with President Trump beginning with his January 6th intelligence
briefing at Trump Tower in New York through his final phone call on April 1 i,2A16.
So I would like to go through those interactions with

you.

You are one of the few

in a position to corroborate or refute what the Director had to say.

Vis-d-vis January 6th meeting at Trump Tower, in his prepared testimony
Director Comey noted that he, quote, met then-President-Elect Trump on Friday,
January 6th in a conference room at Trump Tower in New

York. I was there

with

other lntelligence Community leaders to brief him and his new national security
time on the findings of the lC assessment concerning Russian efforts to interfere in
the election. At the conclusion of that briefing, I remained alone with the
President-elect to brief him on some personally sensitive aspects of the
information assembled during the assessment. That refers I take it to the
dossier?
MR. MCCABE: lt does.
MR. SCHIFF: He testified that prior to the January 6th meeting,

I

discussed with the FBI's leadership team whether I should be prepared to assure
President Trump that we were not investigating him personally. When the

I

 I

48

Director refers to the FBI leadership team, were you then a member of that team?
MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.
MR. SCHIFF: That was true, meaning that we were not investigating him

personally. We did not have an open counterintelligence case on him. We
agreed I should do so if circumstances warranted. During our one on one
meeting at Trump Tower, based on President-Elect Trump's reaction to the
briefing, and without him directly asking the question, I offered that assurance.
Did you discuss that interaction with Director Comey after that meeting?

MR. MCCABE: ldid.
MR. SCHIFF: Were you also part of the discussion as to whether it should
be he alone or he and other lC leaders to brief the President on the dossier?
MR. MCCABE: Yeah. That wasn't entirely our decision. I know that they
were -- Director Comey had been discussing that with the DNI and others,
because it was really the DNI's show to figure out how that brief would take place,
who would speak first, who would cover which portions of the report. And I know
the Director had a couple conversations with the DNI about talking about what we
referred to as appendix A, which was the appendix we included in the report that
refers to the Steele reporting. And at one point it was going to be the DNI and the
Director to have that engagement with President

changed course on

that.

Trump. And then ultimately they

I don't know if it was Director Comey's'decision or the

DNI's.

MR. SCHIFF: The testimony that I just related in terms of whether the
President

-

whether the Bureau had an open counterintelligence case on the

President and the fact that the Director offered that assurance, did you discuss

with the Director that meeting, and is that consistent with what he told you?

I

 I

49

MR, MCCABE: It is.
MR. SCHIFF: And what can you tell us, not based on what you may have
heard when he testified, but rather what he shared with you after the meeting?

What can you tell us about what he relayed about that first discussion with the
President on this subject and whether he took steps to memorialize it?
MR. MCCABE: Sure. So, and I guess maybe to start with, reflecting back
to your last question, there were kind of competing concerns as to who should
have that interaction, whether it should be just Director Comey or Director Comey

and the DNl.
On the one hand, we felt like it put us in a very awkward position. We did
not want to create an impression in the President's mind that this was the FBl, you

know, sharing something with him in a way of trying to kind of influence him or it
be suggestive of like we have something, you know, on you sort of thing. And so
having the DNI there we thought would ameliorate that concern.
On the other hand, it was extraordinarily personal, sensitive material. We

wanted to make sure that we did it in a way that was, you know, as sensitive to the
President's -- we didn't want to embarrass the President by discussing these
things in front of someone

else. So ultimately Director Comey had that interaction

with the President one on

one.

He related it to me I think in a phone call shortly

afler the meeting just the way that he has in the memo, that they talked about the
malerial, that the President seemed shocked and disturbed by the allegations, and
was emphatic in the fact that it wasn't true, and they just had kind of a general
conversation around

that. And that was pretty much it.

recorded his thoughts about

-

I knew that he had

his reflections on the interaction shortly afterwards.

And that was pretty much it.

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50

MR. SCHIFF: How did you know that?

MR. MCCABE: He told me that he was going to do that.
MR. SCHIFF: During the phone conversation?

MR. MCCABE: I think

so.

I think so.

MR. SCHIFF: And where was he when he called

you?

Did he callyou

literally right after the meeting?
MR. MCCABE: I thought he was in his car, but I am not sure where he

was at this

point.

I have heard kind of conflicting versions of whether or not they

went back to our New York field office or whether he drafted the memo that you
have there on a laptop in his

vehicle. I am not sure how that worked out.

MR. SCHIFF: But he called you very shortly afler the meeting when the
recotlection of what took place was very fresh in his mind?
MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.
MR. SCHIFF: And why did the Director or the leadership team believe it

was either important or necessary to give that assurance to the President?
MR. MCCABE: We had a lot of,conversations about that, and there was a

division of opinion. lt was true, and we thought -- we assumed that the President
would

ask.

So being in a position you want to answer the President's question,

the Director wanted to be able to the question clearly. Of course we don't
typically answer that question. We don't confirm or deny the existence of

investigations. So that was, you know, a bit -- part of the dilemma. lt was also
discussed that we were clearly investigating activity potentially conducted by the

campaign. And the campaign was the Trump campaign. So although -- so

in

some way we were essentially investigating activity attributable to President

Trump or candidate Trump. And so were we creating a misimpression by saying

I

 I

5-t

there was no investigation? And ultimately, Director Comey weighed it oul and
made the decision that he did.
MR. SCHIFF: Now, Director Comey also testified about a January 27th

meeting. He stated, quote, the President and I had dinner on Friday, January 27
at 6:30 p.m. in the green room at the White

House. He called me at lunch time

that day, invited me to dinner that flight, saying he was going to invite my whole
family, but decided to just have me this time, with the whole family coming the next

time.

lt was unclear from the conversation who else would be at the dinner,

although I assumed there would be others.
Did the Director tell you about this dinner invitation before he left for the

dinner?
MR. MCCABE: He did.
MR. SCHIFF: And did he tell you anything more than what he testified to
in terms of what he knew or understood about whal would happen at the dinner or

who would be there?
MR. MCCABE: Well, I don't remember exactly what he testified to, but he
told me that he *- in an unexpected way, he had received an invitation to have
dinner with the Presidenl on that I believe it was a Friday night, and he just was
kind of surprised by it.
MR. SCHIFF: Was he at all concerned that the President would raise the

investigation with him?
MR. MCCABE: I think he was always concerned by the prospect of kind of

personal one on one time with the President. I think he was always concerned

,

that that was not typical for an FBI Director, and probably not advisable for an FBI
Director.

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52

MR. SCHIFF: He also testified, it tumed out to be just the two of us seated

at a small oval table in the center of the green room. Two Navy stewards waited
on us, only entering the room to serve food and drinks. The President began by
asking me whether I wanted to stay on as FBI Director, which lfound strange,
because he had already told me twice in earlier conversations that he hoped

I

would stay, and I had assured him that I intended to.
Had he told you previously that the President had told him thal he wanted
him to stay?

MR. MCCABE: I think he had, but honestly I don't recallthe exact details
of how that happened.
MR. SCHIFF: The Director also testified, he stated that lots of people

wanted my job, and given the abuse I had taken during the previous year he would
understand if I wanted to walk away. My instincts told me that the one-on-one
setting and the pretense that this was our first discussion about my position meant
the dinner, was at least in part, an effort to have me ask for my job and create

some sort of patronage relationship. That concemed me greatly given the FBI's
traditionally independent status in the executive branch. A few moments later the
President said, I need

loyalty. I expect loyalty. I didn't move, speak, or change

my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We

simply looked at each other in silence. The conversation then moved on, but he
returned to the subject near the end of our dinner.
Near the end of our dinner, the President returned to the subject of my job,
saying that he was very glad that I wanted to stay, adding that he had heard great

things about me from Jim Mattis, Jeff Sessions, and many others. He then said,
need

I

loyalty. I replied you will always get honesty from me. He paused and then

I

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53

said, that's what lwant, honest loyalty. I paused and then said, you will get that
from

me.

As I wrote in the memo I created immediately after the dinner, it is

possible he understood the phrase honest loyalty differently, but I decided it
wouldn't be productive to push it further.
ls that account something that he related to you after the dinner?
MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. SCHIFF: And did he also on this occasion call you after his meeting

with the President to relate what happened?

.

MR. MCCABE: He did.
MR. SCHIFF: And what can you tell us that he related to you during that

conversation?
MR. MCCABE: Essentially

- is that his testimony or the memo that you

just read, l'm sorry?
MR. SCHIFF: That is his testimony.
MR. MCCABE: His testimony. So it tracks the memo very closely, as did
our conversation. He was very surprised and concerned by the interaction,
specifically about references to the request for loyalty.
MR. SCHIFF; And in his view what did he think the President was asking
tor?
MR. MCCABE: lt was my impression from our discussion that he believed
that the President was asking him to be loyal to the President.
MR. SCHIFF: And was it the Director's impression that what the President

had in mind was loyalty when it came to his handling of the Russia investigation?
MR. MCCABE: I think that he felt like it was a broad and troubling concept,
that the Director of the FBI should be loyal only to the Constitution of the United

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54

States.
MR. SCHIFF: Apparently January 27th, the day of that meeting, that

dinner meeting, was also the day the FBI interviewed Papadopoulos earlier in the
day.
MR. MCCABE: January 27th?
MR. SCHIFF: I believe so.
MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MR. SCHIFF: Now, that would have been at a time, I think you indicated

earlier, obviously prior to the appointment of the Special Counsel

*

MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. SCHIFF: -- when Papadopoulos was being less than fully forthcoming

about his interactions with the Russians.
MR. MCCABE: That's right.
MR. SCHIFF: Do you know whether Mr. Papadopoulos, after his interview
by the Bureau, informed other people, either in the White House or in the Trump
campaign, that he had been approached by the FBI?
MR. MCCABE: I don't know the answer to that.
MR. SCHIFF: Was the concern ever brought to your attention that the

same day the President was asking the FBI Director for loyalty one of the
President's campaign team had been interviewed by the FBI in the
cou nte rintelligence investigation?

MR. MCCABE: I don't remember connecting those two events at that time.
MR. SCHIFF: Were those events ever connected in the

future? Then

I

have to ask you I guess up until the point of Mr. Muelle/s appointment?
MR. MCCABE: Not that I am aware

I

of.

Certainly I cannot comment on,

 I

55

and don't know, what sort of view on those things that Mr. Mueller's team has

taken. I also can't

testify to exactly how everyone on my team may have kind of

processed and thought about those

facts.

I could

just tell you that it's -- that

confluence is not something that I have thought about before.
MR. SCHIFF: My staff just handed me the first paragraph, numbered
paragraph of the Papadopoulos statement of defense says, the defendant, George
Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser for the Presidential
campaign of Donald Trump made materialfalse statements and material
admissions during an interview with the FBI that took place on January 27,2017

.

So that would have been the same day that the Director testified that the

President had asked him for his loyalty,
MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SCHIFF: Anything further you can recall of that conversation with the
Director on January 27lh?

MR. MCCABE:

No.

I mean

just that we were both really surprised. As

I

said, he was concemed going into the interaction kind of because he was
concerned about, as I said, his -- he believed that it was not a good idea for the
Director of the FBI to have these kind of one on one meetings with the President.
And then lo and behold, they had an exchange that concemed him and me
greatly.
MR. SCHIFF: Let me turn to February

14th. James Comey testified that

on February 14th, I went to the Oval Office for a scheduled counterterrorism
briefing of the President. He sat behind the desk, and a group of us sat in a
sernicircle of about six chairs, facing him on the other side of the desk. The Vice
President, Deputy Director of the ClA, Director of the National Counterterrorism

I

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56

Center, Secretary of Homeland Security, Attomey General and I were in the
semicircle of chairs.
I

was directly facing the President, sitting between the Deputy CIA Director

and the Director of NCTC. There were quite a few others in the room sitting

behind us on couches and chairs. The President signaled the end of the briefing
by thanking the group and telling them all that he wanted to speak to me

alone.

I

stayed in my chair. As the participants started to leave the Oval Office, the
Attorney General lingered by my chair, but the President thanked him and said he
wanted to speak only with

me.

The last person to leave was Jared Kushner, who

also stood by my chair, and exchanged pleasantries with

me.

The President then

excused hirn, saying he wanted to speak with me.
Did the Director also discuss this meeting with you on the day that it took
place?

MR. MCCABE: He did.
MR. SCHIFF: And those facts that he testified that I have just related, are
those consistent with what he told you took place?
MR. MCCABE:

Yes. They are also consistent

with the memo that he

wrote following the interaction.
MR. SCHIFF: You had testified earlier that the Director had expressed
concern about being left alone with the President.
MR. MCCABE: That's right.
MR. SCHIFF: Was that owing to both the fact it's probably not a good

practice to maintain the independence of the Bureau, but also because he was
also overseeing an investigation involving the Trump campaign?
MR. MCCABE: Yes.

I

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57

MR. SCHIFF: The Director also testified that the President began by

saying, lwant to talk about Mike Flynn. Flynn had resigned the previous day.
The President began by saying Flynn hadn't done anything wrong in speaking with
the Russians, but he had to let him go because he had misled the Vice President.
Prior to the appointment of the Special Counsel, did the Bureau investigate

whether the President had knowledge that Mike Flynn, as he admitted in his guilty
plea, had met with or spoken with the Russian Ambassador on the subjecl of
sanctions?
MR. MCCABE: Did the FBI investigate whether the President knew that
Flynn lied in his interview? ls that the question?
MR. SCHIFF: That is not precisely the question I asked, but that is an

equally good question.
MR. MCCABE: Sorry. I don't remember us getling to that point prior to
the Special Counsel's effort,
We were obviously closely involved in trying to understand who at the White
House knew what about Mike Flynn's conversation with Russian Ambassador
Kislyak.

MR, SCHIFF: Well let me ask you

this.

According to Director Comey, the

President told him on February 14th that Flynn hadn't done anything wrong in
speaking with the Russians, but that he had to let him go because he had misled
the Vice President.
Prior to the appointment of Special Counsel, were you able to ascertain

whether the President was aware that Mike Flynn had talked to the Russian
Ambassador about sanctions and that the statement he made to the Director was
if not misleading, but was misleading in the reasons why he had to let Flynn go?

I

 I
MR. MCCABE:

No.

58

I don't think so.

MR. SCHIFF: So those investigative steps had not been taken at that
point?
MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SCHIFF: Were those facts, though, that the Director related in his

testimony, as to what the President said to him, consistent with what he told you
after the meeting?

MR. MCCABE: YCS.
MR. SCHIFF: Director Comey also testified he added that he had other
concerns about Ftynn which he did not then specify. The President then retumed
to the topic of Flynn, saying he is a good guy and has been through a

lot.

He

repeated that Flynn hadn't done anything on his calls with the Russians, but had
misled the Vice President. He then said, I hope you can see your way clear to
letting this go, to letting Flynn

go.

He is a good

guy.

I hope you can let this go.

ls that also consistent with what the Director told you contemporaneous
with the events?

MR. MCCABE: Yes, that is consistent. That's what he told me.
MR. SCHIFF: I replied only that he is a good

guy.

ln fact, I had positive

experience dealing with Mike Flynn when he was a colleague as Director of the
Defense lntelligence Agency at the beginning of my term at
would let this

go.

FBl.

I

did not say

I

I immediately prepared an unclassified memo of the

conversation about Flynn and discussed the matter with senior

- with FBI senior

leadership. I take it he is referring to you among others?
MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. SCHIFF: And who were the others that he would have been referring

I

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59

to there?
MR. MCCABE: I am sorry, read me the statement again.
MR. SCHIFF: I immediately prepared an unclassifled memo of the
conversation about Flynn and discussed the matter with the FBI senior leadership.
MR. MCCABE: So that would have been myself, Mr. Baker, likely Jim

Rybicki, his chief of staff, possibly Bill Priestap, who is the AD of
counterintelligence, possibly others.
MR. SCHIFF: He continues, I had understood the President to be
requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false
statements about his conversations with the Russian Ambassador in December.

I

did not understand the President to be talking about the broader investigation into
Russia or possible links to his campaign. I could be wrong, but I took him to be
focusing on what had just happened with Flynn's departure and the controversy
around his account of his phone

calls. Regardless, it was very concerning given

the FBI's role as an independent investigative agency.
What can you tell us about your conversation with Director Comey after this
meeting on the same day as to those facts, as to his impression that the President
was asking him to drop the matter?
MR. MCCABE: His impression, as he communicated it to me, was that the
President was asking him to end an investigative matter, which was greatly
concerning to the Director and to

me.

We were shocked.

MR. SCHIFF: Did you and the Director discuss at that time whether this

might constitute obstruction of justice?
MR. MCCABE: I don't remember that specifically. lt's possible that we

did.

I

just don't remember that from that time.

I

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60

MR. SCHIFF: Did the President's request that the Director let this go,
meaning the Flynn mafter, have any impact on the Bureau's handling of the

investigation concerning Mike Flynn?
MR. MCCABE: Of course not.
MR. SCHIFF: On December 2nd, 2017 , President Trump tweeted, I had to

fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the
President in that tweet
that tweet

-

FBl.

The

and I know the lawyer has taken the credit or blame for

- appears to acknowledge

that he knew at the time that Flynn was fired

that he had lied to the FBl.
Prior to the appointment of the Special Counsel -- and you may have

answered this in large part already but

- was the FBI able to confirm whether the

President was aware that Flynn had lied to the FBI?

MR. MCCABE: No, sir.
[Discussion off the record.]
MR. SCHIFF: The Director continued, the FBI leadership team agreed

with me that it was important not to infect the investigative time with the
President's request, which we did not intend to abide. We also concluded that
given that it was a one-way conversation, there was nothing available to
corroborate in that account. We concluded that it made little sense to report it to
Attorney General Sessions, who we expected would likely recuse himself from
involvement in Russian-related investigations.
Why was it expected that at that time that the Attorney Generalwould
recuse himself?

MR. MCCABE: I think his recusalwas already under consideration by the
Department of

Justice. I assume that that's where that would end up.

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51

MR. SCHIFF: Was lhere any other basis on which the Director believed

that the Attorney General might be forced to recuse himself?
MR. MCCABE: The recusal issue is - I think we knew of the general facts
that had raised the recusal issue. I can't speak specifically to what Director
Comey was thinking on

that.

But we certainly knew that the issue would come to

the fore as a result of the Attorney General's interactions with Russians and his
involvement in the campaign.
MR. SCHIFF: Mr. Chairman, lyield back.
MR. GOWDY: lcan go.
MR. CONAWAY: Lefs go

vote. There are some refreshments and stuff

for you, Mr. McCabe. And we will come back and it will be our turn.
IRecess.]

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62

[5:08 p.m.]
MR. CONAWAY: Back on the record. Contrary to our opening statement,

we are going to -- instead of doing 15-minute segments we will do 3O-minute
segments each. That way the flow will be a little bit better. So with that, Mr.
Gowdy, 30 minutes.
MR. GOWDY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Hello. Can you hear me?

Yeah? Okay. I apologize for bouncing around, but we will get

it all

covered at some point or another.
When you and I broke off before, Mr. Schiff, when I think, if memory serves
me, we were -- I don't remember what we were talking about,

'but

my notes reflect

I

was kind of writing down the different thought process that Director Comey would
have gone through before appropriating the decision away from the Department of

Justice onto the Bureau, in that July Sth, press conference.
And I wrote down, I think you said there was some systemic anomalies with
the way the DOJ was structured in this investigation, as opposed to

others. I may

be putting words in your mouth, but you said something about the structure of the
investigation being different.
MR. MCCABE: I did, and by that I meant the fact that the DAG and the AG
were not involved in

- didn't exercise any sort of a leadership role over the

investigation as they would have in a normal kind of, you know, highly sensitive,
significant case of this nature.
MR. GOWDY: All right, so you have that, you have Attorney General
Lynch asking that something be referred to as a matter and not an investigation,

which you thought was curious because it had already been referenced as an

I

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63

investigation. You've got the tarmac, and then you have the other issue that you
went into some detailon.
MR. MCCABE: That's right.

MR. GOWDY: And it strikes some of us that when Director Comey had
issues or challenges subsequently with the way things are, that were being done,
or could be done, I think by his own admission, he had some memos disseminated

publicly to spur Special Counsel being appointed. I think that's what he
not putting my words in his

said.

l'm

mouth. I think that's why he disseminated at least one

of the memos that he had made in reference to his conversations with President

Trump. Was there any discussion of doing anything to spur the appointment of
Special Counsel given the issues at the Department of Justice?
MR. MCCABE: I can't speak to whether or not they discussed that at the
outset of the investigation. They may have, but I wasn't present for any of those

conversations. I wasn't a part of the team at that point. During my involvement
in the case, I don't remember a, you know, a concerted push in that direction, or

even raising the issue with DOJ, but as I say, they had been kind of at work on the
the thing for, gosh, I don't know,

I

months or so by then.

MR. BAKER: That's to the best of your recollection today.
MR. MCCABE: That's correct. That's correct.
MR. GOWDY:

Okay. I guess you can see why someone may -- I mean,

it's a very unusual decision for a Bureau agent to make a charging announcement.

MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. GOWDY: I don't know that I have ever seen that done before.

MR, MCCABE: I have not.
MR. GOWDY: lt's a little bit unusual for the head of the FBI to take a step

I

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64

to spur the appointment of Special Counsel, but I have also seen that done once

how. And

l'm just wondering if any of these issues, any of this confluence of

factors might have led you and the Director to discuss, we may need Special
Counsel for Secretary Clinton's case back in April, May, June of 2016?
MR. MCCABE: So to be clear, the Directo/s statement on July Sth was a

recommendation. That was our position in terms of what we had done, what we
had seen, and what our thoughts were about

it.

And it was a recommendation to

the Department of Justice and we, in fact, actually went to the Department of
Justice, I think the next day, where the entire team both on the prosecutive and the
investigative side kind of reviewed the entire matter and made the official
recommendation to the AG who accepted it.
ln our many conversations about the unique and kind of uniquely stressful
and complicated position that we were in, certainly, we discussed things like that,
like how and whether the Attorney Generalwould be in a position to weigh in on

that recommendation at the end of the

case.

Like from the perspective of, we are

trying to imagine like what does that look like when that day gets here? How is
that

done? So, but it was my irnpression that the concept of bringing in a Special

Counselwas not -- was maybe something that had been kind of litigated earlier.
MR. GOWDY: But in another fact pattern, it would be the Assistant Uniled
States Attorney or a U.S. Attorney that explained the decision not to

charge, lt

wouldn't be a Bureau agent.
MR. MCCABE: That's

conect. That's correct.

MR. GOWDY: And I do understand that you all consulted the Department

of Justice and I guess in theory, they could have done what they wanted. That is
a pretty steep mountain to climb in a case where the world's premier law

I

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65

enforcement agency had just laid out all of the reasons not to bring charges. That
would be a steep mountain for a prosecutor to climb, I would think.
MR. MCCABE: lt

is.

lt would

be.

But lwould also say that we were very

clear on our understanding of how the DOJ folks who were on the investigative
team saw the evidence and what their thoughts were about what we had seen
across the span of the

ffise.

So we didn't

- I certainly didn't think at that point

that DOJ was in any different place.
Certainly, they were taken by surprise over the way that the announcement

was conducted and that was, as you said, a unique and kind of one-time-only

event.

But in terms of our view of the merits of the case, it was my perception at

that time, based on many conversations that I had had with people at the
Department of Justice, that they saw it the same way that we did.
MR. GOWDY: What role did SpecialAgent Strzok play into the

investigation of Secretary Clinton's email server?
MR. MCCABE: To the best of my recollection, Peter probably started out
on the case as some -- as a kind of a supervisory investigator who had been

detailed over from the Washington Field Office. Eventually, during the pendency
of the investigation, he was promoted into a position of section chief in the

Counterintelligence Division and so he continued in his same role in the
investigation from that position.
MR. BAKER: Counterintelligence division at headquarters.
MR. MCCABE: That's correct. I'm sorry, at headquarters.
MR. GOWDY: Who made the decision to promote

him?

Do you have a

promotion board that makes that decision?
MR. MCCABE: We

do.

That would be the SES Promotions Board. So

I

 I

66

the position would have been canvassed. He would have competed for it with
some number of other candidates and it goes through a standard process.
MR. GOWDY: Do you know whether Special Agent Stzok interviewed
Huma Abedin?
MR. MCCABE: I don't know that.
MR. GOWDY: CherylMills?

MR. MCCABE: I mean, I know that these people were interviewed. I can't

tellyou who exactly who was present for the interviews.
MR. GOWDY: Do you know who conducted the interview of Secretary

Clinton herself?
MR. MCCABE: I think Peter was present for that, but I don't know if he

was asking the questions.
MR. GOWDY: Going back to the word "unprecedented" that

- I don't want

to interrupt you if there's something else.
MR. MCCABE: No, lwas just going to say, we had agents who were
present for all of those interviews as well, who had been detailed there from the

Washington Field Office.
MR. GOWDY: There were agents present. There were also other people
present that, again, it's just been unusual in my experience to allow fact witnesses

to sit in on

- I don't want to say target because that sounds so pejorative, but

target interviews.
MR. MCCABE: Yeah, I agree with

us. But I will say that the specifics around

you.

lt was

unusual.

lt was noted by

those, those are voluntary interviews

that were negotiated through a kind of an extended process by the Department of

Justice, and so the specifics about who would attend and who would do what were

I

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67

really driven by the Department of Justice.

MR. GOWDY: Well, let me ask you

this:

lf you want to talk to a witness,

and a witness isn't allthat interested in talking to you, or sets parameters or

conditions that are unacceptable to you, do you have the ability to conduct an
involuntary interview?
MR. MCCABE: We'd certainly subpoena someone to appear before the
grand jury.
MR. GOWDY: ls that ever done?

MR. MCCABE: ls it ever

done?

lt's frequently done.

MR. GOWDY: Allthe time.

MR. MCCABE: Right. Right. lt was not done in this case.
MR. GOWDY: Why not?

MR. MCCABE: Because the Department of Justice decided to pursue
access to individuals and access to evidence through essentially consent

agreements. There was a great deal of friction between the FBI and the
Department of Justice over those issues across the pendency of the investigation.
And ultimately, that's their decision. We don't decide who the Department
subpoenas or doesn't subpoena to appear before an interview. lt's a -- that's a
decision on their side of the street.
MR. GOWDY: lf the Attorney General and the Deputy Attomey General

were kind of out of the loop, who was making the decisions in terms of granting
immunity, consent agreements, the scheduling of witness interuiews? Who is the
decisionmaker?
MR. MCCABE: Yeah. So the highest ranking person at the department
who is involved in the investigation on a very kind of day-to-day level, was George

I

 I
Toskas

(ph). David Laufman (ph)

68

reported to George Toskas (ph), and David

kind of oversaw the, I guess line attorneys

-

is that the right way to refer to it

-

line attorneys who were working the investigation. Richard

- the

help me out with

Richard's last name.

, I'm

MR. MCCABE
was the highest ranking person at DOJ who was really in

sorry. So George

charge. I know that

George discussed the case to some degree with John Carlin because John Carlin
and I would discuss periodically things about the investigation, although John
wasn't as actively involved in the day-today management of the case, that he

- in

the way that he might have been on any other big case.
And I think that was also a reflection of the fact that he was in a politically
appointed position.
MR. GOWDY: tf I have the chronology down right,

is when there's a

that -- with Papadopoulos

conversation of interest to a

I
I

J

ir when that is transrnitted or information related thereto is transmitted, maybe
Does that sound

right?

I'm looking at notes I took.

MR. MCCABE: So that information comes to us on

I,the
Icase.

I

and then on

team at headquarters actually opened the case,

MR. GOWDY: All

right. You and I had discussed

in the past, Bruce Ohr.

MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. GOWDY: Dkl you know, or do you know whether or not he met with

Chris Steele in
MR. MCCABE: I do not know that.

I

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69

MR. GOWDY: So he would not have been meeting on behalf of the FBI if

he had done that, taken that meeting?
MR. MCCABE: Not to my knowledge. At some point during the late

sumrner, maybe into the fall, as we were investigating the Steele reporting,

I

became aware of the fact that Bruce Ohr had some sort of a preexisting
relationship with Christopher Steele, but I did not rely on that relationship in any

way.

I had my own handling

agent. I had my own team conducting the

investigation who were meeting with Steele. So it was not particularly relevant to
me
MR. GOWDY: Here's the reason I'm asking about it, is if this was before

I

of 2016, there's this Ohr meeting with Christopher Steele. Steele told

Ohr that Carter Page
had met with some high-levelofficials in Russia. He also communicated how

desperate he was that Donald Trump not be elected President. And this seems
to predate the Bureau finding out from that

about the

communication that then triggered the investigation. lf it happened in
of 2016, it would be before

then.

f

Right?

MR. MCCABE: Bruce Ohr was meeting with Christopher Steele in

I
MR. GOWDY: Yes.

MR. MCCABE: So on
to our agent in

I

I

is when Steele provided the first document

and then he provides the second document

o^I.

We, of course, here at headquarters don't know anything about that at the time.
So what -- I don't know when Bruce met with Christopher Steele but it could have

been, I guess theoretically, it could have been before or after those documents

I

 r
came into the possession of our agent in

70

I.

MR. GOWDY: Here is what I'm trying to reconcile. lf I heard your

testimony correctly, the decision to initiate an investigation into a member of
President Trump's campaign, then Candidate Trump, was made independent of

any knowledge of the dossier?
MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. GOWDY: But in February, someone who is not low ranking at the

Department of Justice was meeting with the author of the dossier and being told
that Carter Page was meeting with high-level Russians. lt just

-

MR. MCCABE: ln February?

MR.GOWDY: No.

Thisisf

MR. MCCABE: I'm not aware of that meeting. lwas not -- obviously, if
I'm not aware of it now, I wasn't aware of it on

I

when we opened the case.

MR. GOWDY: Well, I guess that's why we got to -- we need to talk to

Bruce Ohr at some point because I have no reason to question your chronology.
lf something happens in

I,

you don't find out about it until late

!,

but a DOJ

attorney that really doesn't have any jurisdiction in this area that I can determine, is
meeting with this source and hearing about Carter Page and hearing that this

source that we later relied upon in an affidavit, I think I got this right, is desperate
that Donald Trump not get elected.
MR. MCCABE: Yeah, I - I don't know what to say about that.
MR. GOWDY: You mentioned a long footnote in the FISA application.
MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.
MR. GOWDY: Do you know whether or not that footnote included the

name of the law firm that Christopher Steele was working for?

 7t

I
MR. MCCABE: Yeah, I don't believe it

does. I think the footnote refers

to

the fact that Steele had been hired by -- I think he is referred to as an identified us

person. And I think the footnote goes on to refer to the fact that the identified U.S.
person was hired by a U.S. law firm. That's the best of my recollection of how it's
related in the footnote.
MR. GOWDY: But it could have read Steele was hired by Fusion GPS,

which was hired by Perkins Coie, which was retained by the Democratic National
Committee and Hillary For America. lt could have read that way?
MR. MCCABE: Certainly, we would have known at that point about the
identity of Fusion GPS, and likely, the identity of the law firm as

well.

I would

suspect that we probably knew about the connection to the DNC, but I can't
confirm that for you.
MR. GOWDY: Why not include that in the application?
MR. MCCABE: I think that just goes to

- I think it's probably just the way

that FISA applications are written. This is my -- I'm speculating here, but did not
include the identities of U.S. persons when not necessary.
MR. GOWDY: But if you were a neutral and detached arbiter of whether or
not to exercise your discretion to do something or not, would it not be of interest to
you that the ultimate employer of that source that you are at least 50 percent

relying upon was the party other than the party of the nominee's campaign?
MR. MCCABE: Well, I think the footnote does rnake clear that the source
was ultimately hired in an effort to collect negative information on --   think he is
referred to as candidate one -- but on Candidate Trump by a different political

effort, if that rnakes sense. So I don't know that it would be

*

it's probably just

as --   don't know that it makes a difference if the -- the source was hired by a

I

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72

competing candidate from a different party, or a competing candidate from the
same

party. lt seems like the effort is the same. I don't know if that makes

sense.
MR. GOWDY: lt does, but in October, it probably wouldn't matter whether
it was a competing party or the same party because the primary was

there were only two candidates at that

candidates hired the

over.

And

point. And the campaign of one of the

- at least by your reading and my reading - the author of

50 percent of the affidavit.
MR. MCCABE: I certainly understand what you're saying. You know, it's
probably worth noting

that.

I mean, literally, every word of the FISA application,

but particularly this one, and particularly that footnote, was very carefully
exarnined, not just by the affiant, but by the several layers of attorneys, both from

the FBl, and the Department of Justice who were -- who have a role in approving
that package before it goes to the FISA court.
So there's -- there were many sets of eyes, and I would expect legal

judgments made about how exactly we had described the, not just the source, but
how the source had been hired, and who had hired them, and for what purpose.

So I would expect that those things that you are pointing out were
considered in that process and, ultimately, the FISA was signed off on by the
Director, and the Deputy Attorney General.
MR. GOWDY: When did you know that the DNC was the ultimate
employer of Christopher Steele?
MR. MCCABE: I don't remember when
today when exactly I knew

exactly. I can't tell you sitting here

that. ljust don't remember.

MR. GOWDY: Do you remember who told you?

I

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73

MR. MCCABE: I would expect it was sorneone from the team, likely in a

briefing about, you know, what we were doing and what progress we were making,
but I don't know specifically when I learned that.
MR. GOWDY: Having litigated some, when you make a note that this
source that we are relying upon is number one, not a concerned citizen; number
two, is not an agent of a friendly government. lt is actually someone who has
been contracted twice laundered

-

MR. MCCABE: Uh-huh.
MR. GOWDY:

*

by the opposition

party. Wouldn't that be something you

would say wow, that -MR. MCCABE: I mean, I think it was certainly relevant to us that he had
been contracted by a competing candidate initially, and that ultimately, that
contract had been picked up by a competing candidate from the other party. That
was definitely relevant to us; one of the factors that we considered in assessing
whether or not we believed his reporting.

MR. GOWDY: Well, you mentioned as Director Comey does from time to
time, that the initial retention of Christopher Steele or Fusion GPS was by a
Republican firm.

MR. MCCABE: That's my understanding.
MR. GOWDY: How would you have learned that?

MR. MCCABE: ln the same way that ljust related from a briefing from the

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74

team.
MR. GOWDY: But wouldn't you have learned those at the same time since

the only person that could have told you would have been the firm?
MR. MCCABE: lt's likely that I would have learned that at the same time.

lf in those briefings we knew both ends of that connection at the same time, which
think likely did, ljust can't tell you exactly when that happened.
MR. GOWDY: My friend from California went through a line of

questions -- l'm sure we will come back to it -- abput the memos that Director
Comey -- where he memorialized conversations he had with President Trump.
Do you know whether he mernorialized any conversations he this with

Attorney General Lynch.
MR. MCCABE: I'm not aware of any memos he made as a result of
contact with Attorney General Lynch.
MR. GOWDY: Do you know why he would have gone to great lengths to

memorialize conversations with President Trump, but not other important
conversations?

MR. MCCABE: I know generally why he memorialized his conversations
with President Trump, but I don'l know why he - and if he decided not to do the
same thing with the Attorney General.
MR. GOWDY: Why did he do it with President Trump?

MR. MCCABE: He was concerned about the frequency and the nature of
his interactions with the President. And I think he felt that these were likely

conversations that would be important for him to be able to recollect at some point
in the

future. And so he captured those recollections contemporaneous with the

conversations.

I

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75

MR. GOWDY: Did he start with the first conversation they had, or did they

have a couple of conversations and then he started memorializing them?
MR. MCCABE: My best recollection is that the meeting in January where
they briefed -- I'm sorry, the lntelligence Community assessment was their first,
think, meeting, but they may have had other

I

- l'm not sure, sir, to be perfectly

honest. I know that he refers in his memo from the dinner that he had previously
spoken to the President about his job, but I don't -- I don't remember clearly when
that happened.
MR. GOWDY: I guess what I'm trying to understand is if he was

concerned with the frequency of the interaction, but yet, he memorialized the very
first interaction, that probably wasn't the reason that he memorialized it because
that would have been the first.
So was there some other reason that he felt the need to memorialize or at

least make a present sense impression of what he thought the conversation was
about?
MR. MCCABE: Well, I think it's what ljust related to

you.

I think he

understood the importance of those interactions. I think he figured that they
would likely be

* they could lead to issues

that would be the subject of interest

later, and that he needed to record his recollection of how they had taken place.
MR. GOWDY: Did he or you view President Trump's comments as an
attempt to obstruct your ongoing investigation into Michael Flynn?
MR. MCCABE: We were very concerned about his comments about letting

the Flynn investigation

go.

I mean, we certainly interpreted it as, yeah, an effort

to end that investigation.
I mean I did, and I believe he agreed with that assessment.

I

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76

MR. GOWDY: I don't know whether you have seen Director Comey's

testimony from earlier this year where he told members of our committee -- this will
be a paraphrase, but it will be pretty close -- that the senior agents who

interviewed Flynn did not detect deception when they interviewed
seen

him.

Have you

that? Are you aware of that?
MR. MCCABE: I don't remember his testimony about

remember that

- I remember

that.

But

I

their impression when they came back from the

interview. And that's consistent with what they said when they came back from
the interview. They felt like it was not clear to them that he was, you know, lying
or dissembling.
MR. GOWDY: We!l, if the Director of the FBI said the agenls who

spent

just got through interviewing Michael Flynn did not detect deception, that's

-

not the great beginnings of a false statement case to the

FBI? lt doesn't mean

you can't get there, but thats usually not the great beginning when the two people

who interviewed him didn't think he was lying?

I

Five minutes.

MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. GOWDY: So if Director Comey is operating under that information
frorn agents, if the agents who interviewed Mike Flynn did not think he was lying or

did not detect deception
deception

- I want to be fair about what they said -- did not detect

-

MR. MCCABE: Right.
MR. GOWDY: -- then what would there have been to obstruct? What was

the investigation?
MR. MCCABE: Well, the conundrum that we faced on their return from the

I

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77

interview is that although they didn't detecl deception in the statements that he
made in the interview, but the statements were inconsistent with our
understanding of the conversation that he had actually had with the ambassador.
MR. GOWDY: Well, would you agree that every factually deficient

statement made to a Bureau agent does not qualify as -. for criminal prosecution
as a false statement?
MR. MCCABE: Every factually inconsistent statement

-

MR. GOWDY: Deficient.
MR. MCCABE: Deficient statement.
MR. GOWDY: You are an FBI agent right

now. lf I said, hey, look, todAy

is Thursday, and there is a great movie coming on tonight, that's not

that

-

true.

ls

does that rise to the level of a false statement to an FBI agent?
MR. MCCABE: No, of course not.
MR. GOWDY: All right. What are the elements of making a false

statement to an FBI agent?
MR. MCCABE: lt has to be about a material matter, and il's -- I don't want

to step on your legalabili$.
MR. BAKER: lt is asking for a legalconclusion, or a statement.
MR. GOWDY: No, it's

can go look them

up.

not.

lt's asking for the elements of an otfense. We

I'm not asking for his conclusion.

MR. BAKER: Based on your recollection.
MR. MCCABE: Based on my recollection and experience, it has to be a
false statement about a material matter.
MR. GOWDY: What about the issue of intent?
MR. MCCABE: Of course, intentionally false.

I

 I
MR. GOWDY: All

right.

78

See what I'm getting

at?

lf Director Comey was

told by the senior agents that they did not detect an intent to deceive, then that
strikes me that you may have some trouble with one of the elements of the
offense.

l'm not trying to play lawyer with

you.

I'm trying to figure out, there used to

be a lot of talk about collusion. Now there's more talk about obstruction of justice

l'm trying to understand what was being obstructed. lf President Trump
said, I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, he's a good man, that is
not all that different from what he said about Secretary Clinton after he won.

Which is, she's been through a

lot.

I don't want to see her hurt.

MR. MCCABE: Yeah.
MR. GOWDY: He said that

too.

Did that

'. would that have impacted

y'all's willingness to go forward on an investigation, the fact that he said that?
MR. MCCABE: Well, we didn't have an investigation as to whether or not
she had been through a
not

lot.

We did have an investigation about whether or

- whether or not General Flynn had made false statements or -- let me

check -. check that.

MR. GOWDY: Right.
MR. MCCABE

We, after the interview, had his own statements which the interviewing agents took
fairly positively. That certainly didn't make the issue any clearer. But we knew
that we still had a fair amount of investigation to do.

I

 I

79

And
now, of course, we had this statement issue kind of hanging out there as

well.

So

we felt like we had some work to do.

I

oneminute.

MR. GOWDY: Was General Flynn initially interviewed as part of a

MR. MCCABE: He was interviewed by
MR. GOWDY: ls there a -- l'm not asking you for a conclusions. ls there
a crime that you can imagine that could, in theory, be covered by talking to another

ambassador -- an ambassador about sanctions and whether or not they should be
responded to or not responded

to?

ls there al least the predicate for a criminal

investigation in that conversation alone?
MR. MCCABE: There certainly could be.
MR. GOWDY: What?
MR. MCCABE: You're asking me hypothetically.
MR. GOWDY: What statute would be in play?

MR. MCCABE:

I
I

 I
MR. GOWDY: I'm with you on

did.

My question

is:

80

allthat.

l'm not questioning anything you

You have already received questions. You are going to

receive a lot more about obstruction of

justice. I don't know lhe elements of

obstruction of justice. I don't know if there has to be an ongoing criminal inquiry.
I don't know if there has to be a predicate for a criminal inquiry.

But if the Director of the FBI had been informed by his senior agents that

interviewed him that they did not believe he was being deceptive, I'm trying to
understand what it was that could have been obstructed by the President saying:
I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go.

MR. BAKER: May I have a moment, Mr. Chairman, just to talk to him?
MR. GOWDY: Sure, you can talk to your lawyer any time you want to.
[Discussion off the record.]

MR. BAKER: Okay.
MR. MCCABE: I'm sorry, what was the question?
MR. GOWDY: l'm not sure I'm going to be able to remember, and I'm out
of time.
MR. MCCABE: So if I can just

clariff, So he was interviewed by

At the time our focus was on, as I have said a couple of times,
I

know this for a fact

-

would expect

- and I don't

but I would expect that what Director Comey was concerned

about was an effort to impede or influence us to turn off an investigation into

exactly

that.

So I don't know that the interviewing agents' kind of thumbnail

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81

assessment of Flynn's truth and veracity from the interview wasn't dispositive
about whether or not we would continue to investigate Mr. Flynn.
MR. GOWDY: All

right.

I'm out of

time. We will come

back to it.

MR. SCHIFF: Mr. McCabe, let me just follow up on that if I could. At the
time that you interviewed Flynn, it was pursuant to a
ls that right?

MR. MCCABE: That's right.
MR. SCHIFF: And I think Director Comey testified that lhe agents who
interviewed him didn't discern physicalindications of deception, changes in
posture, in tone inflection, or eye contact? ls that your understanding as well?
MR. MCCABE: That's my generat recollection, yes.
MR. SCHIFF: Now, you have been in the Bureau for how long?
MR. MCCABE: Twen$-one years.
MR, SCHIFF: And in your experience, are some people very capable liars

and others not very good at hiding the truth?
MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.
MR. SCHIFF: ln the case of Mike Flynn
to discuss this here

-

- and tell me if we are not allowed

you had pretty good reasons
at least in part?

MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.
MR. SCHIFF: And you could compare them to what he was telling the
Bureau?

MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SCHIFF: And in the early part of his interviews, he was denying much
of what he had said to the Ambassador, is that accurate?

 I

82

MR. MCCABE: That's right. The best of my recollection is, in the

MR. SCHIFF: So he --

rectly contradicted

what you knew to be the truth?
MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SCHIFF: Now, we know now because Mike Flynn has pled guilty to
lying to the FBl.

MR. MCCABE: That's right.
MR. SCHIFF: And owing to the factual basis that was necessary for that
plea, that at the time that he spoke to FBI agenls and the FBI agents were unable

to discern indicia of dishonesty, he was, in fact, being dishonest?
MR. MCCABE: That's apparently the case, yes.
MR. SCHIFF: We also know from Sally Yates'testimony that when she

apprised the White House that Mike Flynn may be subject to compromise based
on what he has said or caused others to say publicly about

that she did not communicate to the White House at
that time what the Bureau's perception of his honesty during his interview was.
Do I remember that testimony correctly?

MR. MCCABE: I don't have a clear recollection of her testimony.
MR. SCHIFF: And do you have any
time he was lying

- well, so if Mike Flynn knew at the

-

MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. SCHIFF:

-

even if the agents didn't, are you in a position to tell us

whether the President also knew that Mike Flynn was lying?

I

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83

MR. MCCABE: lt's certainly possible. I can't -- I don't know that, but it's
certainly possible.
MR. SCHIFF: And you wouldn't be able to tell us today whether or when
the President leamed that Mike Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI?
MR. MCCABE: I cannot tellyou that today.
MR. SCHIFF: Or whether the President was concerned that had Flynn lied

to the FBl, either with the President's knowledge or without, that it was in the

Presidenfs interest to see that case go away?
MR. MCCABE: l'm sorry, you lost me about halfiuay through.
MR. SCHIFF: You wouldn't be able to tell us today, would you, based on

the status of the investigation prior to the appointment of Special Counse! whether
the President at the time that Ftynn was let go and at the time of the President's
conversations with Director Comey -MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. SCHIFF:

- you wouldn't be able to tell us as of the time Special

Counselwas appointed, whether you were aware if the President knew Flynn had
lied to the FBI?

MR. MCCABE: No, sir.
MR. SCHIFF: I want to ask

*

follow up with a couple of questions about

the FISA application.
MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. SCHIFF: I have been on the committee for about a decade. This is

the most scrutiny we have ever given lo any FISA application. lt's more than
appropriate for us to scrutinize a FISA application of a U.S. citizen, so there's
nothing wrong with that.

I

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84

MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.
MR. SCHIFF: But nonetheless, the amount of focus on this particular one
suggests to me it is about more than just the fact that it was a FISA application.

So let me ask you

this:

I

think there's a sense in the outside

-

outside of

this building, that if the FISA application was fraud in any way, then the whole
investigation crumbles.

So I want to ask

you:

What was the role of the FISA application in this

investigation? And let me ask it this way: Had the FISA application not been
approved by the court, would the investigation have ended?
MR. MCCABE: No,

sir. The investigation

of Carter Page would have

continued without the use of the FISA technique. And certainly, the investigation
into Russian influence in the 2016 campaign would have continued.
MR. SCHIFF: And thE

would have continued?

MR. MCCABE: Of course.
MR. SCHIFF: And the investigation of Flynn would have continued?
MR. MCCABE: That's conect.
MR. SCHIFF: And the investigation of Papadopoulos would have

continued?
MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. SCHIFF: So all that would happen even if the court had turned it
down?
MR. MCCABE: That's conect.
MR. SCHIFF: So tf the information about Fusion GPS and an attorney,
and the Democratic Party and the Washington Free Beacon, and all of that had

been in the FISA application and had been tumed down, the investigation would

I

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85

have gone on?

MR. MCCABE: Thafs

right.

FISA is one investigative technique. We

had dually predicated cases against the individuals you mentioned. We were

going to investigate those cases with whalever techniques were at our fingertips.
Had we decided not to pursue FISA, or had the FISA been turned down, we would
have continued investigating without it.
MR. SCHIFF: lf you had credible allegations that a U.S. person was

essentially acting as a foreign agent of an adversarial power, would it be negligent
of the FBI not to investigate that?
MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. SCHIFF: ln this case,

Correct?
MR. MCCABE
MR. SCHIFF:

That's corect.
You also

ls that also true?
MR, MCCABE: That's conect.
MR. SCHIFF: So you apply for the FISA application. The FISA
did you learn that Carter Page had

application is granted.

MR. MCCABE: That's our assessment, yes.
MR. SCHIFF: And it's also your assessment that

ls that true as well?

MR. MCCABE:

That is true.

I

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85

MR. SCHIFF: And as a result of the FISA, you learned that -- and other

MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SCHIFF: And in fact, as a result of your investigation and the FISA,

I
MR. MCCABE: That's right.
MR. SCHIFF: And in fact, Mr. Steele

MR. MCCABE: He did.

MR. SCHIFF: And so if we were interested in confirming what part of the
dossier is true and what part is not true, the FISA application has actually helped,
has it not?
MR. MCCABE: lt has.
MR. SCHIFF: Now, let me ask you about, if I could, the role of the Steele

dossier because I think there's a similar theory outside the building that if the
Steele dossier can be discredited, the whole investigation goes away or can be
discredited.

You've already testified that the investigation began not because of the
Steele dossier, but because of the information about George Papadopoulos. ls
that right?

I

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87

MR. MCCABE: That's conect.
MR. SCHIFF: So let's say that you never received the Steele dossier

Would you still have
MR. MCCABE:

Yes. We opened the J

case before we had the

dossier.
MR. SCHIFF: And would you still have investigated Mike Flynn?
MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. SCHIFF: Given that some of the information in the dossier has been

corroborated in part by the FISA, but through other investigative means as well,
would it be negligent not to try to determine how much else of the dossier was
accurate?
MR. MCCABE: lt would be negligent not to determine

that. That's

correct.
MR. SCHIFF: Did you ever accept the dossier as the last

word? ln other

words, you were going to rely on this and no further investigation necessary?
MR. MCCABE: No, sir.
MR. SCHIFF: Let me go back to where I had left off in terms of the

interactions that the Director had with the President. He also testified about a
March 30th meeting and
called rne at the

FBl.

said:

On the morning of March 30th, the President

He described the Russian investigation as a cloud that was

impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country. He said he had nothing to do
with Russia.
At the time that he said that he had nothing to do with Russia, was the FBI
aware that during the campaign his organization had been seeking to do business

with Russia and build a Trump Tower in Russia?

I

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88

MR. MCCABE: I don't know the answer to

that. So, March

30th did we

know -MR. SCHTFF: Did you know at the time the President told the Director of

the FBI that he had nothing to do with Russia that, in fact, the previous year

-

part

of the previous year,2 years, the President had been pursuing the building of a
Trump Tower in Moscow?

MR. MCCABE: I did not know that at the time.
MR. SCHIFF: Retuming to Director Comey's teslimony. He said he had
nothing to do with Russia. He had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and
always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia. He asked what we
could do to, quote, "lift the

cloud." I responded that we were investigating the

matter as quickly as we could and that there would be great benefit if we didn't find
anything to our having done the work

well.

He agreed, but then reemphasized

the problem this was causing him.
The President went on to say that if there was some satellite associates of
his who did something wrong, it would be good to find that out, but that he hadn't

done anything wrong and hoped I would find a way to get it out that we weren't
investigating him.
Did you also have a meeting or discussion on the phone with Director

Comey after the March 30th meeting vuhere he discussed what took place during
that meeting?
MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.
MR. SCHIFF: Was that a phone conversation as well?

MR. MCCABE: The best of my recollection is we probably discussed it in

person. I think Director Comey was in his office for that phone call.

I

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89

MR. SCHIFF: Were you present during the call?
MR. MCCABE: No, sir.
MR. SCHIFF: Do you know whether other agents were in the room with

him and could at least listen to his half of the conversation?
MR. MCCABE: I know that for one of the phone calls the Directo/s chief of

staff, Jim Rybickiwas in the room while the Director was on the phone
not sure if it was that

call.

I know there was one other phone

call.

call.

l'm

I'm confused

as to which one that happened.
MR. SCHIFF: Did

-

well, let me continue

then.

I

will ask you about other

parts of it.
The Director goes on to

say:

ln an abrupt shift, he turned the conversation

to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe saying that he hadn't brought up, quote,
"the McCabe thing" because I had said McCabe is honorable, though McAuliffe
was close to the Clintons and had given hirn (l think he meant Depu$ Director
McCabe's wife) campaign money, although I didn't understand why the President
was bringing this

up.

I repeated that Mr. McCabe was an honorable person.

When you discussed this, did the Director mention this in his conversation
with you as well?
MR. MCCABE: He

did.

lt was not the first time that the President had

raised me with the Director.
MR. SCHIFF: And did the Director have any understanding of why he
thought the President was bringing this up?
MR. MCCABE: Understanding is probably not the right characterization.
Our concern was that he was bringing it up as some sort of an almost a veiled
threat.

I

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90

MR. SCHIFF: That if the Director didn't lift the cloud of the Russian
investigation, that he would take action against you?

MR. MCCABE: That's conect. That was my concem, and as

I

understand it, that was Direclor Comey's concem as well.
MR. SCHIFF: Director Comey continued

saying: He finished by stressing

the cloud that was interfering with his ability to make deals for the country, and
said he hoped I could find a way to get out that he wasn't being investigated.

I

told him lwould see what we could do and that we would do our investigative work

welland as quickly as we could.
lrnmediately after that conversation I called Acting Deputy Attorney General
Dana Boente, AG Sessions had by then recused himself on all Russia-related
matters, to report the substance of the call from the Preskient and said I would

await his guidance. I did not hear back from him before the President called me
again, 2 weeks later.
ls that consistent with what he related to you contemporaneous with the

meeting or soon thereafter?
MR. MCCABE: Yes, with the phone

call.

lt was a phone call between he

and the President; not a meeting.
MR. SCHIFF: And did Director Comey tellyou what he thought the
President meant by "lift the cloud"?

MR. MCCABE: Yeah, I rnean, I think Director Comey's impression was
that the President was still quite frustrated with the fact that we were continuing

our investigative efforts into the

-

into the campaign and Russia issues.

MR. SCHIFF: And dld the Director communicate that the President
essentially wanted him to absolve him publicly?

I

 I
MR. MCCABE:

91

Yes. The President was interested

in the Director making

some sort of a public statement that the President was not under investigation.
MR. SCHIFF: Another conversation took place on April 11,2017

.

Director Comey testified: "On the morning of April 11 the President called me and
asked what I had done about his request that I get out that he is not personally

under investigation. I replied that l'd passed this request to the Acting Deputy
Attorney General, but I had not heard
in the way of his ability to do his

job.

back.

He replied that the cloud was getting

He said that perhaps he would have his

people reach out to the Acting Deputy Attorney General. I said that was the way
his request should be handled. I said the White House counselshould contact
the leadership of DOJ to make the request, which was the traditionalchannel. He
said he would do that and added, quote, "because I have been very loyal to you,
very loyal. We had that thing, you know." I did not reply or ask him what he
meant by that thing.
I said only that the way to handle it was to have the White House counsel

call the Acting Deputy Attorney General. He said that was what he would do, and

the call ended. That was last time I spoke with President Trump.
MR. GOWDY: Adam, I don't want to interrupt you, but we don't have

Director Comey's memos. We thought they were read and return.
MR. SCHIFF: This isn't his memo. This is his testimony. This is his
written testimony.
MR. GOWDY: So that is not from his

memo. lt's from the testimony.

MR. SCHIFF: That is from the testimony. ls that correct?

I

The June

I written testimony to the Senate Select Committee

on lntelligence.

I

 92

:
MR. SCHIFF: So this is what he presented to Committee before he began
his oraltestimony.
MR. GOWDY: Okay, fair enough. Thanks.
MR. SCHIFF: I can assure you, they haven't given us the memos any
more than they have given them to you.
MR. GOWDY: I tnought they were read and

return. And I would like to

have them.
MR. SCHIFF: Yeah, lwould too.
So did the Director also share this conversation with you?
MR. MCCABE: He did.
MR. SCHIFF: And what was his, as you can recall from your conversation
rather than his testimony, what did he have to say in terms of the President's
comments that "l have been very loyal to you, very

loyal. We had that thing, you

know."

What did the Director tell you he took from that?
MR. MCCABE: He was concerned. He was concerned that the President

was stillfocused on and frustrated by our investigative efforts: the President was
really insisting that the Director rnake some sort of a public statement that, of
course, the Director was not comfortable rnaking; and the reference to "that thing,"
we weren't 100 percent sure what that

was.

But Director Comey was, you know,

interpreted it the same way that we had interpreted the prior comments about me
and my

wife. That it was some sort of -

it could be some sort of a, you know, a

veiled threat.
MR. SCHIFF: And in this case the veiled threat would be against Director

Comey?

I

 I

93

MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SCHIFF: Along the lines of, l, the President, have been very loyalto
you.

the

I want you to lift the

cloud. Otherwise, I might be less loyal to you. ls that

MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SCHIFF: That was the impression of Director Comey?
MR. MCCABE: lt was and it was my impression.
MR. SCHIFF: On May 9th, as you know, James Comey was relieved of

his role as Director of the

FBl.

On May 10th, during a meeting with the Russian

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Kislyak, the President
reportedly

said:

I

just fired the head of the

FBl.

He was crazy, a real nut

faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken

job.

I

off. Mr. Trump added:

l'm not under investigation.
What do you know, if anything, about that meeting that the President had
with Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Kislyak?
MR. MCCABE: I only know what I read in the news reports.
MR. SCHIFF: Were you made aware of the memos that Attorney General
Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein wrote concerning Comels
firing before they were made public?
MR. MCCABE: That's a good question. So this is on May

9th.

I became

aware of Director Comey's firing when I was called out of my close-out meeting at
the end of the day, probably 5:15 p.m., and I received a message that the Attorney

Generalwanted to see me in his office.
So I went across the street. At that point I did not know that the Director
had been

fired.

And we had not

- well, the memos had been dropped off at

I

 I
the -- at FBI headquarters, but nobody

94

- they were kind of dropped off in an odd

way, and so we the folks who received them didn't realize what they had, and they
hadn't made their way upstairs to my office or the Directo/s office.

So lwent across the street. I talked to the Attorney General, and he
informed me that the Director had been fired and that I would need to serve as the
Acting Director for some period of time. By the time I got back to my office, it was
being widely reported on the

news. Someone came into my conference room.

was with my leadership team, and informed us that someone had left a letter at
SIOC, and that was when I realize what it likely

was. We retrieved it from

SIOC,

and that's when we learned about the memorandum.
MR. BAKER: What is SIOC?

MR. MCCABE: I'm sorry, SIOC is our intake office for FBI headquarters,
it's Strategic lnformation Operation Center.

I

I

 I

95

[6:05 p.m.l
MR. SCHIFF: So you only read the memos that the deputy attorney

general and the Attorney General had prepared after you learned of the firing?
MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SCHIFF: Did either of them, the Attorney General or deputy attomey

general, discuss with you before the firing their intention to fire or the President's
intention to fire Director Comey or the basis that they would provide the President
to fire Director Comey?
MR. MCCABE: Absolutely not.
MR. SCHIFF: So the whole thing took you and the

director:

MR. MCCABE: Completely by surprise.
MR. SCHIFF:

-

by surprise.

MR. MCCABE: Completely by surprise, yes.
MR. SCHIFF: So who was it who informed you, again, that the Director
had been fired?

MR. MCCABE: Attorney General Sessions.
MR. SCHIFF: And what did Attorney General Sessions tellyou at that time

was the reason that Director Comey was being fired?
MR. MCCABE: He said to me, I don't know if you've heard, but we've had
to fire the Director of the FBl.
MR. SCHIFF: And what did he tell you about why the Director of the FBI

was being fired?
MR. MCCABE: I guess it seems odd now in retrospect, but he didn't really

say.

Our conversation was very

brief. I was, you know, surprised, to say the

 I

96

least.
I think he said that the President had decided to fire the

Director. And

he

immediately went into talking to me about seruing as the Acting Director. He

made clear that it might not be for very long, that they might appoint an interim
Director to cover the period of time until a permanent Director was selected and
confirmed.
He asked me if I had any questions. I said, yes, I had a lot of questions,

but lwas not prepared to ask them at that moment. And that was

it.

I left.

MR. SCHIFF: So you didn't ask him at that time why Comey had been
fired?
MR. MCCABE: I didn't.
MR. SCHIFF: And he didn't offer an explanation for it?

MR. MCCABE: No, sir.
MR. SCHTFF: So he didn't discuss with you the justification that Comey,

he believed, had mishandled the Clinton investigation?
MR. MCCABE: I don't remember that from our conversation.
MR. SCHIFF: And I take it he didn't discuss anything about the Russia

investigation in the context of the firing?
MR. MCCABE: Not that I recall.
MR. SCHIFF: On June 8th, Director Comey, in his testimony before the

SSCI, stated, "lt's my judgment that I was fired because of the Russia

investigation. I was fired in some way to change -- or the endeavor was to
change the way the Russia investigation was being conducted."
ls that your assessment as well?

MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.

I

 I

97

MR. SCHIFF: And why do you assess that the reason that he was fired

was to change the way the Russia investigation was being conducted?
MR. MCCABE: Well, I mean, it's, you know, it's probably an amalgam of
many reasons thal led up to that point. The fact that the President had
communicated to Director Comey on many occasions that he was frustrated with
the Russia investigation, that it was creating a cloud over his Presidency, that he
was frustrated by our failure to kind of announce to the world that he was not the
subject of investigation, by his desire to end the investigative activity into General
Flynn, combined with the -- his overall public comments over the weeks leading up

to the firing, refening to the investigation as a witch hunt, and in terms that clearly
indicated he didn't think much of it.
And then of course the comments that he made after the firing, in which he
stated during an interview that he was thinking of the Russia investigation when he
fired the Director.
I

would say all those things for me add to my assessment that that's in fact

why he fired the Director.
MR. SCHIFF: Did you ever learn why the Attorney General and deputy
attorney generalwrote memos that may have served as a pretext for the firing of
Director Comey in the sense that it didn't talk about the Russia investigation but
rather about his handling of the Clinton investigation?
MR. MCCABE: I learned about some of the conversations that took place
around the request by the President to the Deputy Attorney Generalto draft a
memo about the firing.
MR. SCHIFF: And when you say you learned about it, did you learn about
it from reading aboul it in the press or did people communicate with you about

I

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98

those conversations?
MR. MCCABE: People communicated to me about it.
MR- SCHIFF: And who communicated this to you?
MR. MCCABE: The deputy attorney general.
MR. SCHIFF: And what did he tellyou?

MR. MCCABE: He related to me essentially the series of events that had
taken place in which he went to the White House.
MR. BAKER: lf we could just have a moment, sir.
[Discussion off the record.]
MR. MCCABE: Okay. So I am being informed by counselthat I do not
have clearance to discuss conversations between the President and other people.

ls that right?
MR. BAKER: That is what Scott's informed me, yes.
MR. SCHIFF: Well, we will take up that issue and may need to have you

back. This has been a continuing problem. But let me try to ask it in a way you
can answer

it. Did the.

Did the deputy attomey generaltellyou that Director Comey was fired
because of his handling of the Clinton email investigation or because of the Russia
investigation?
MR. MCCABE: The deputy attorney generaltold me that he wrote the
memorandum justifying the firing of Director Comey, and that he did not need to

include information about Russia in that memo.
MR. SCHIFF: And did the deputy attorney generaltellyou whether he
knew that the decision to file Director Comey had been made prior to his writing

the memo or only after his writing the memo?

I

 I

99

MR. MCCABE: So I am being informed by my counselfrom the

Department thal the only way that the deputy attomey generalwould know that
would have been based upon his communications with the President, and I do not
have clearance to relate that information.
MR. SCHIFF: Did the deputy attorney generaltell you whether he believed

that his memo was being used as a pretext to fire James Comey when the reason
for the firing lay elsewhere?

MR. MCCABE: I am being told thafs the same question.
MR. SCHIFF: Not the same question, but it may be the same answer.

l'llyield back.
MR. STEWART: Thank you.
I have a couple things I want to follow up on to questions that you have

been asked previously and answered. And ljust want to make sure I understand
them and that there is clarity with

it. And they are really quite simple, I think

maybe even yes-no questions.
Did the FISA court, when it was first presented with the Steele dossier,

which is where I am going to concentrate my questions because it is one of the
more troubling aspects of this whole episode to me, did the FISA court know of the

identities of the person who was paying and had hired Mr. Steele at the time that
they made the decision whether to grant the FISA action?
MR. MCCABE: To the best of my understanding, the FISA application
does not contain the identities. lt merely identifies those people as an identified
U.S. person or

-

MR. STEWART: Okay. Thafs what I understood. And I got to tellyou,
it's my own opinion, that's astounding to me, that that would have been left out of

I

 I

100

that FISA application. That it would have been not only with clarity, but it would
seem to me that that fact was obscured in the FISA application.
Someone made the decision along the line to do

that.

Someone in that

editing process of that page and a half footnote that you talked about has said
we're not going to tellthem that this is paid for by Fusion GPS through a law firm
by the DNC and HRC campaign. Do you know who made that decision?
MR. MCCABE: I don't. I don't know that that decision was made, and so

l

don't know who could have made that decision.
MR. STEWART: Well, at some point the decision was made because it
was written in such a way that that was not included.
MR. MCCABE: I don't know that that's any different from how these issues
are typically addressed in FISA packages. I think the general practice is to not
include the true identity of U.S. persons.
MR. STEWART: But I can understand if its not relevant to the case or to

the integrity of the decision the FISA courts have to make. But it seems to me
that this would

be.

But putting that aside, maybe we just disagree on that.

Let me ask you just your appraisal of the Steele dossier, if you

could. Do

you believe that it reached a standard of credibility that was required for an FBI
investigation or to initiate a FISA request?
MR. MCCABE: I think that the Steele reporting is sufficiently credible to be
included with other information in a FISA package, as it was.
MR. STEWART: So you are confident of its contents?

MR. MCCABE: I know -- I wilt not sit here and tellyou that I can vouch for
all the content of the Steele reporting.
We can't prove

I

 I
all of

it.

We can't disprove all of

it.

101

I don't know that we've disproved any of it.

But nevertheless, with appropriate caveats, as we tried to do with that
footnote, I think it was appropriate to put it in the FISA package.
MR. STEWART: So lwant to come back to a couple questions. But since
you went in lhat direction, let me follow up with that, if you could.
Mr. Gowdy had some questions for you where he was essentially

asking -- and I am paraphrasing and I think you'll know -- your efforts to
corroborate the dossier and some of the facts. And he asked you for an example
of facts that you were able to coroborate.
And in your answer you said, for example, that

Help me understand your appraisal of the dossier by tellang me what you

think is the most damaging or damning or important piece of evidence that's
contained in the dossier that you now know is true.
MR. MCCABE: Well, as I tried to explain before, there is a lot of
information in the Steele reporting. We have not been able to prove the accuracy
of allthe information.
MR. STEWART: Okay. So what is one that you have been able

to:

MR. MCCABE: Sir, I'm not the right person to ask in terms to parse out

every fact in the Steele reporting.
MR. STEWART: How come?
MR. MCCABE: Because I am not involved in the reporting and the
investigative activity that takes place.
MR. STEWART: But you

..

MR. MCCABE: l've indicated where we have recorded that activity.

I

 102

MR. STEWART: But you said you consirJer it credible.

MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. STEWART: And so I am asking you, tellme something credible in
that report that's important.
MR. MCCABE: I have already stated that we assess that Carter Page

!

MR. STEWART: How do you know that that's true?
MR. MCCABE: As I said, sir, it's an assessment based on other
information that's come to us.
MR. STEWART: Do you know it's true or is that just your best guess?
MR. MCCABE: lt's an assessment.

MR. STEWARTT And help me understand what an assessment is.
MR. MCCABE: That's our educated guess based on evidence.
MR. STEWART: So it's your best

guess. You don't know if it's true or not.

MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. STEWART:

Okay. I am going to ask the question one more time,

because I think it's important for you to be able to answer

this.

Tell me the most

damaging thing that you know of in this dossier that you have been able to verify is

true. The most *

the thing that strengthens

-

MR. MCCABE: Sir, I can't answer that question off the top of my head.
MR. STEWART:

-

the thing that strengthens your ability to go before the

FISA court and say, we want to open this investigation based on this piece of
information.

 I

r.03

MR. MCCABE: Sir, I can't give you that kind of detail off the top of my

head. I would be happy to go back and take another look at the report

and

answer your question.
MR. STEWART: l've got to tellyou, I think that's a -- I don't think that's a

detail. I think that's a very important piece of information.
This dossier is one of the fundamental pieces of evidence that you
presented before the FISA

court. lt seems to me that you would

be able to tell me

something in there that was substantial that you knew was true that you could say
to the FISA court, so this is why we are asking you to do this.
MR. MCCABE: Yeah. So as you know, I was not the affiant on the

package. I think there are probably other witnesses who could answer your
question in more granularity.
MR. STEWART: Did you sign any of the FISA?

MR. MCCABE: I authorized, I think, the last

-

the last reauthorization.

MR. SfEWART: Did that include the dossier as part of that application?
MR. MCCABE: lt did.
MR. STEWART: So you are signing that saying that you are
authenticating that this is true.
MR. BAKER: lf I could have a moment.
MR. MCCABE: So, sir, I am signing the approval for the FBl, which is
relying on the facts as related by the affiant and the process that we have in place
to corroborate those facts and to record the information behind each one of those
facts.

MR. STEWART: Okay. So you wouldn't sign that, though, if you didn't
believe in the veracity of what you were presenting to the court.

I

 I

104

MR. MCCABE: I believe in the statements as related by the affiant. And
part of my belief is founded upon the process that I know the investigators and the

affiant have to go through not just in putting the package together, but of course
conducting the investigation.
MR. STEWART: And who is the affiant in this case?
MR. MCCABE: I don't remember. I think you have the FISA package,

though.
MR. STEWART: I want to go back to what you said about your efforts to

verify the information here. And I got to tell you, ljust can't -- I can't believe that
you can't answer that question. I just

- that's just astounding to me. But I will

put that aside.

Tellme about your efforts to substantiate the sour@ or the subsources of
this dossier.
MR. MCCABE:

Yeah.

So we have conducted significant investigation

along those lines.
MR. STEWART: And who have you talked

with? Were you able to talk

to

any of the sources?

MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.
MR. STEWART: Were you able to talk to some

-

MR. BAKER: Can you just clarify? When you say we, I want to be clear,
what did you personally do versus what did the FBI do?
MR. MCCABE:

Yeah.

I am speaking on behalf of the FBl.

MR. BAKER: Please be clear.
MR. MCCABE: I am sorry about

that. So I have not interviewed any of

the sources. I have not done that investigative

I

- taken those investigative steps

 I

105

myself. I have been briefed by the teams the results of their efforts.
MR. STEWART: We have some discrepancies, and maybe it's a matter of
a timeline, but as of October 31st, which was 4 or 5 weeks ago, there was

described at that time that none of the sources or subsources had been verified.
That was by Mr. -- yeah, Priestap. I want to pronounce his name correctly.
So at that point they had not verified any of

them. Can you describe to us

who you have been able to verify and what elements of that dossier have been
verified since?
MR. MCCABE: I can't give you that level of detail here tonight, sir.
MR. STEWART: What do you think when Mr. Comey describes the

dossier as unsubstantiated? How do you respond to that?
MR. MCCABE: I am sorry, what was the

-

MR. STEWART: Mr. Comey has described the dossier as salacious and

unsubstantiated. Was he wrong in describing it that way?
MR. MCCABE: I don't remember when he described it that way.
MR, STEWART: lt was this summer, June.

MR. MCCABE: ls that the description that he when he discussed

-

MR. STEWART: Unverified.
MR. MCCABE: l'm sorry?
MR. STEWART: Unverified and salacious. Maybe lsaid unsubstantiated

before. lf I did ..
MR. MCCABE: I can't speak to why he referred to it that way.
MR. STEWART:

Okay. Well, it's interesting that he considered it

unverified.

MR. MCCABE: Director Comey was very familiar with the Steele reporting

I

 I

106

and was involved in not only our assessments that led to its inclusion in the FISA

package, but also how we broached the issue of including it in the lntelligence
Community assessment.
MR. STEWART: Why would he describe it as unverified?
MR. MCCABE: I don't know.
MR. STEWART: How much time have I taken?

There is still 15 minutes Ieft.

I

MR. STEWART: Okay. And Mr. Gowdy, you want to take time,

I

suppose.
MR. GOWDY: I want you and Mr. Hurd to take allthe time you want,

because I am sure Mr. Schiff and I will be here later than you all.
MR. STEM/ART: I would like to come back to some of these things, but

willyield to
MR.

job.

I get

-

I

go ahead, Mr. Hurd.

HURD: Deputy Director, thanks for being here. You have a hard ass

it. I spent 9-1/2 years as an undercover

officer in the

ClA. I had the

opportunity to serve alongside many of your legats, some of the finest people

I

know. I had the opportunity to work shoulder to shoulder with these fottrs f
well, and worked *ith

I.

So I am actually a fan of the

organization.

And I have some proceduralquestions. ls it common to use
uncorroborated information that is based on unknown subsources to ask for a
FISA request or a FISA warrant? Uncorroborated inteland unknown
subsourcing, is that a common practice?
MR. MCCABE: I can't speak to whether or not it's common. I don't --

 

wouldn't characterize the Steele reporting as completely uncorroborated. There

I

 I

107

were certainly aspects of the reporting that we were able to corroborate. But as

I

said earlier, I think accurately caveated and described to the court, it is merely
information you make available to the court and they can place whatever
emphasis or discretion they have on it.
MR. HURD: I have been unable to read the footnote. So I apologize for
asking ignorant questions. Was influence as well as inform one of the caveats in
the footnole?

MR. MCCABE: I don't remember that.
MR. HURD: The original intelligence that we received from a

I

I

about Papadopoulos, was influence and inform a potential disclaimer in

that initial reporting source to your understanding?
MR. MCCABE: I don't remember that.
MR. HURD: Did the

directly approach the legat or was
and then got passed to the

that information that went through
legat?

MR. MCCABE: My understanding is they approached the State
Departrnent, and the State Department passed it to the legat,

MR. HURD: Why did the legat in

I

take 3 months to report the

information to headquarters?

MR. MCCABE: He, as I understand, wasn't sure where to report that
information, and he made some efforts to report it back to his field office, and then
to the Crimina! Division at headquarters, none of whom were aware of the
existence of the team investigating the political influence matters. And so it took
him some time to get it to the right place.
MR. HURD: ls it a common practice in the FBI to not ask

I

-

I know this is a

 r

108

weird double negative -- to not ask sources about their additional sources of
income?
MR. MCCABE: To not ask -MR. HURD: So you're running sources. !s it common practice to
understand where their source of income is as an issue of motivation or potential

future vulnerability?
MR. MCCABE: lt's certainly possible, certainly relevant.

MR. HURD: So is.it common to not gather that information?
MR. MCCABE: I can't speak to how common it is to not do something.

MR. HURD: So would Christopher Steele, in his previous

- it was known

to the FBI that he had plenty of contacts with the press and had worked with the
press on numerous occasions. ls that correct?
MR. MCCABE: No, I don't think that's conect.

MR. HURD: Okay.
MR. MCCABE: I think our

-

in fact, I think our assessment of the Steele

reporting ending up in the hands of members of the press was that it was likely
being shared by the people that had contracted the reporting.

MR. HURD: Gotcha.
MR. MCCABE: According to Steele, he provided the reporting only to the

individualwho contracted it and then to us.
MR. HURD: So in the acquisition chain of the information it was clearly

documented that this information was originally collected for someone else and
they were sharing

this.

He was additionally sharing this to the FBl.

MR. MCCABE: That's my understanding.
MR, HURD: And is it your understanding that when he was sharing that

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information, whether the original source that he collected it for knew that he was

also sharing it with the FBI?
MR. MCCABE: That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that,
although I do know that he was ultimately

* source relationship was terminated

because he shared the fact -- because he exposed the relationship to others. But
I don't know if that exposure is the one that led to the termination.

MR. HURD: Gotcha. And lwant to make sure I am clear. You, in a
question of my colleague Mr. Stewart, you implied that the Steele iossier, the
information from the Steele dossier alone would not have been enough to get a
FISA -- go to the FISA court. Because you said the information from the Steele
dossier, along with other information, is what led you to lake this to

-

led the FBI

to take this to the FISC court. So is the implication that that information alone
was not enough to go to a FISA court?
MR. MCCABE: Let me be

clear.

I don't

want to rely on implication, My

position is that anything less than the package that went to the FISA court would
not have been enough. We put in that information that we thought was
nec€ssary.

MR. HURD: Gotcha. lwill yield back to my colleague.
MR. STEWART: I willjust follow up -- thank you

- I willjust follow up with

two questions, and it is along the same lines.
Would you say that the veracity of the dossier is more or less credible than
most of the evidence that you have presented before the FISA courts?
MR. MCCABE: I couldn't possibly make that assessment for

you.

I

don't -- I can't characterize the veracity of all the evidence that we have ever put in
front of the FISA court.

r

 I
MR. STEWART: ldon't understand

stronger, some is

not.

110

why.

I mean, some evidence is

You couldn't venture an opinion on whether this is stronger

evidence or less strong than others?
MR. MCCABE: No, sir.
MR. STEWART:

Okay. Let me ask it this way. Are you aware of any

other evidence presented to the FISA courts that has been described as unverified
and salacious by the Director of the FBI?
MR. MCCABE: I am not aware of evidence presented to the FISA court

that's been described in that way.
MR. STEWART:

Okay. Would that indicate to you that the Director

believes this evidence was less -- had less credibility than some of the other

evidence usually put before the courts?
MR. MCCABE: I think probably the way that we handled the Steele

reporting in the ICA is instructive to that point. We did not believe that the
information in the Steele reporting was to the same level of credibility and
trustworthiness as the rest of the intelligence that went into the assessment, which
is why it's handled and referred to in an appendix and not in the main body of the

report.
However,

I

lt was certainly relevant to the same tasking that we had received

from the President. And we also felt that the information was likely going to be
widely available because it seemed to be allover town, that it was something that

the President and the President-elect should know about.
MR. STEWART: Last question, going back to something you said earlier.
You said you don't remember when you found out when that it was Mr. Steele who

 I
had been

-

L11

and that he had been paid by the

remember when that information

DNC. ls that true? You don't

-

MR. MCCABE: ldo not.
MR. STEWART: Do you remember

- did you know that -

the DNC

essentially was the source of funding for this dossier. Did you know that when
you signed the document to prcsent this to the FISA court?
MR. MCCABE: I don't know the answer to that.
MR. STEWART: Okay. Mr. Hurd.
MR. HURD: You have alluded to a

on you all's

analysis of what has been corroborated with the Steele dossier.
MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. HURD: ls that a document that you would provide access to this

committee? I know ifs probably a working document, and we would recognize it's
up to a certain point

-

MR. MCCABE: Right.
MR. HURD:

*

and it may not be a complete

review. But is that

something that we would be able to have access to and review?
MR. MCCABE: lt's my understanding that they are going through the
process of making that available now.
MR. HURD: Because I think some of the question is the veracity of some
of the dossier information. And there has been conflicting information from the

work that this committee is doing. And so I think that, as the repository of you all's
understanding of this, would be insightful for this committee.
MR. MCCABE: ! agree. lts a document definitely relevant to your work,
and it's one that we're trying to make available to the committee now.

I

 Ltz

I
MR. HURD: Gotcha.
MR. MCCABE: Yep.

MR. HURD: So is it something you are working on in retrospect or is it
something that's already been completed?

MR. MCCABE: No, it's something that we worked on up until the point that
we kind of handed off the matter to the special counsel's office. So ifs a bit of a
snapshot in time. lt will freeze in the beginning of May.
MR. HURD:

Sure. Snapshot in time

is

- it's good for us. So thank you,

sir.

MR. MCCABE: Yep.

MR. HURD: And I yield back to my colleague.
MR. CONAWAY: This may have already been asked, but you said the
FISA on Carter Page was based in the dossier and previous information you had

about him in your files existing.
MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.
MR. CONAWAY: From our understanding,

MR. MCCABE: To the best of my recollection, sir,

MR. CONAWAY: So was his interaction delivering pizza orwas it iust

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113

mean, was it something germane to the charge?
MR. MCCABE: No, sir,

MR. CONAWAY:

MR. MCCABE: I don't know enough about that underlying case to opine
on whether he was or not,
MR. CONAWAY: lgot

you.

Thanks.

MR. MCCABE: He clearly wasn't charged, so that tells you something.
MR. CONAWAY: I guess in my head I am thinking obviously the Bureau
keeps things forever. And I didn't know how -- that answer is you didn't charge
him with anything, you didn't follow up, you didn't find him to be a problem, and yet
2 years later, 3 years later, because of that previous interaclion, he is

already

-

you feel like that's enough to rnove fonrard on this on an otherwise

innocent American citizen.
MR. MCCABE: He is a guy who definitely caused us concern,

right? We

interviewed him probably, I want to say, at least two times during the course of
those

-

of lhat prior investigative activity.

How they sized him up at that time I can't say exactly, but I do believe that

MR. CONAWAY'

Okay. I got you. I appreciate that. Thanks.

MR. MCCABE: Sure.
MR, STEWART: l don't want to monopolize everyone's time, but thank you
for letting me take just a few more minutes, Mr. Gowdy and Chairman.
ln the footnotes that we have talked about quite extensively here, it's my

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114

understanding that it refers to a law firm, not a specific firm, but a law firm

itself. lt

also says a named U.S. person. But is it your understanding that it does mention
a U.S. politica! party or it does not mention a U.S. politicalparty?
MR. MCCABE: I don't remember that it mentions a politicalparty. I think
what it says is that it was -- it was originally contracted for a political opponent. ls
that right? lt refers to the fact that it was essentially produced by someone who is
a politicalopponent.
MR. STEWART: Can you describe your role in the decision to brief the

summary of the dossier to President-elect Trump?
MR. MCCABE: Can ldescribe my role in that?
MR. STEWART: ln that decision.
MR. MCCABE: Well, I participated in conversations in the consideration of
how to handle the Steele reporting with respect to the

lCA. And ultimately it

ended up being included in attachment A rather than in the main body of the
report.
MR. STEWART: Why was it included as an attachment? Do you know?

MR. MCCABE: lt was included in as an attachment

-

MR. STEWART: Rather than in the body.

MR. MCCABE: Because we saw it differently, and I think the rest of the lC
saw it differently than the intelligence that was included in the report.
MR. STEWART: Differently as in less credible?

MR. MCCABE: I think yes, we were not as confident about its credibility as
we were with the other intelligence that we included in the report, largely based on
the fact that it was derived from subsources who we had yet to identify.

MR. STEWART: Would you describe yourself as more comfortable with

I

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115

the dossier than you were at that time?

MR. MCCABE: I'm sorry?
MR. STEWART: Are you more comfortable with the credibility of the

dossier than you were at this time when it was included in annex A

-

MR. MCCABE: You mean, am I more comfortable with the credibility today

than I was when?
MR. STEWART:

Yes.

Do you think it's more credible now than you

believed it was at that time?
MR. MCCABE: I think that our folks have done a fair amount of work on
trying to track down and vet the information in the Steele reporting since the time

-

MR. STEWART: Has that work made you more comfortable and more
believing in its credibility?
MR. MCCABE: I think generally, yes, but I can't speak to the specifics.

I

understand the amount of work that we have placed and

MR. STEWART: Let me ask you to follow up on

that.

What do you know

now -- because you just said you are more comfortable in its credibility

- what

have you learned that made you more comfortable, more believing of its credibility
now that you didn't know now because of the hard work of your agents?

MR. MCCABE: I think that our folks have done a solid job in shedding light

And I think that that work has not
exposed any weaknesses or failures in the reporting.
MR. STEWART: So can you give me an example of

-

MR.MCCABE:lcannot,sir.l'llhavetorelyontheIndother
witnesses to do that for you.

I

 I
MR. STEWART: All

116

right. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

MR. GOWDY: SpecialAgent McCabe, I have got 4 minutes. I don't think
it's really fair to you to start a line of inquiry and then conclude in 4 minutes. So

I

am going to shoot it over to Adam and then come back when he is through.
MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MR. SCHIFF: Mr. McCabe, I don't want to get into specific questions about

the sources, but to the degree that you have been able to identify the sources, are
they in a position such that the information that's attributed to them they would be
situated to be able to report?

MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. SCHIFF: Let me go back to what I had been asking you about just for

clarification. One of the things we are charged with doing is looking into the
government's response to the Russia active measures campaign.
lf the FBI Director was let go as a way of influencing that, that's obviously a

pret$ key issue for us.
And along those lines, if the memo that was -- memos that were written
were written with an eye towards providing a cover for the true explanation for the
firing, that's of significance to us.
lf I understand correctly, you are not invoking privilege today, but you are
declining to answer questions that involve information gathered as a result of
conversations with the President and the deputy attorney general.
MR. BAKER: Excuse

me.

Can ljust consult on that to make sure what

we are invoking?
MR, SCHIFF:

Yeah.

My understanding was you are not invoking

privilege, but you are saying that you are at this point not authorized to discuss

I

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177

that, and you are not foreclosing that you could seek authorization to discuss that.
MR. BROWER: I think in prior testimony the Attorney General and the
deputy attorney general both indicated they don't have authorization to talk about
their communications with the President. And we are in the same place here.
We don't have authorization.
MR. SCHIFF: Well, in the case of the Attorney General, the Attorney

Generalwould be the one to authorize the Attorney General, unless the President
is seeking to invoke privilege. Are you aware of any invocation by the President

of executive privilege?
MR. MCCABE: Me?
MR. SCHIFF: Well, you or counsel. I need to know whether you're

refusing to answer these questions on the basis of a claim of executive privilege
by the President or whether there is some other basis.

MR. BROWER: To my knowledge, the President has not

* the issue is not

that we are invoking. The issue is we don't have authorization to disclose. And
without authorization to disclose, we cannot.
MR. SCHIFF: Authorization from whom?

MR. BROWER: lt would be authorization from the White House.
MR. SCHIFF: Okay. We will have to pursue this, because thafs not how
the executive privilege works. But in any event, lwon't belabor it.
Let me turn to the subject of text messages, if I could. There is an ongoing

Department of Justice inspector general investigalion of the handling of the email

investigation. ls that right?
MR. MCCABE: That's

true.

Yes.

MR. SCHIFF: And in the context of that investigation, the inspector

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118

general's offlce identified text messages that they thought may display a bias
among some of the agents involved?
MR. MCCABE: That's conect.
MR. SCHIFF: And those were brought to the attention of the special
counsel?
MR. MCCABE: I assume

so. They were brought

to my attention, and my

understanding is they were brought to the special counsel's attention at the same
time.
MR. SCHIFF: There were allegations last year that there was a bias within

the Bureau among some of the agents against Hillary Clinton. One article
referred to the FBI as Trumpland.
Do you know whether the lnspector General's investigation has also
uncovered text rnessages or other communications that indicate a bias moving in

the opposite direction, that is against Hillary Clinton?
MR. MCCABE: I am not aware of any other text messages coming to the

attention of or being investigated by the inspector general.
MR. SCHIFF: Now, when you say you are not aware of that, is that
because that information hasn't been shared with you or have you been informed
of the negative, that is the inspector general has told

you: We

have found no

evidence of a bias in the opposite direction?
MR. MCCABE: I have not been told that by the inspector general, just to
be

clear. I am stating that I have

not been notified that they are.

MR. SCHIFF: Well, let rne ask you

this.

The inspector general is doing

an investigation of how the Clinton email investigation was handled.
MR. MCCABE: That's right.

I

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119

MR. SCHIFF: Certain text messages have been disclosed to the press as

a result.
MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.
MR. SCHIFF: By a decision of the Department of Justice to do so.
MR. MCCABE: That's my understanding.
MR. SCHIFF: Other text messages that the inspector general may have

uncovered, or emails or other communications in the opposite direclion, have nol
been made public.
MR. MCCABE: That's my understanding.
MR. SCHIFF: lf they exist.
MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.
MR. SCHIFF: And presumably, the inspector general is looking at the
question of bias running in any direction, correct?

MR.MCCABE: Presumably.
MR. SCHIFF: Do you know why the decision was made to release some
text messages but potentially not release others?
MR. MCCABE: I do not.
MR. SCHIFF: Was the concern ever discussed at the Bureau that this
might give the public impression that, to the degree agents had opinions on the

Presidentialelection, they only ran in one direction?
MR. MCCABE: We didn't have that discussion.
MR. BAKER: Just to be clear, you didn't have that discussion?
MR. MCCABE: I didn't have that discussion.
MR. SCHIFF: ln your experience, is it an aberration to be disclosing
employee communications during the pendency of an inspector general

I

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120

investigation?

MR. MCCABE: I have never seen this happen before.
MR. SCHIFF: Has that caused consternation within the FBlwhy private

communications would be disclosed to the press even before the inspector
general's work is done?
MR. MCCABE: lfs hard for me to characterize what everybody's thinking.
Some people have definitely communicated that to me, that they are concerned
about the disclosure that took place and what that portends for future disclosures.
MR. SCHIFF: Did the Department seek your counsel as to whether these

should be made public?
MR. MCCABE: They did not seek my counsel, no.
MR. SCHIFF: You can see why I would be concemed with a partial
disctosure during the middle of an investigation, can you not?
MR. MCCABE:

ldo.

lsee

it.

Yes.

MR. SCHIFF: Let me go to one last subject matter and then turn it over to
my colleagues.

We have had testimony from some of the individuals affected by the issue
of the

I

 72t

MR. MCCABE

r

MR. SCHIFF:

MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SCHIFF:

MR, MCCABE:

MR. SCHIFF:

MR. SCHIFF:
MR. MCCABE:

MR. SCHIFF:

MR. MCCABE:

r

 L22

MR. BAKER: Best of your recollection today
MR. MCCABE: lcan't remember.
MR. SCHIFF

MR. MCCABE:
MR. SCHIFF:

MR. MCCABE:

@

l

I

 123

MR. MCCABE: ldid
MR. SCH]FF

MR. MCCABE

MR. SCHIFF:
MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir
MR. SCHIFF

MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir
MR. SCHIFF

MR. MCCABE

MR. SCHIFF

 I
MR. MCCABE

L24

That's right. Yes.

MR. SCHIFF:
MR. MCCABE

MR.MCCABE:

I

I

MR. SCHIFF:

r
MR. MCCABE:

MR. SCHIFF:

MR. MCCABE

That's correct.

MR. SCHIFF:

MR. MCCABE:

I

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125

MR. SCHIFF

MR. MCCABE:

I

I
MR. SCHIFF:

MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SCHIFF: At this point let me yield to Mr. Castro.
MR. CASTRO:

I

just have really one line of questioning for

you.

Do you

know when did Director Comey first feelthat his job might be threatened under

President Trump?
MR. MCCABE: I don't know the answer to

that.

I mean, I think we, as

I

have stated, were concerned by the interactions he had had with the President.

I

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126

think he captured those con@rns accurately in his testimony and in the memos.
MR. CASTRO: Do you recallwhen the first interaction was?
MR. MCCABE: His first interaction with the President? I don't. I think it

predated the first memo, which was as a result of the ICA briefing in New York.
But I can't remember exactly what that was.
MR. CASTRO: Was it before or after Michael Flynn was interviewed about
his conversations with the Russians?
MR. MCCABE: Did you remember the date of the lCA briefing?

The ICA briefing was January
24th

6th.

The interview of General Flynn was the

MR. CASTRO: Of January?
MR. MCCABE:

- of January.

MR. CASTRO: Okay.

MR. BAKER: Somewhere in there.
MR. MCCABE: lt was definitely the 24th, because I saw him again on the

271h. That's correct.
MR. CASTRO:

Yeah. After the President had taken office.

MR. MCCABE: The interview of General Flynn, of course.
MR. CASTRO: I guess what's kind of odd here is that the FBI goes and
interviews General Flynn and decides that he doesn't seem to be deceptive in his

account of his conversation with the Russians. The FBI seems to give this person
a lot of benefit of the doubt, which I think seems unusual for the FBl.

So I guess this is a scenario that I need to ask you about, because I think
it's

- to be thorough we got to pursue it.

You have an FBI Director who wants to

stay in his job, a President who is threatening to

I

-

basically issuing a veiled threat

 I

L27

to take away his job if he doesn't let Mike Flynn off the hook. And then the FBI is
saying, well, this guy didn't really do anything, he didn't seem like he was lying.
The FBI Director comes and describes that to us.
One could say that perhaps the FBI Director was influenced by Mr. Trump's

threats and was trying to keep his job. What do you make of that?
MR. MCCABE: I don't think that's accurate. I think a lot has been made,
certainly we have talked about it this afternoon, about the interviewefs
impressions of General Flynn on the day of the interview. And it is true that they
returned to the office and said, hey, we didn't
obviously

lying.

-

he didn't seem like he was

But we knew that day that his statements were inconsistent with

And I should also point out that the team at the Department of Justice
was -- did not credit the

- didn't put much weight on the inlerviewer's assessment.

So there was really no change in

status. There was no backing off of the

investigation on General Flynn as a result of the interviewe/s impression.
MR. CASTRO: But that decision was not the FBI's, that was the Justice
Department's, correct?
MR. MCCABE: No, our investigation continued, despite the fact that we
had this somewhat anomalous reaction by the interviewers.
MR. CASTRO: ln your career, how often have you seen FBI agents go to

an interview, know ahead of time that somebody has said something, hear that
person describe something that's inaccurate, and then come away and say they
weren't really lying?
MR. MCCABE: lt was

odd.

lt was not the reaction I expected from them.

But we had -- we knew we had a lot of work left to

I

do.

There were all sort of

 I

L28

steps that we hadn't taken yet, like we were pursuing phone records and toll
records at that

time. There were all kinds of really very basic foundational

investigative activity that had to take place and we were committed to getting that
done.
MR. CASTRO: Was it your perception that Mr. Comey was an honest
broker throughout this process?
MR. MCCABE: Mr. Comey?
MR. CASTRO:

Yes.

Director Comey.

MR. MCCABE: Of course. Yes.
MR. CASTRO:

Okay. lyield back to the ranking member.

MR. SCHIFF: Mr. Swalwell.
MR. SWALWELL: Thank you, Deputy Director. And thanks for your
service to the FBl.
MR. MCCABE: Thank you.
MR. SWALWELL: Mr. McCabe, were any of the sources that Mr. Schiff
alluded to that informed the Steele report that you were knowledgeable of, were
any of them U.S. citizens or U.S. persons?
MR. MCCABE: Any of the sources that informed the
MR. SWALWELL: That was a clumsy

way.

leporting -

Earlier you totd Mr. Schiff that

you were familiar with some of the sources for the Steele

dossier. ls that right?

MR. MCCABE: I can't sit here and tellyou individuals' identities. ldon't
know that level of detail.

But ldon't -- I am
not sure of their USPER status.
MR. SWALWELL: Do you know if any of them are U.S. citizens?

I

 I

t29

MR. MCCABE: I don't know that.
MR. SWALWELL: And that would be important for compelling them to

testify in a criminaljury

-

a grand jury or jury trial, right?

MR. MCCABE: Yeah.
MR. SWALWELL: Director Comey told our committee on March 2nd that
no decision had been made up untilthat point as to whether Michael Flynn should
be charged. ls that your recollection of the chronology, was that as of March 2nd
no decision had been made which the FBlto recommend charging or by the

Department of Justice to pursue charges?
MR. MCCABE: That's correct.

MR. SWALWELL: So would it be fair to say that on February 1Sth, when
Director Comey met with President Trump one on one in the Oval Office, that a
decision had not been made yet as to whether or not a false statement had been
made by MichaelFlynn?
MR. MCCABE: I think that's accurate, yeah.
MR. SWALWELL: And at that point, at least to your knowledge, agents

would have been collecting other information outside of just their observation of
General Flynn when they interviewed him?
MR. MCCABE: That's absolutely right. As I have stated, even following
the interview on the 24th, we had a lot of work left to do in that investigation.

I

don't believe that status would have changed materially by February 1Sth.
MR. SWALWELL: FTom

, that was the first day that the

investigation was opened, up until specialcounseltook over the investigation,
when had a grandjuryfirst been convened?
MR. MCCABE: Hmm. Okay. So I am being told I can't talk about the

I

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130

grand jury matters.
MR. SWALWELL:

was convened betwe"n

Okay. Sure. Can you tell us whether a grand jury

I

and when specialcounsel?

MR. MCCABE: I can't answer

that.

I'm being told

- I'm sorry, l'm being

told I can't answer that.
MR. SWALWELL: Prior to special counsel taking over the Russia
investigation, was Attorney General Sessions interviewed with respect to the

Russia investigation by the FBI or Department of Justice?
MR. MCCABE: Was Attorney General Sessions interviewed by the FBI?

MR. SWALWELL: R()ht.
MR. MCCABE: Not to my knowledge.

I

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131

[7:05 p.m.]
MR. SWALWELL: And you are familiar with the

MR. MCCABE: I'm familiar with those reports.
MR. SWALWELL: And to your knowledge, prior to Special Counsel being
appointed, Attorney General Sessions or Senator Sessions had not been
interviewed by the FBI about those contacts or his testimony to the Senate about
not having those contacts?

MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SWALWELL: How many witnesses have been interviewed by the FBI
with respect to the Russia investigation prior to Special Counsel being appointed?
MR. MCCABE: How many witnesses had been interviewed by the FBI
prior to the involvement of the Special Counsel? I don't know the answer to that.

MR. SWALWELL: ls it something that you can give us a ballpark figure on.
MR. MCCABE: I wouldn't feel comfortable making -MR. SWALWELL: And I ask only because Mr. Schiff alluded to

Mr. Papadopoulos's plea on January 27th, which is an interesting
me rephrase

that.

-

I'm sorry, let

Mr. Papadopoulous' first interview was January 27,2417, as

the statement of facts informs us, which was also the day that you testified that
Mr. Trump had called Director Comey and invited him to

dinner. ls that right?

MR. MCCABE: I don't have independent knowledge of exactly the date
that Mr. Papadopoulous was interviewed. I haven't reviewed the charging
document that you are refening to.
MR. SWALWELL: Have you seen the statement of facts?

MR. MCCABE: I have not.

I

 I
MR. SWALWELL:

L32

Okay. lf indeed Mr. Papadopoulous was interviewed

by the FBI on January 27 ,2017, and that was the sarne day that Mr. Trump invited

Director Comey to the \A/hite House for dinner, would it be important to the FBI to
know whether Mr. Papadopoulous had told individuals on the campaign or
individuals at the While House that he had been approached by the FBI?
MR. CONAWAY: Four minutes.

MR. MCCABE: lt would be important for us to know who Mr.
Papadopoulous had shared the facts of that interview

with.

Yes.

MR. SWALWELL: And were you guys up on a wire with Mr.

Papadopoulous at that point, January 27,2017?
MR. MCCABE:

MR. SWALWELL: To your knowledge, was Mr. Papadopoulous the first
person that was contacted by the FBI with respect to the Russia investigation as

far as an in-person interuiew?
MR. MCCABE: I don't know the

answer. lt's possible that Mr. Flynn was.

MR. SWAL\I/ELL: Okay, that's right, earlier about the Kislyak
MR. MCCABE: The 24th,

right.

-

But there could have been others.

That's just giving you my best guess.
MR. SWALWELL: Do you know what time of day Mr. Papadopoulous was

contacted?
MR. MCCABE:

ldo

not.

MR. SWALWELL: ls there a practice of when to contact a witness if you

want to interview them without thern being able to prepare?
MR. MCCABE: I mean, that's allvery case and fact specific.

I

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133

MR. SWALWELL: Sure.

MR. MCCABE: lt could be wildly different case to

case.

Depends on

where the person is and, you know, whether or not you want to approach them at
work, or near their work, or away from their home, or -- it's a lot of different factors
go into that.
MR. SWALWELL: You're familiar that in January 2017 President-Elect
Trump tweeted publicly complaining about leaks coming out of the lntelligence

Community. Are you familiar with those tweets?
MR. MCCABE: Generally, I don't

- there's a lot of tweets. I can't say that

I remember that one specifically, but I'm generally familiar with his

-

MR. SWALWELL: Are you familiar with him comparing the lntelligence

Community to Nazi Germany?
MR. MCCABE: I remember that one.

MR. SWALWELL: And your testimony to us today is that
when the investigation on a member of the Trump campaign opened?
MR. MCCABE:

was the date that we opened the umbrella

investigation looking into the possibility of Russian influence on the campaign,
MR. SWALWELL: And that included looking at a member of the Trump

campaign. ls that conect?
MR, MCCABE: Sure, so from that umbrella case then we opened the

I

that went along wilh it within the next few days.

MR. SWALWELL: And just about a week prior to opening that
investigation, Donald Trump had become his party's nominee for President. ls
that right?
MR. MCCABE: I don't know the date that he got the nomination, but lwill

I

IS

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134

take your word for it.

MR. SWALWELL: And to your knowledge, is it accurate to say that from
until November 8th, when Donald Trump was elected President,
there was no press reporting or any leaks about any FBI investigation into

anybody on his campaign?
MR. MCCABE: Yeah, to the best of my recollection,

no.

Not that I'm

aware of.

MR. SWALWELL: How much rnore time do I have?
MR. CONAWAY: One minute.

MR. SWALWELL: Okay

MR. MCCABE: Yes.

MR. SWALWELL:

MR. MCCABE:

But I'm not aware of our contact with her on that issue
MR. SWALWELL: And how would you assess the character of James

Comey from your knowledge of working wlth him?
MR. MCCABE: Of James Comey?
MR. SWALWELL: Yes.
MR. MCCABE: He is a man of the absolute highest character. I hold him
in incredibly high esteem.
MR. SWALWELL: Thank

you.

I

I yield back.

 I

135

MR. GOWDY: SpecialAgent McCabe, do you need a break?

MR. MCCABE: I think I'm okay.
MR. GOWDY: All

ma*ed as exhibit

right.

I'm going to hand general counselwhat's been

1.

[McCabe Exhibit No.

1

Was marked for identification.l
MR. GOWDY: lt is not marked very fancifully, but I wanted you to have it.
I think it is what Mr. Schiff was asking you about, and it purports to be, and I have

no reason to believe it is not, it is a written opening statement, for want of a better

phraseology, by Director Comey for the Senate Select Committee.
MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MR. GOWDY: Before we get to that, I want to wrap up Michael

Flynn. lt

is not lost on me that he went into a courtroom, raised his hand, said I admit to all
of the elements of the offense and pled guilty. So, you know, part of why we're
relitigating it, it may seem meaningless, he admitted to

it.

Whether or not

anybody else thought he was lying or not, he said he was.
I do think it is important to understand the

chronology. lf I have

it right, in

July of 2016, a matter or an investigation was begun into Michael Flynn.
MR. MCCABE: I think it was August, that first week of August but
MR. GOWDY: All

-

right. August of 2016.

MR. MCCABE: Uh-huh.
MR. GOWDY: Did the Bureau interview him at any point between August

and late December of 2016?
MR. MCCABE: Not that I'm aware of.

MR. GOWDY: Why not?

I

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136

MR. MCCABE: lt's not uncommon that you would not immediately go out

and interview the subject of an investigation.
MR. GOWDY: You are

correct. lt is not uncommon. Director Comey

said the Bureau was on the verge of closing the matter at the end of
December 2016. Do you agree or disagree with

-

MR. MCCABE: I think that, to the best of my recollection, our assessment
by the kind of middle of December was that we really had not substantiated

anything particularly significant against General Flynn.
MR. GOWDY: So would it be fair to say the Bureau was contemplating
closing the investigation?
MR. MCCABE: I don't think a closure would have been soon, but we were

keeping a close eye on what.kind of progress were we making and I think our
assessment at that time was we weren't making a lot of progress.
MR. GOWDY: Did you have plans to interview him before you closed the
matter?
MR. MCCABE: I wouldn't characterize it as

plans. That would be kind of

the normal way to do that, but we weren't in the planning

-

the closing planning

phase.
MR. GOWDY: Why did the Bureau interview General Flynn when they

did? What was the reasoning

for the interview?

MR. MCCABE: Because the

- I'm trying to reassemble

this chronology in

my mind, but to the best of my recollection, we interviewed General Flynn at that
time because of the existence of the

-

of his conversation, the record of his

conversation with Ambassador Kislyak had become widely known through press
reporting.

I

 I
And at that point, there was really

737

- there was no - that part of the

investigation had become so widely known there was no -. there was no reason to
continue, kind of, in a covert investigative posture and so we wanted to sit down
with General Flynn and understand, kind of, what his thoughts on that
conversation were.
MR. GOWDY: Was he interviewed because the Vice President relied upon
information from him in a nationalinterview?
MR. MCCABE:

No. I don't remember that being a motivating factor

behind the interview.
MR. GOWDY: So he would have been interviewed even separate and
apart from the fact that former Acting Attorney General Yates believe that he had

mislead the Vice President, and that needed to be addressed?
MR. MCCABE: He would have been interviewed either way.
MR. GOWDY:

Okay. Look at the committee exhibit

1.

I think it is a

7-page document. The first page is not numbered. Do you have that in front
you?

MR.MCCABE:

ldo.

ldo.

MR. GOWDY: Go to the very bottom, last paragraph, kind of in the

middle

-

pardon me?

MR. SCHIFF: What document are you referring to?
MR. GOWDY: The same one you've been using

Select opening. Yeah, you inspired me to go get
ln the middle of the last paragraph

MR. MCCABE: Of the first page?
MR. GOWDY: First page.

I

-

it.

allday.

The Senate

So thank you for doing that.

 I

138

MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MR. GOWDY: 'We also agreed I would do it alone to minimize potential

embarrassment to the President-elect."
What potentialembarrassment were you worried about?
MR. MCCABE: Now, I'm reading this for the first

time.

But as I read this

paragraph, it appears to me that Director Comey is referring to the briefing that
they participated in at Trump Tower over the

lCA. lt is agreed

that

-

and I think

this is referring, my best understanding is that he is likely referring to the concems
that ! talked about earlier this evening, where we were concemed about talking
about this sort of salacious material with the President-elect and we didn't want to

do it in a way that, you know, might make him uncomfortable.
MR. GOWDY: Well, at the risk of asking leading questions because I don't

want to prompt an objection from my friend from California, but I don't think this
point matters a whote lot, not only was he the President-elect, he is a husband and
a father, and some of the allegations in the dossier are pretty salacious and

embarrassing and incendiary.
MR. MCCABE: Yes sir.
MR. GOWDY: What Director Comey was refening to as potentially

embarrassing would be embarrassing for any man in that situation?
MR. MCCABE: Of course, that's

right. That's

right.

MR. GOWDY: All right, now -MR. SCHIFF: I have no objection to that line of questioning.
MR. GOWDY: Flip to the second page kind of in the middle, it's the

paragraph that begins "in that context."
MR. MCCABE: Okay.

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139

MR. GOWDY: "l discussed with the FBI's leadership team whether

I

should be prepared to assure President-Elect Trump we were not investigating
him personally. That was true; we did not have an open counterintelligence case
on him."
So if it is true that someone is not the target of an investigation, what is
wrong with asking that you say so publicly?
MR. MCCABE: Well, our way of handling these things is that he we don't

confinn or deny the existence of an investigation. And we get this queslion

frequently. And to essentially, go down the road of confirming the nonexistence
of a case, you put yourself in a position of essenlially ruling out the negative, and
therefore identifying the positive. Does that make sense?
MR. GOWDY: lt does, and I think the Bureau may have fallen a little bit

into that trap in the fall of 2016 when Director Comey testified that a matter was
ended and he thought that he had assured Congress that he would alert them if
that changed. He did alert them in a very public way with a letter that my
Democrat colleagues, probably rightfully take exception to both of those letters.
So I do get the reason it's not

done.

My point is not to quarrel with the

Bureau's policy. My point is this is somgone who has been assured privately he
is not the target of an investigation.
MR. MCCABE: Right.
MR. GOWDY: ls it unreasonable for that person who is not a former

Federalprosecutor, not a former U.S. Attorney not a Bureau agent to say, okay, if
that's true, why can't you say that publicly?
MR. MCCABE: ls it unreasonable for him to ask that?
MR. GOWDY: ls it is unreasonable for a person to say if I'm not the target

I

 I
of an investigation, can you at least let people know

140

that? I get why you didn't.

I'm not quaneling with your policy.
MR. MCCABE: Yeah, I mean, I think in the abstract way that you have

defined the question,

no.

But that request didn't come under those

terms. The

request came to Director Comey in the context of a very clear frustration with the

existence of the Russia investigation writ large.
MR. GOWDY: But

why? Why was he frustrated? Was

he frusfrated

because he thought he was going to jail, or was he frustrated because it had
placed a cloud over what he perceived to be the first few months of his
Presidency?
MR. MCCABE: ! don't
relayed to us

know. I can only refer to what Director Comey

-

MR. GOWDY: Which was what?
MR. MCCABE:

-

which was that he made the statement about the cloud

over his work.
MR. GOWDY:

Right. "lfelt compelled to document my first conversation

with the President-elect in a memo."
Now I think you and I had discussed earlier that Director Comey's impetus

behind memorializing this was the frequency of the contact he was having with the

Presidentelect. This seems to suggest he began to memorialize him with the
very first conversation. ls that the way you read it?
MR. MCCABE: That's what he is saying here in this paragraph.
MR. GOWDY: So it would not have been because he was concerned
about the frequency of the interaction with the President-elect because he began

to memorialize it from the very first conversation.

I

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141

It's not a trick question.
MR. MCCABE: I don't know that -- I can't

- I don't know that I can agree

with

that.

l'm not 100 percent sure that this was actually the first conversation that

they

had.

I think they may have had conversations before

this.

Maybe this was

their first face-to-face conversation. I don't know the answer to that.
MR. GOWDY: Can we agree 100 percent that the Director himself said, "l
felt compelled to document my first conversation with the President-elect in a
memo."
MR. MCCABE: That is clearly what he has said in this document.
MR. GOWDY: All

right.

Fair enough. Page

3. You see a little

description of a small oval table in the second paragraph. Two Navy stewards.
MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. GOWDY: What you don't see in this, but you will see in the memos is
a conversation that Director Comey had with those two Navy stewards about

height requirements and whether or not you're eligible for rnilitary service because
of height requirements.
So that, who you wouldn't be surprised, forrner U.S. attorney,

former -- current head of the FBl, detail of a small oval table, detail of height
requirements, center of the green room. What I don't see in here is him
representing that he felt pressure to drop something.

Am I missing in this memo or any of the other memos where he
documented that he felt like the President was asking him to drop an ongoing

criminalprobe?
MR. MCCABE: I can't say why he included that detail in this document or
in his memos or why he didn't include other --

I

 t42

I

MR. GOWDY: In the grand scheme of things, if you are looking back on a

conversation with the President of the United States, if you felt pressure to drop an
ongoing probe, is it unreasonabb to believe that that would have made its way into
a memo?
MR. MCCABE: To the best of my recollection, sir, from the conversation

I

had with him, not from the documents, his concern from this interaction at dinner
regarded the President's comments about loyalty. That's the best of my
recollection about this.
MR. GOWDY:

Right. And when we get to that, which is on the next page,

"l paused, and then said,'You willget that from me.' As I wrote in the memo

I

created immediately after the dinner, it is possible we understood the phrase
'honest loyalty'

d

ifferently."

ls it possible that they understood the phrases differently? Comey seemed
to think they could have.
MR. MCCABE: I mean, l'm not going to reinterpret the former Directo/s
words

MR. GOWDY: Well, he said it himself. He allowed for the possibility that

the President may have interpreted what he was asking differently from the way
that the former Director interpreted it.

MR. MCCABE: He did.
MR. GOWDY: All right next paragraph. "During the dinner, the President
returned to the salacious material I had briefed him on about January the 6th."
And we will skip

down. "He said he was considering ordering me to

investigate the alleged incident to prove it didn't happen." I correctly replied that

he should give that some additionalthought. And then we have it again "because

I

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143

it might create a narrative that we were investigating him personally, which we

weren't."
Again, this is not a former United States Attorney in the Southern District of

York. This is not an FBI agent. lt's not in this, but it is in the memos,

of New

I would invite your attention to the

and

memos. This was someone who was being

accused of some pretty unusual sexual matters in public. So is it really
unreasonable for a husband and a father to say, if you can get me out from under
this cloud, will you do

if

ls that unreasonable? lf the cloud to him was the

salaciousness of the criminal of the sexual maters, is that unreasonable to ask
that?
MR. MCCABE: You're asking me to speculate as to what the President
was referring

to? ls that right?

MR. GOWDY: No, I'm

not.

!'m asking you to do no more speculation than

the other side has asked you to do over what cloud the President thought he was
under.

You and I agree he is not the target of any counterintelligence or crirninal
probe?
MR. MCCABE: I don't believe that he made the comments about the cloud
in this context. My understanding, and based on my conversations with Director

Comey, is his reference to the cloud over his Presidency was rnade in the phone
calls in March and April, and in that context, Director Comey understood that he
was referring to the investigation, not the mentions of the sexua! activity from the
Steele reporting.
MR. GOWDY: All right, but he's not the target of an ongoing Bureau
criminal investigation. Agreed? He wasn't at the time?

I

 I

744

MR. MCCABE: He was not at the time.
MR. GOWDY: He was not the target of an ongoing counterintelligence

probe by the Bureau?
MR. MCCABE: His campaign was.
MR. GOWDY: He was not.

MR. MCCABE: Conect. But as I've already discussed, there was kind of
an ongoing issue that we were grappling with, specifically in the context of
confirming that he was not under investigation because we weren't sure that that
was 100 percent accurate since we were investigating the activity of his campaign
and activity that, by virtue of the fact that it was his campaign, could be ultimately

attributed to him.
MR. GOWDY: ls there any taw or statute that prohibits the Bureau from

confirming or not confirming the existence of an investigation?
MR. MCCABE: l'm not aware of a law or statute that

-

MR. GOWDY: lt's a policy.
MR. MCCABE: lt's a policy.
MR. GOWDY: lt's a Department of Justice policy, probably for lots of really

good reasons, but it's a policy, right?
MR. MCCABE: Thafs my understanding.
MR. GOWDY: So when you were the Acting Director of the FBl, could
have done so if you wanted to, what would have been the repercussions?

MR. MCCABE: I'm not sure there would not have been repercussions.
MR. GOWDY: From whom? Who can discipline the head of the FBI?

MR. MCCABE: As the Acting Director of the FBl, I think l'm -- l think the
lnspector General likely could have taken issue and investigated.

I

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145

MR. GOWDY: He could have looked at it, but l'm not sure there was much
he coutd have done about it.

MR. MCCABE: The Deputy Attorney General. I mean, I reserve my
comments about the lG.
MR. GOWDY: All

right.

Flip to page

5.

"The President began by saying

Flynn hadn't done anything wrong in speaking with the Russians."
MR. MCCABE: I'm sorry, where are you?
MR. GOWDY: Top of page 5.

MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MR. GOWDY: "The President began by saying Flynn hadn't done anything

wrong in speaking with the Russians."
Are you aware of any criminal code section that would have been
implicated by Flynn talking to the Russian Ambassador during the transition
period?
MR. MCCABE: Otherthan the Logan Act, no.
MR. GOWDY: I'm laughing only because we spent most of the day

discussing two statutes that have never ever been enforced

-

negligence standard, and the classified email, and the Logan

so the gross

Act.

Has there

been a prosecution under either one of those?

MR. MCCABE: Not that l'm aware of.
MR. GOWDY: All

right.

So, absent wanting to make new law, you can't

think of a criminal code section other than the Logan Act that could have been
implicated by Flynn talking to the Russians in the transition period?
MR. MCCABE: I haven't done a legal analysis on any possible criminal
implications of his contiact with his conversation with Ambassador Kislyak, but of

I

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146

course, that was not the subject of our investigation. Our investigation was to try

to determine the substance and the impact of General Flynn's interactions and
relationships with Russian Govemment officials.
MR. GOWDY:
MR. MCCABE
MR. GOWDY:
MR. MCCABE

I-

MR. GOWDY: You had it shortly after, right?
MR. MCCABE: Sure.
MR. GOWDY: I assume you had
New York Times had

it.

it.

The Washington Post had

it. The

I assume the Bureau had it.

MR. MCCABE: We did.
MR. GOWDY: Third paragraph. "The President then returned to the topic

of Mike Flynn saying: "He is a good guy and he has been through a lot."'
ls that obstruction?
MR. MCCABE: I'm not going to -- you're asking me to give you legal
interpretation of that statement kind of in the abstract sense, and I don't think I can

do that.
MR. GOWDY: Well let me ask you

this:

How long have you been in law

enforcement?
MR. MCCABE: Twenty-one years.
MR. GOWDY: Have you ever had anyone approach you on behalf of a

defendant that is about to be sentenced or someone that you're investigating and
putting in a good word for them?

I

 I

t47

MR. MCCABE: I can't think of an instance off the top of my head, but it's
certainly possible.
MR. GOWDY: You must have been out of a field office for a

white. You

must have been at headquarters for a long time because it's not unusualfor
someone to say, hey, I hope this person doesn't get the book thrown at them.
They are not a bad person. lt happens at every courtroom across America allday
long.

MR. MCCABE: I'm sure it does, sir.
MR. GOWDY: Well, is there anything eye-catching to you in the President

telling the former Director, "He is a good guy and has been through a lot"?
MR. MCCABE: I think the facl that they are discussing the ongoing FBI
investigation is troubling to me.
MR. GOWDY: Troubling because of

- troubling in what way? The

President is the head of the executive branch, right?
MR. MCCABE: Yes, he is.
MR. GOWDY: Does the President have pardon powers?

MR. MCCABE: He does.
MR. GOWDY: Are they plenary?

MR. MCCABE: Certainly.
MR. GOWDY: Can he pardon someone even before you get a conviction?
MR. MCCABE: That's my understanding.
MR. GOWDY: So the head of the executive branch who has the full ability

to pardon anyone even before a conviction, and you were lroubled that he said
he's a good guy whose been through a lot.

MR. MCCABE: Yes, troubled because it is not, in my experience, it's not

I

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148

common the President of the United States to weigh in on a specific criminal
matter despite the fact that he has pardon power.
MR. GOWDY: Were you equally troubled
a couple of years

ago?

- did you watch the Super Bowl

Did you some President Obama's interview with Bill

O'Reilly.
MR. MCCABE: I don't remember that.
MR. GOWDY: Were you equally troubled when he said there was not an

smidgeon of corruption during the pendency of an IRS investigation?
MR. MCCABE: I don't remember that comment, sir.
MR. GOWDY: You don't remember it.

MR. MCCABE: ldon't.
MR. GOWDY: lt got a lot of

play. The President

of the United States

-

MR. MCCABE: Uh-huh.
MR. GOWDY:

-

in the middle of an ongoing probe, said there's not a

smidgeon of conuption.
What about when he commented on Secretary Clinton while you all were in
the middle of investigating the email server? How did you take that?
MR. MCCABE: lt was conceming to us.
MR. GOWDY: Not concerning enough to put it in a

memo. Did you bring

it to anybody's attention, take it to the AG's attention?

MR. MCCABE: I'm not aware that President Obama expressed that to the
Director of the

FBl.

So I think the situation was a little bit different.

MR. GOWDY:

How? How is it different to say to the entire country as

opposed to saying it to the head of the FBI?
MR. MCCABE: Because they think of the circumstances of a private

I

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149

one-on-one meeting with the President of the United States and the Director of the
FBI is kind of a unique and rare occurrence. I don't think Director Comey had any

such interactions with President Obama. Not that l'm aware

of. And certainly,

nol about that statement. I would have heard that.
MR. GOWDY: Did he take his concerns to anyone at the Department of

Justice?
MR. MCCABE: Ultimately, he talked to the acting Deputy Attorney
General.
MR. GOWDY: Who was that?

MR. MCCABE: Acting, Dana Boente.
MR. GOWDY: About this, about feeling the pressure?
MR. MCCABE: I mean, I know that he had a conversalion with Mr. Boente

after the first phone call in March to discuss his discomfort with these

-

with the

conversations that he had been having with the President, and also to let DOJ
know to try to slay within the requirements of the contacts policy.
MR. GOWDY: "l understood the President to be requesting that we drop

any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his
conversation with the Russian Ambassador in Decernber. I did not understand

the President to be talking about the broader investigation into Russia or possible
links to his campaign. I could be wrong, but I took him to be focusing on what just

happened wilh Flynn's departure and the controversy around his account of his
phone

calls.

Regardless, it was very concerning given the FBI's role as an

independent investigative agency."
I

agree. There are an independent investigative agency. I would invite

your attention to not just this portion of the memo that is including his opening

I

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150

statement, but all eight of them because I have read them

twice.

Have you read

them, alleight?
MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. GOWDY: Did you read the section where he said it wasn't proper for
you to be having this conversation with

me.

lt should be done from you to the

Department of Justice and then down to me,

MR. MCCABE: I remember that.
MR. GOWDY: All

right.

So we are quarreling about the method by which

a message is communicated? He had no problem if the conversation had gone

from himself to the Department of Justice, down to the head of the

FBl.

So was it

the conversation that was improper, or was it who he was having it with?
MR. MCCABE: I don't know that you can separate those two things.
MR. GOWDY: But he

did.

Because he laid out the path by which that

could be communicated. Agreed?
MR. MCCABE:

Yeah. That's the path thafs required by the White House

contacts policy.
l'm sorry.
MR. GOWDY: March 31st, page

6.

Middle. He described the Russian

na
cloud" that was impairing his ability to act on behalf of the
investigation as quote

country. He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with
hookers in Russia, and had always assumed that he was being recorded.
So then we have this phrase, "cloud," and then one sentence removed from

the salacious allegations of sexual misconduct. You don't think there is any way
the cloud could have been a personalfamilial cloud, and

-

MR. MCCABE: Well, I'm just reading the document. He said he

I

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151

described the Russia investigation as a cloud. So I assume that's what he's
referring to.
MR. GOWDY: Yeah, but part of the Russia investigation involved a

dossier that had some very salacious allegations in it, didn't

it? I mean, I know

you have not covered it before, I would invite you to go back and reflect on those
eight memos again. I've read thern.
l'm not defending what the President asked and the manner in which he did

it.

I don't think it is unreasonable for a husband and a father who is not the target

of an ongoing probe to

ask: Can you let other people know that?

I think there's

one memo where he makes specific reference to questions he was getting from
his wife and his

kids.

Do you remember that one?

MR. MCCABE: Generally.
MR. GOWDY:

Allright. When did you learn that, is it SpecialAgent

Page? ls she an agent?
MR. MCCABE: No, sir, she is an attorney.
MR. GOWDY: When did you learn that Ms. Page and SpecialAgent
Strzok were involved in a relationship with one another?

MR. MCCABE: That would have been July 27th ot 2O17.
MR. GOWDY: 2017?

MR. MCCABE: That's right.
MR. GOWDY: So you didn't know any in 2016 when the texts that Adam

referenced were produced to us, you weren't aware of it then?
MR. MCCABE: I don't think the -- I don't think the texts were produced to

you in 2016.
MR. GOWDY: No, no,

no.

The texts were from 2016. They were

I

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152

produced a week ago.
MR. MCCABE:

Right. No, sir, I didn't have any knowledge of those texts

until the lnspector General shared them with me on the 27th of July.

there.

MR. GOWDY: I'm with you

I'm wondering about knowledge of the

relationship.

MR, MCCABE: I did not know about the relationship untilthe lnspector
General said that, through his review of the texts, that they thought there was a
personal relationship.
MR. GOWDY: All

right.

And just to kind of set the

scene. March

of 2016, was the investigation into Secretary Clinton's email server still ongoing?
MR. MCCABE: March o12016? Certainly.
MR. GOWDY: This is Page

-

"God Trump," there's no punctuation

between the two, but I'm assuming she wasn't using those words together. "God
Trump is a loathsome human." What does the word "loathsome" mean?
MR. MCCABE: Pretty bad.
MR. GOWDY: Reprehensible?
MR. MCCABE: Sure.
MR. GOWDY: Is that fair?
MR. MCCABE: That's fair.
MR. GOWDY: And Stzok said, "Yeah, he may

win." This

is March 26th

and was Stzok involved in the investigation of Secretary Clinton's email?
MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir, he was.
MR. GOWDY: What role did he play?

MR. MCCABE: He was

-

he had a leadership role over the investigation.

He's, you know, the person right beneath the AD of the Counterintelligence

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Division.

MR. GOWDY: Did she have a role in the investigation?
MR. MCCABE: She did as kind of an adviser, and someone who was on
the team that was kind of considering what we were doing in the case.
MR. GOWDY: We are still in March of
he's an

2016. And this is Stzok, "OMG

idiot." And then we have Strzok saying, "God Hillary," here there's no

punctuation, but l'm assuming he is not using those two words together, "God
Hillary should win 100 million to zero."

What do you think when you hear that an agent assigned to investigate
something says that someone should win 100 million to zero?
MR. MCCABE: lt is
July

27th.

awful. lt's aMul. lwas shocked when

I was disappointed,

I heard it on

surprised, and stillam.

MR. GOWDY: My time is up. Adam, if you give me 15 seconds.
MR. SCHIFF: Sure.
MR. GOWDY: That zero

-

is there something that you want to say?

MR. MCCABE: Just to see if we could take a quick restroom break.
MR. GOWDY: We can do it now and come back later.
IRecess.J

MR. SCHIFF: Just turning to some of the areas that my colleague
covered, in the written testimony of the Directo/s -- concerning the February 14th
Oval Office meeting, he stated: "The President began by saying Flynn hadn't

done anything wrong in speaking with the Russians."
ln Mike Flynn's statement of the offense, he acknowledges informing
high- and senior-transition officials of his contacts with the Russian Ambassador.
Do you know, or did you find out prior to the appointment of the Special Counsel

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whether the President was saying that Flynn hadn't done anything wrong in
speaking with the Russians because the President was aware from the transition
team that Flynn had, in fact, done that, or it was done with his acquies@nce. Do

you know whether either of those were the case?
MR. MCCABE: I don't know that.
MR. SCHIFF: The Director testified about his reservations in terms of

making a public statement about the President's stalus. And as I understand it
from your testimony, it sounds like there were two concerns. One is that his
campaign was under investigation.
MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SCHIFF: So in terms of representing publicly that he was not under
investigation, that might actually not turn out to be correct if the investigation of the

campaign led to him?
MR. MCCABE: That's correct. lt would also have put us in the awkward
position of then going out and having to change the statement that we had made
earlier and it seemed to be

- that would be a concerning place for us to be.

MR. SCHIFF: Now, my colleague asked you about whether it would

violate any laws lo be secretly communicating with the Russian Ambassador and
the Logan Act was brought

up.

And I want to ask you about that because there's

been a lot diminishing the significance of the Logan Act because it hasn't been
utilized before.
MR. MCCABE: Uh-huh.
MR. SCHIFF: lf someone violates a U.S. law, does the FBI generally view
it as worthy of investigation regardless of whether that particular statute has been

used or used recently?

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MR. MCCABE: Of course. That's not a factor in our decision to initiate an
investigation.
MR. SCHIFF: lt would be the Justice Department's decision whether to

seek to prosecute someone under a statule that hadn't been used before?
MR. MCCABE: Of course.
MR. SCHIFF: But if you have credible evidence that someone is violating
a current U.S. law, it is not something to be ignored?

MR. MCCABE: That's right.
MR. SCHIFF: And to your understanding, was the Logan Act designed to

legislate effectively that you only have one government at a time, and that private
parties were not to undermine the existing government, if you know?

MR. MCCABE: Yeah, I don't know. l'm not an expert on the Logan Act,

so I shouldn't opine.
MR. SCHIFF: Would you agree there's a distinction between a friend or a

loved one, and a courtroorn somewhere in the country vouching for a defendant
before sentencing as being a good guy, and the President of the United States in a
private meeting with the head of the FBI asking him to let a case go?
MR. MCCABE: That seems different to me.
MR. SCHIFF: And the fact that the President has the power of pardon
doesn't change that, does it?
MR. MCCABE: No, it does not.
MR. SCHIFF: The fact that Nixon had the power to pardon the burglars of
the Watergate Hotelwouldn't make him any more -- wouldn't make it any more

appropriate for him to have a conversation with the then FBI Director about letting
the burglars go?

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MR. MCCABE: I don't want to speculate on historical matters, but I can tell
you that it's -- the fact of the President's pardon power didn't really impact how we
perceived the conversation between the President and the Director.
MR. SCHIFF: Now, I do agree with the colleague, frankly, my colleague,

that I don't think it would be particularly appropriate for the President to be
intervening with the Department of Justice or the FBI when it comes to an
investigation that involves his own campaign, but there is nonetheless an explicit
poticy against the President of the United States directly communicating with the

head of the FBI over a pending criminal matter. ls there not?
MR. MCCABE: Yes, there is.

MR. SCHIFF: And by engaging in that conversation about Mike Flynn, the
President was violating that policy?

MR. MCCABE: That would be my understanding of the policy. That's
right.

MR. SCHIFF: We have the added fact in this circumstance that the
President, after Direclor Comey testified, essentially said that he was lying about
his interactions with the President on the subject of Mike

Flynn. Did he not?

MR. MCCABE: l'm generally familiar with those comments, yes.
MR, SCHIFF: So the President disputes what the Director testified to and
what the Director related to you contemporaneous with those meetings?
MR. MCCABE: Apparently.
MR. SCHIFF: Going back to Mr. Papadopoulous and the timing of his

interview by the FBI and the President reaching out to the Director of the FBl.
Would you be able to report back to us the time of his interview?
MR. MCCABE: I don't see why not.

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MR. SCHIFF: Do you happen to know, so that we might seek phone
records because at this point we don't have Mr. Papadopoulous' cooperation with
us as much as he is cooperating with counse!, do you happen to know what phone

service Mr. Papadopoulous used?
MR. MCCABE: I don't know that.
MR. SCHIFF: Let me turn to lhe issue of the text messages. Was a text
message written by Mr. Strzok on April 1Sth that provided, "l want to believe the
path you threw out --" let's see, make

sure. I guess this is a text message

between Mr. Stzok and Lisa Page. And l'm not sure which direction it's headed.

"l want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office
that there's no way he gets elected, but I'm afraid we can't take that

risk.

lt's like

an insurance policy, an unlikely event you die before you're 40."
Which direction was that text message headed? Was it from, if you know,
Mr. Strzok to Lisa Page, or from Lisa Page to Mr. Strzok?
MR. MCCABE: l'm not sure I know.
MR. SCHIFF: Okay. My staff informs me that was written by Mr. Stzok.
Do you know what path Mr. Strzok is referring to that, I guess, Lisa Page

would have thrown out for consideration in Andy's office, what that refers to?
MR. MCCABE: I have no idea what they are referring to in this

text.

I

don't know. The text obviously didn't come to me, but I don't know what they are
talking about.
MR. SCHIFF: None of us expect FBI agents, more than anybody else, not

to have opinions about Presidential candidates. The question is whether those
opinions influence the exercise of their responsibilities.
MR. MCCABE: That's right.

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MR. SCHIFF: What is your experience with Mr. Strzok as an agent, his

professionalism, his performance of his duties?
MR. MCCABE: Well, one of the reasons why I was so shocked by the
texts when they were shared with me in July is that they are

-

and disappointed,

quite frankly, is because they are so, they stand in such contrast to my

experiences working both with Peter Stzok and Lisa Page.
I know Peter to be an accomplished, experienced, really a

counterintelligence expert. He focused most of his career on counterintelligence
work in the FBl, a former Army officer. And I relied on Peter

*

we all did

-

to play

a very important role in many important cases, not just the Clinton email case, or

case, but, you know, Peter has been involved in many

the

other important cases before

-

before those.

At no time dirl I ever see Peter exhibit the positions, or the opinions that are
contained in those texts. At no time did I ever see him express those sort of
opinions or thoughts in the course of his duties. So lwas quite surprised to see
them when I did.

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[8:04 p.m.l
MR. SCHIFF: So the disdain that he shows for Mr. Trump, Mr. Sanders,

I

believe he had some choice words to say about Congress, those were not
sentiments that he shared with you?
MR. MCCABE: No, sir, they were not.

MR. SCHIFF: Did you ever have any reason to believe or see any
indication his private personal views of any of the candidates influenced the
exercise of his duties?
MR. MCCABE: No, sir, I did

not.

And, you know, Peter did not work on

either case in isolation. lt was very much a small, kind of closely held team, but
one that was involved at the absolute highest

levels. We were -- they were

briefing me and the Director of the FBI on an incredibly regular basis.
So there was many other

-

not many, but there was a small group of senior

leaders and investigators involved in virtually every decision of that case.
MR. SCHIFF: And the decisions that were made, were the decisions made

jointly in terms of any significant turning point in the investigation?
MR. MCCABE: They were, with mine and the Directo/s participation in
most cases.
MR. SCHIFF: And did Mr. Stzok ever urge you to take an action on the

basis of his antipathy towards any candidate?
MR. MCCABE: He did not.
MR. SCHIFF: I would like to ask you about some of the other parts of the

investigation before the appointment of special counsel.
With respect to Mr. Papadopoulos, do you know whether he was involved in
organizing meetings between then-candidate Trump and heads of state, such as

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Egyptian President al-Sisi?
MR. MCCABE: I am not aware of that.
MR. SCHIFF: Did you have any information about Joseph Mifsud prior to

the appointment of special counsel, who he was, what his connections to the
Kremlin might be?
MR. MCCABE: ljust very vaguely remember the name being discussed,

but I can't recall the details, the specific details as to who he was or why he was
significant to

us. That is Mifsud, right?

MR. SCHIFF: Mifsud. Or

Mifsud. I actually have it spelled both ways

here.
MR. MCCABE: The name I remember is Mi6ud, M-i-f-s-u-d. Again,

I

don't really recall the details of why we were interested in him.
MR. SCHIFF: Christopher Steele did not write about Deutsche Bank in the

dossier that I am aware of, but did express concems about Deutsche Bank to
others in terms of possible Russian money laundering or securitization of loans.
To your knowledge, were those concerns shared with the FBI by Mr. Steele?
MR. MCCABE: I don't remember hearing that.
MR. SCHIFF: And prior to the appointment of special counsel did the FBI

make any effort to determine whether Russian financing might be a lever the
Russians were using over the President?
MR. MCCABE: Can you repeat the question?
MR. SCHIFF:

Yes.

Prior to the appointment of special counsel, did the

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MR. MCCABE:

So that one I remember, but that's all I have on that.
MR. SCHIFF: Let me yield to my colleague. And I want to make sure we

go to Jackie. Why don't we go to Jackie and we'll come back to it.

Okay. Ms. $peier.
MS. SPEIER: Thank you.
Thank you for your service.
MR. MCCABE: Thank you.
MS. SPEIER: There is a couple of questions lwould like to ask at the front

end, and then I would like to go over the dossier with you and see to what extent
you can provide us wilh any additional information.
You opened a case on Carter Page before you had the dossier. You have

said that a number of times this aflernoon. You atso opened a case on

I

I

before you had the dossier, correct?
MR. MCCABE: That's correct.

MS. SPEIER: And you opened a case on Michael Flynn before you had
the dossier.
MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MS. SPEIER: So in allthree of those cases, you opened them because

you had information that did what?
MR. MCCABE:

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I

MS. SPEIER: So it wasn't untilyou had the information about George

Papadopoulos that you triggered these

I
MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MS. SPEIER: And at that point had Flynn already made his trip to Russia
to the RT gala?
MR. BAKER: Excuse

me.

I am sorry.

MR. MCCABE: So just to be clear, before I get to your answ.r,

I
So some

of the things that we talked about a while ago.
MS. SPEIER: But that was years previously. He had been off your radar
screen for some time, correct?

MR. MCCABE: lt was an ongoing preliminary inquiry.
MS. $PEIER: Oh, it was ongoing.
MR. MCCABE: So kind of a lower level of investigation.

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153

MS. SPEIER: Allright.

MR. MCCABE: And I'm sorry, what was your other question?
MS. SPEIER: Can you repeat it?

flhe reporter read back the record as requested.l
MR. MCCABE: I don't know exactly when he made that trip, but it was
prior to the initiation of our investigation, because that was one of the things we
knew about General Flynn and his interactions with Russians.
MS. SPEIER: But it wasn't that trip to Russia that triggered opening the

investigation. ltwas George Papadopoulos' -MR. MCCABE: Right. Not by

itself. The simple fact that he had traveled

there in the abstract was not - would not have caused us to initiate an
investigation.

MS. SPEIER: Did President Obama ever contact you about the

investigation?
MR. MCCABE: Me personally? No.
MS. SPEIER: To your knowledge, did he ever contact Director Comey?

MR. MCCABE: Like a one-on-one contact,

no.

ln fact, I don't think, to my

knowledge -- I'm not aware that they ever discussed it.
MS. SPEIER: And to your knowledge did he ever --

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MR. BAKER: What is the it?
MR. MCCABE: The Russia investigation. I'm sorry.
MS. SPEIER: And to your knowledge, did President Obama ever contact

then-Attorney General Lynch about the Russia investigation?
MR. MCCABE: I don't know that,
MS. SPEIER: On January 27th, Director Comey is invited to dinner very
late in the day

-

MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MS. SPEIER: -- to meet with the President. On January 26th, Acting

Attorney General Sally Yates went to the White House to inform the counsel there
that Mr. Flynn may have been compromised. ls that correct?
MR. MCCABE: She went to the Whtte House

- that is my best

recollection, that it was on or about the 26th that she went to the White House to

talk to White House Counsel. Because I know it was after our interview, and our
interview took place on the

24th.

So Ms. Yates went to the White House to talk to

White House Counseleither on the 25th or the

26th. I am not 100 percent sure.

MS. SPEIER: So it is likely then that the counsel, the general counsel in
the While House, had informed the President, which might have triggered the

dinner invitation. ls that
MR. MCCABE:
MS. SPEIER:

- thafs speculation, I realize.

Yeah, I can't speculate on ffre likelihood of that.

I

I
MR. MCCABE: lt is a really good question, and not one probably that I can

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explain perfectly

I
MS. SPEIER

MR. MCCABE: lhave not.
MS. SPEIER: Has anyone within the FBI?

MR. MCCABE

I
MS. SPEIER: Okay.
Could we go through the dossier? Do you have a copy of it there?

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MR. MCCABE: ldo not.
MR. BAKER: We might have one.
To be clear, we will have to rely on the one that was
published by Buzzfeed publicly.
MR. MCCABE: Okay.

f

That is the onty version that we have available to us here.

MR. MCCABE: lwill use your version. I can't confirm that it is the same.
MR. SWALWELL: But if you wanted to make available your copy
MS. SPEIER: All

-

right. There it is. Allright.

So the U.S. Presidentialelection, Republican candidate Donald Trump's

activities in Russia and compromising retationship with the Kremlin. Let's just
take

- lefs take the summary on that first page. How much of that, if any of it,

have you been able to source or to confirm?
MR. MCCABE: I am not going to be able to speculate for you off the top of

my head what the resutts of our investigative team had concluded by May
mean, I could better answer your question if we had the

17th.

where we

could kind of go through fact by fact what we have been able to confirm and what
we haven't. But I would just be kind of guessing at that off the top of my head.
MR. SWALWELL: Just because it's been referred to, let's mark the
Buzzfeed dossier as exhibit 2, if that's okay with the chair.

[McCabe Exhibit No. 2
Was marked for identification,t
MS. SPEIER: All

right.

So our ability to go through this is going to

-

MR. MCCABE: I am really not the right person to do that with you.

MS. SPEIER: All

right. I think at this point lwillcede

my time because

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the next thing I need to do is going to take more time.
MR. SWALWELL: Mr. McCabe, on May 1Oth President Trump met

with

-

and it was alluded to earlier .. Sergey Kislyak and Foreign Minister Lavrov

in the Oval Office, the day after James Comey was

fired.

Director Comey told this

committee on March 2nd in closed session that

MR. MCCABE:
MR. SWALWELL: Yes

I

MR. MCCABE

MR. SWALWELL:

MR. MCCABE:

MR. SWALWELL: With respect to General Flynn, would you agree that

separate from the criminal liability that he potentially could have been exposed to,
as Mr. Gowdy was questioning you, that there was also a counterintelligence
concern as to whether his contacts with Russians could amount to putting him in a
position where he could be extorted or subject to blackmail or used for espionage

purposes?
MR. MCCABE: Certainly.

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MR. SWALWELL: And can you elaborate a little bit on that?
MR. MCCABE:

Sure. So our Cl concerns were really the foundation of

why we opened the case. As I saltJ earlier, we opened it in an effort to shed light
on individuals in the campaign who might be interacting with -- cooperating with
Russian efforts to influence the 2016 elections.

Within that scope, it is possible that you could come across criminalaclivity,
frorn false statements to acts of espionage. There is a lot of potential there.
MR. SWALWELL: lf you are managing an investigation and you find out

that one of your investigators has a perceived bias about an individual that is the
target or subject of the investigation, is it appropriate to either, A, keep them on the
investigation, or B, nemove thern?
MR. MCCABE: Well, I did

that.

I removed Pete Strzok from that

- from

the special counsel's team for that reason.
MR. SWALWELL: And why is a perceived bias almost as bad as if there

was an actual bias? Or is that a consideration? Mr. Schiff talked about whether
the agent's politicalviews ever affected his work, and you testified that to your
knowledge it had

not.

So would you agree that at the very least there was at least

a perceived bias on his part about candidate Trump?
MR. MCCABE: Well, only after I saw the

behalf of Mr. Stzok or Ms. Page for that matter

telrts. The possibility of bias on

-

MR. SWALWELL: Yeah, why is that of importance for the independence of
the investigation?
MR. MCCABE: lt was important to me because I did not want to take --

I

didn't want to take any chance whatsoever of placing the work of Special Counsel

Muelle/s efforts in jeopardy. And so that is why I moved to remove Pete that day.

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MR. SWALWELL: Thank you.
MR. GOWDY: SpecialAgent McCabe, who was the affiant on the first
FISA application?

MR. MCCABE: I don't know the answer to that.
MR. GOWDY: ln your experience, who had been affiants on FISA

applications?
MR. MCCABE: lt would usually be a supervisory specialagent at

headquarters.
MR. GOWDY: Could it have been Peter Strzok?

MR. MCCABE: That would be highly unlikely. lt was not Peter Stzok,
am being

told.

I

I don't know the name of the person who was --

MR. GOWDY: The name is redacted. That is why I am asking.
MR. MCCABE: So it is definitely not Peter Strzok, because his name

would not have been redacted. lts redacted because the person who is the
affiant is not an SES-level official, and thats kind of how we do the cut line on
redaction of names.
I have read the name
I

recently. I don't remember that person's name. But

do remember it was a superuisory special agent, so a GS-14 agent at

headquarters. That is definitely not Peter Strzok,
MR. GOWDY: All

right. We will bounce around a little bit, but it's not to

trick you, it's just to try to wrap some things up.

MR.MCCABE: Understood.
MR. GOWDY: The difference between extremely careless and grossly
negligent.

MR. MCCABE: You are asking me what the difference is between those

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two?
MR. GOWDY: lf there is one.

MR. MCCABE: I am really not comfortable rendering a legalopinion as to
what the difference is.
MR. GOWDY: I'm not asking you your legal opinion, just the phrases,

extremely careless, grossly negligent. lf you were going to define grossly
negligent, how would you do it?
MR. MCCABE: Grossly negligent is really negligent.
MR. GOWDY: What if you couldn't use the word negligent in your

definition, had to use another word for negligent?
MR. MCCABE: Really reckless. I mean, you are asking me to speculate
as to how to define -- ! mean, the terms are obviously different. They are very

closely related.
MR. GOWDY: They are pretty closely related. The first draft of what

some people call the exoneration letter, or exoneration memo, I don't know if that
is the right way to phrase it, but the first draft

-

MR. MCCABE: This is the July statement?
MR. GOWDY: lt's lhe July statement, but the drafts were percolating

around before

then. What is the first time you saw one of the drafts?

MR. MCCABE: I don't remember the date that I first saw it, but I remember
it was something that the Director had worked on over the weekend and that he

shared with a smallgroup of us when he came back into the office.
MR. GOWDY: Could it have been May?
MR. MCCABE: lt's possible.
MR. GOWDY: Do you know if there were witness interviews done in the

I

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17L

course of that investigation after you saw that first draft?
MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. GOWDY: Do you know whether Secretary Clinton herself was

interviewed after that draft?
MR. MCCABE: I do.
MR. GOWDY: Whywould you begin to work on a memo, a lefter, an

email, a speech if you hadn't interviewed all the witnesses?
MR. MCCABE: I think that we -- I think that Director Comey was preparing
for the eventuality of that possible conclusion to the investigation.
MR. GOWDY: You may can lhink of a

third. I can only think of two

conclusions, either charge or don't charge. Am I missing one?
MR. MCCABE: Not that I am aware of.
MR. GOWDY: So was there equal effort put into drafting an inculpatory
speech

-

MR. MCCABE: Not that lam aware of.
MR. GOWDY:

-

one announcing the

- well, if you haven't interviewed

the

target yet, and you have no idea what she is going to say, then why would you not
spend equaltime on both?
MR. MCCABE: Well, ldon't think that had we the opportunity to charge or
had the decision been made that we had the evidence that we needed to
seek

-

to recommend to the Department lhat Secretary Clinton be charged, under

that scenario we would likely not have been making an announcement.
MR. GOWDY: Why would the same perceived conflicts not exist with the
Department?
MR. MCCABE: Because I think the indictment would have stood on its

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772

own.
MR. GOWDY: You don't get to make the decision on an indictment by

yourself. You have to run that by an AUSA, don't you?
MR. MCCABE: Of course. Of course. Had we been in the position to go
to the Department and say, "Hey, here is the evidence we have, and we think that,
you know, we think the case should go fonrard," then presumably the case would
have gone fonrvard with an indictment. I guess what I am trying to say is the

indictnent would have filled lhe shoes of the statement.
MR. GOWDY: So whatever concerns Director Comey had with the
Department of Justice would not have existed had you gone the other way with

your recommendation.
MR. MCCABE: I think it would have been a very different scenario.
MR. GOWDY: How?
MR. MCCABE:

Yeah. They are yelling at me not to speculate.

MR. GOWDY: Well, here, let me help

you.

I don't want you gefting yelled

at, especially not by a lawyer.

You can't indict. You don't have the power to indict.
MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. GOWDY: That's an AUSA.
MR. MCCABE: Yep.
MR. GOWDY: You either make a recommendation -- actually, lots of times

you guys don't even make recommendations. You just produce what you found.
MR. MCCABE: Uh-huh.
MR. GOWDY: So this is already an unusualfact pattern.
Can you see how it doesn't engender public confidence if there was an

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exoneration memo being written but not the other side of it when there were still a
half dozen to a dozen interviews yet to be done? Can you see how it might
appear that maybe the decision had already been made?
MR. MCCABE: Certainly I can see how it would appear that way to people

who weren't involved in the investigation. I do.
I

think that's a little bit different than the question of, like, why would you

draft a statement explaining why you weren't seeking charges and not draft a
statement explaining why you were seeking charges? Because typically in the "l
am seeking charges" category, the statement would be

-

you wouldn't be making

a statement because you would be concerned about prejudicing the prosecution.
MR. GOWDY: I don't know, SpecialAgent McCabe, did you happen to see

the press conference when Michael Grimm was indicted?
MR. MCCABE: ldid not.
MR. GOWDY: I have seen shorter closing arguments --

MR. MCCABE: ldid not.
MR. GOWDY:

- than that press conference.

So it's not beyond the realm of possible for a Federal prosecutor to have a
press conference even making a charging decision. lt happens a lot.
Sometimes they go into great detail.
So was there any thought given into drafting an inculpatory document as

opposed to an exculpatory document?
MR. MCCABE: Not that l'm aware of.
MR. GOWDY: Who was on the

I

team?

MR. MCCABE: So that would have been Director Comey
MR. BAKER: Stay above the level of

I

-

SES. SES and above.

 I
MR. MCCABE:

Okay.

L74

So you are referring to allthose people involved in

these discussions and concerns. I am sure if you spoke to some of the agents
they probably wouldn't think of us as being teammates.
So Director Comey, myself, Mr. Baker, Peter Stzok, for some period Trisha
Anderson, although she was out on maternity leave for some
John Maffa

(ph).

time.

Lisa Page.

Bill Priestap. I don't want to leave him out.

James Rybicki was present for some of those conversations as
Steinbach (ph), of course, until he

left.

really predated my involvement in the

well.

Prior to that, John Jagalon

Michael

(ph). That

case. I may be leaving some folks out, but

that is the majority of it.
MR. GOWDY: What was Agent Stzok's role, if any, on leads provided by
the CIA?

MR. MCCABE: His role in leads provided by the
would have reviewed

CIA? I mean, Peter

- would have been privy to that information,

would have, you

know, been in the kind of decisionmaking process I guess about how
investigative steps would have been taken as a result of

- what

- I am not sure which

leads exactly you are referring to, but generally that would have been his role.
MR. GOWDY: I know we have touched on Bruce

Ohr. Tell me again

when you realized that he was talking to the FBl.
MR. MCCABE: Bruce Ohr?
MR. GOWDY: Yeah.

MR. MCCABE: Talking to the FBI?
MR. GOWDY: Or being debriefed by the

FBl.

I assume there wouldn't be

302s if he weren't being debriefed by the FBl.
MR. MCCABE:

Yeah.

I have not seen those 302s, so I am not

I

sure. As

 I

175

I said earlier, at some point I became aware of the fact that Bruce had some sort

of relationship with Chris Steele, but I don't know exactly when that was in the
investigation.
MR. GOWDY: When did you become aware that Bruce Oh/s wife was an

employee of Fusion GPS?
MR. MCCABE: I read that in the paper last week.

MR. GOWDY: You didn't know it until then?
MR. MCCABE: No, I don't know Bruce's wife, and did not know what she

did for a living.
MR. GOWDY: I am going to go back to the text we left off with, a hundred
million to

zero.

I read that to mean the candidate himself wouldn't vote for

himself. ls that how you read zero, not a single solitary vote?
MR. MCCABE: I hadn't really thought about that.
MR. GOWDY: Now that you think about it, zero is a pretty lonely number,

isn't

it? Not a single solitary person in the entire country.
MR. MCCABE: lt seems that way.
MR. GOWDY: lf you had seen that text or known about that text sooner,

would you have removed him from any other investigations he was on related to
either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?
MR. MCCABE: I am reluctant to speculate about the hypothetical, but

I

cannot imagine a scenario in which that text or texts like that wouldn't have been
deeply conceming to me.
MR. GOWDY: I don't want you to speculate. The second you learned of

these texts from Michael Horowitz, what did you do?
MR. MGCABE: I came back to the

I

office. I was serving as Acting Director

 I
at that

776

time. I discussed what I had seen and what I now knew about Pete

and

Lisa's texts with a very small group of senior leaders, and I made the decision to
reassign both of them that evening.
MR. GOWDY: And how would that

-

MR. MCCABE: I had a conversation about where that would be and where
they would go.
MR. GOWDY: And how would that analysis have been different had you

learned it in the summer of 2016 and not the summer of 2017?
MR. MCCABE: I don't know how it would have been different. I don't
know that it would have been different.
MR. GOWDY: Why did you think it was important to remove him from the

special counsel's investigatory team?
MR. MCCABE: I thought that as long as the inspector generalwas

pursuing -- was looking into whether or not they had

-

the two were politically

biased, that they should not be in a position to impact the special counsel's work

untilthe inspector general had concluded his investigation.
lVlR.

GOWDY: Looking in Aprilof 2016, and this is Ms. Page, "So, look,

you say we text on that phone when we talk about Hillary because it can't be
traced."
What does that suggest to you, concem about something being traced?

Was it a government phone?
MR. MCCABE: lt was.
MR. GOWDY: Both her phone and his were government phones?

MR. MCCABE: That's my understanding. But I don't know

-

I can't sit

here and tell you exactly what phone numbers they were texting from, but Srafs

I

 I
been my assumption all along, was that they were

L77

-

that these texts were

available to the inspector general because they were conducted on Bureau-issued
telephones.
MR. GOWDY: ln June of 2016, that's I guess a couple of weeks before

Director Comey's press conference,

"Hi. I'm just leaving my meeting now. How

we make law in this country is offensive and inesponsible."
I am not quarrelling with the conclusion she reached, but do you know what

meeting she was making reference to?
MR. MCCABE: ldo not.
MR. GOWDY: Then Strzok followed up, "l know it

is.

lt's why I loathe

Congress. Can't wait to hear the story."
MS. SPEIER: That's common.
MR. GOWDY: Was it some trip they made to Capitol Hill?
MR. MCCABE: ldon't know, sir.
MR. GOWDY: Now this is July of 2016.
MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MR. GOWDY: And refresh my recollection. lnvestigation

connected with the Trump campaign began when?
MR. MCCABE: l'm sorry, could you repeat the question?

and then the Flynn case was

The

opened on the

I

!

The case itself, the umbrella case was opened on the

J

MR. GOWDY: Was Mr. Strzok involved in all four of them?
MR. MCCABE: I have seen the opening document from

thfl,

and he

was the approver on that document. I haven't seen the opening documents of the

I

 L78

But I wouH expect he likely was.

-

MR. GOWDY:

Allright.

So this is July 19th, 2016, the text.

MR. MCCABE: Okay.

GoWDY: And a I

MR.

an opening document into

later his nane is on what you said is

-

MR. MCCABE: That's right.

GoWDY:

MR.

-Zt

MR. MCCABE: Well, the opening document to the umbrella case is the
only one that I've reviewed.
MR. GOWDY: I'm not going to be able to capture this because I'm not
sure what the word says, so l'll skip

douche bags are about to come

it.

out."

'TURN lT ON, TURN lT ON," all caps, "the
Do you know who he was referring to?

MR. MCCABE: ldo not.
MR. GOWDY: The President, now President, then candidate Trump's

family, his wife and kids.
MR. MCCABE: I did not know that.
MR. GOWDY: This is July

27th. And again, the investigation was opened

wh

MR. MCCABE: That's right.
MR. GOWDY: This is Ms.

win

now.

Page. "Yeah, it's prefty cool.

She just has to

I'm not going to lie, I got a flash of nervousness yesterday about

Trump."
Then we have August of 2016, August the 6th of

2016. This is Ms. Page,

"And maybe you're meant to stay where you are because you're meant to protect

thi country

ftom that mena@.n

I

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179

Can you shed any light on what she may have meant by "where you are"?

MR. MCCABE: lcannot.
MR. GOWDY: You have been an investigator for a long

time.

How many

years?
MR. MCCABE: Twenty-one years.
MR. GOWDY: What do you think she meant by that?

MR. MCCABE: I am not going to opine on what two people
communicating on a private text that I wasn't included on were referring

to.

I don't

know, sir.
MR. GOWDY: And then SpecialAgent Staok's response was, "l can

protect our country at many levels." Any idea what he could have meant by that?
MR. MCCABE: ldon't.
MR. GOWDY: Can you see how the timing might not be confidence

inspiring?
MR. MCCABE: I don't think any of it is confidence inspiring. I think
it's -- it's tragic.
MR. GOWDY: August 26th,

2016. This is SpecialAgent Stzok. "Just

went to a southern Virginia WalMart. I could smellthe Trump support."
Now, October the 20th of 2016, and the FISA application would have been
made when?
MR. MCCABE: I have

I

the court authorized the surveiltance. So the

package was in process the days leading up to that likely.
MR. GOWDY: This is SpecialAgent

Strzok. "l am riled up. Trump is an

F'ing idiot, unable to provide a coherent answer."
How rnany Andys are there in the leadership ranks at the Bureau?

I

 I

180

MR. MCCABE: I am only aware of

me.

Well, it depends on what you

define as leadership ranks. lf you're referring to the seventh floor, I am the only
one I am aware of.
MR. GOWDY: What I am trying to figure out, Mr. Deputy Director

-

MR. MCCABE: Thats right. There was another one who is gone now.
MR. GOWDY: Here is what I am trying to figure

out.

This is August

of 2016.
MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MR. GOWDY: lt's right after the investigation has been launched, before
the first FISA application, but after the investQation has been launched.
MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MR. GOWDY: And this is SpecialAgent Stzok. "l want to believe the
.

path you threw out for consideration in Andy's ofiice."
I have never been to your

office. I don't know if there are lots and lots of

rooms. I don't know if you make it available for other people to use when you are
not

there.

ls any of that possible, they could have been in your office without you

being there?

MR. MCCABE: lt's possible,

sir.

I have one

room. And it's certainly

possible that they could have been in there when I was not there.
MR. GOWDY: Did they come to brief you or visit with you frequently?

MR. MCCABE: Page and

Stzok?

They were frequently in my office.

MR. GOWDY: Together?
MR. MCCABE: Sometimes together, sometimes separately.
MR. GOWDY: ls there any other Andy he could have been referring to?

MR. MCCABE: I don't knour who he was referring

I

to.

I have just been

 I

181

reminded there was another Andy who worked essentially across the hall from me
at the time, but I dont know who he was referring to.
MR. GOWDY: Who is that Andy?

MR. MCCABE: Andrew Castor (ph).
MR. GOWDY: Did he go by Andrew or Andy?
MR. MCCABE: Andy.

MR. GOWDY: Whatwas his role?
MR. MCCABE: He was the

- a associate assistant deputy director.

Sorry, it took me a minute to pull that one back together. He essentially worked
for the ADD, who is the associate deputy director. He is the guy that handles the
role that I was in before I was

deputy. He handles all the business side of the

Bureau.
MR. GOWDY: Would that have been someone that they reported to or

had reason to talk to

-'

MR. MCCABE: lt's certainly somebody they could have spoken to, could

have had a conversation

with.

I don't

know. I can't say who they were referring

to.
MR. GOWDY: 'lwant to believe the path you threw out for consideration
in Andy's office that there's no way he gets elected."

Can you see how a person might understand the "he" to be Trump in a

two-person race where the other was a female?
MR. MCCABE: I can certainly see how you would assess that.
MR. GOWDY: "But I'm afraid we can't take that

the word "risk" modifies? What do you think
talking about?

I

risk." What do you think

- what risk do you think they are

 r

L82

MR. MCCABE: The "he" getting elected?
MR. GOWDY: That's a reasonable construction of it, I think. What was

your reaction when you read that?
MR. MCCABE: lwas shocked. Shocked, confused, surprised. As I said
before, I have no idea what they are refening

to.

I cannot think of a single

conversation that I have participated in that fits the description laid out in that text.
MR. GOWDY: Can you think of any conversations that took in your
presence where people were musing about what life would be like under one

candidate or the other if they won?
MR. MCCABE: Not particularly,

sir. I cannot.

We didn't discuss things

like that.

MR. GOWDY: There is a little bit of conflict between how the Bureau
remembers the DNC seryer hack and how others at the DNC remember

it.

What

is your recollection of how the Bureau learned about it, and what steps did you

take to alert the DNC?
MR. MCCABE:

I
Our cyber folks -. and I don't know, my assumption is that they were cyber

folks at the Washington field offtce

-

contacted the DNC, the individualwho had

been identified to them by the DNC as the person responsible for securing their

systems. Essentially, contact was made and it was explained: Hey, you should
go look for these indicators on your system, and if you see this, you should let us
know and then we willfigure out next

steps. And they never received a response

I

 I

183

to that contact.

MR. GOWDY: ls that the way you would have made contact with any

other entity, you would have had

- I don't use the phrase low level in reference to

FBI agents, but a line agent? Would a line agent have made a callto sorneone in

the cyber department at any entity, political or otherwise?
MR. MCCABE: Line agents make those kind of calls every day.
MR. GOWDY: So Director Comey doesn't make those calls?

MR. MCCABE: No,

sir.

No, sir.

MR. GOWDY: And Deputy Director McCabe doesn't make those calls?
MR. MCCABE:

ldo

not.

MR. GOWDY: So you handled it the same way you would anyone else

who had been potentially victimized by this?
MR. MCCABE: That's

conect. lt's notable

as well, I should point out that

the activi$ that led to that notification affected many, many, many victims at the
same

time.

So there is a lot of that sort of notification work going on in the same

way with all sorts of different victims, potential victims.
MR. GOWDY: Did the Bureau ever make an effort to access the server

itself, the DNC server?
MR. MCCABE: I don't recallexactly what we asked

for. My recollection is

that we did not get a kind of cooperative response from the DNC, which is
not -- thats not uncommon. But it's not

- typically, what we ask for is not ac@ss

to a server or a piece of equipment, but rather access to logs from the system to

I

 I

184

be able to try to determine if the indicators of the intrusion are present in the

system. And I don't believe we ever got that sort of cooperation from the DNC.
MR. GOWDY: Do you know why there was a lack of cooperation from the
DNC?

MR. MCCABE: ldo not.
MR. GOWDY: ls it a potential violation of a criminal code to intrude on

someone's server without their permission? Are there any criminal code sections
that are implicated?
MR. MCCABE: Of course.
MR. GOWDY: Did you consider using

- would you consider

the server to

be evidence in that potentialcrime?

.

MR. MCCABE: lt's possible, but without confirmation that the activity that

we are concemed about even took place, I don't know that you'd be at a point
where you're confident that you had probable cause to indicate that there was
evidence of a crime on the server.
MR. GOWDY:

Allright.

You can ask, which doesn't require probable

cause, you can ask the owner of the server to produce it; or you can wait until

there is probable ffiuse to believe that a crime was committed and that that's part
of an evidentiary scheme that you would want.
Did you ever contemplate at any point in the process gaining access to lhe
server, either by subpoena, search warrant?
MR. MCCABE: Certainly you are not asking me personally. I did not

engage in that sort of investigative

-

MR. GOWDY: What you know about the Bureau's

effort. The reasons it's

important is that there is a division of thought on whether the -- well, Director

I

 r

185

Corney's testified, Jeh Johnson's testified. There's another school of thought on

whether or not the Bureau and DHS needed access to that server and I am just
trying to reconcile the differences.
MR. MCCABE: We had over a course of many months numerous
interactions with the

place.

DNC. This is the best of my recollection as to how that took

I have described how the early interactions took place and were not

productive.
Eventually, we kind of escalated our contact with individuals at the DNC.
My best recollection is that we requesled that sort of access to logs, things of that

nature, and we did not get that.
We don't typically force victims to provide information if they don't want to
cooperate with an inquiry. So that's something that we balance, and it's typically
something that we balance in particularly cyber €ses, where oftentimes we are
dealing with entities that are trying to be very quiet about the fact that they have
vulnerabilities that may have been exploited.
MR. SWALWELL: Mr. McCabe, my good friend from South Carolina

referenced a draft report being written in the Clinton investigation, and I don't know
if it would surprise you to learn, as I am learning right now, a Bloomberg news
story from yesterday that this committee, as you sit here as a witness and we go to
New York tomorrow to interview witnesses, the chairman of the committee told
Bloomberg that this committee's staffers have begun drafting parts of the final
report.
So it sounds like in large investigations you want to get started on drafting a

report as you continue to learn information. ls that just what an investigation
would entail?

I

 I

186

MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. SWALWELL: Part of our committee's role in this investigation is to
understand what the government response

was.

Could you give us an overview

you to

of your knowledge of, prior to the

George Papadopoulos back in 2016,

And again, you don't have to go into great

detail. I don't want

to jeopardize

sour@s and methods. But we do need to understand what that looked like.
MR. MCCABE:

Yeah. And I am very sensitive about kind of getting too

I

MR. SWALWELL: Can you talk a little bit just about the sguads and the

coverage of individuals?
MR. MCCABE:

I

I

 187

MR. SWALWELL: What is an lO?
MR. MCCABE: lntelligence officers. I'rn sorry.
MR. SWALWELL: Just for the record.
MR. MCCABE:

MR. SWALWELL:

MR. MCCABE: Right.
MR. SWALWELL:

MR. MCCABE:

 I

188

MR. SWALWELL: ln 2016, what was your estimate of the number of

Russian intelligence officers and just individuals associated with Russian
intelligence services who were operating in the United States?

MR. MCCABE:

I
MR. SWALWELL:

MR. MCCABE: Absolutely.
MR. SWALWELL: -- as far as sources or part of the network?
MR. MCCABE:

MR. SWALWELL: Once you were

I*ith

respect to Mr. Papadopoulos, did the FBI do anything to expand

its coverage of Russian individuals or focus on the Presidential campaigns to see

il they were trying to reach out or approach individuals on the campaigns?
MR. MCCABE: We refocused, maybe reallocated is too strong a word, but

MR. SWALWELL: Once you learned aboul the approach to Mr.

Papadopoulos, was any defensive briefing given to candidate Trump or anyone on
the Trump team?
MR. MCCABE: We participated in intelligence briefings that were provided

I

 I

189

to both candidate Trump and candidate Clinton after each were designated the
nominees of their respective parties. So we participated in briefings to the two
candidates, the two Vice Presidential candidates, and I think there were also
separate briefings, one each, for campaign staff, select campaign staff.
MR. SWALWELL: Who participated in the briefing of candidate

Trump? lf

you know.
MR. MCCABE: ldon't rernember.
MR. SWALWELL: Do you know whether candidate Trump was advised

specifically about Russians and their interest in Mr. Trump or his campaign?
MR. MCCABE: That's really our role in those briefings. Those briefings

are arranged by the DNl, and kind of each agency is given a block of time and kind
of a topic to address. And thafs really the purpose of the FBI involvement in
those briefings, is to provide what we consider a defensive briefing to make it clear
to the candidates and their select staff the fact that they are targets and will likely
attract that sort of contact from the intelligence officers.
MR. SWALWELL: Was there any information specific to Russia that was

conveyed to candidate Trump?
MR. MCCABE: I would have to look back at what the folks briefed, but

I

cannot fathom that Russia was not included in that briefing.
MR. SWALWELL: And today, knowing that Russia did interfere in the

elections, that the ICA has been produced, one of the conclusions of the ICA was
that Russia is conducting a lessons learned campaign to potentially aftack us
again.

What has changed at the FBI as far as its coverage of Russia, particularly
, and also of any intrerests they may have in

r

 I

190

candidates or campaigns?
MR. MCCABE:

MR. SWALWELL: Are there any additional resources that you could use
from Congress that would assist you to either plus up the numbers so that your
coverage, particularly surveillance of the Russians, is better equipped to handle
the threat or that technical collection is better?
MR. MCCABE: I mean more resources are always helpful. We will

So more resources are atways

helpful. I am not of course prepared to

deliver a specific request for resources tonight, but I would be happy to come back
and do that.

 I

191

[9:05 p.m.l
MR. SWALWELL: Did you observe the testimony that representatives

from Facebook, Google, and Twitter provided to Congress about interference in
the 2016 election?
MR. MCCABE: ldid not.
MR. SWALWELL: You are familiar that social media platforms in the

United States were weaponized by the Russians?
MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. SWALWELL: ls there any recommendations you would make to us
about any duty to report that perhaps social media companies should have as far
as notifying the FBl, if they were to see or observe activity on their platforms
before the FBI is able to be alerted to it?
MR. MCCABE: Yeah, I mean, there's -- we have seen a pretty significant

shift in the approach that the social media companies are taking for that activity
now from where they were back in 2016, more cooperation, better transparency,
reporting when they see that activity, is something that's always going to help us
try to stay ahead of the threat.
MR. SWALWELL: Finally, public reports as wellas some of the guilty

pleas that have been obtained in Special Counsel's prosecution, we have learned
of different approaches that Russians made to individuals on the Trump campaign
and many times offering dirt on a political opponent. The same guestion with
respect to social media.
Do you believe that it would assist our ability to protect against an attack by

Russia or any country if there was a duty to report requirement on an individual if
they were contacted by a foreign nationalas it related to a political campaign?

I

 I
I

L92

willjust give you an example. ln 2000, the Gore campaign received the

debate prep book for the Bush campaign from a foreign national and provided it to
the

FBl.

right thing

There is no duty to do so, but they

- I think most people agree -- did the

there. As it stands today, it doesn't seem that there was a duty for

anyone on the Trump campaign or the Clinton campaign to come fonruard if they
were offered dirt on their opponenl.
Would that assist the FBI in its investigations if there was such a duty to at
least alert the FBI in a situation like that?
MR. MCCABE: lt's hard for me to speculate on possible

- what would

likely be possible legislative actions, but I will say it's better for us to

know. That

being said, there are all kinds of other considerations that the department, and of

course, you allwould have to factor into creating such a legal obligation, but
speaking just for the investigators, it's always better for us to know what the

adversary is up to.
MR. SWALWELL: Well, thank you, again, Mr. McCabe. You have

provided a lot of color to our ongoing investigation. With that I yield to Ms. Speier.
MS. SPEIER:

MR. MCCABE

I

 193

MS. SPEIER:

MR. BAKER:
MR. MCCABE

MS. MOYER:
MR. MCCABE
MS. SPEIER:

MR. MCCABE

MS. SPEIER:

I
MR. MCCABE

I

 I

794

MS. SPEIER:

I

MR. MCCABE:

MS. SPEIER

II
MS, SPEIER:

MR. MCCABE
MS. SPEIER:

MR. MCCABE

I

MS. SPEIER:

MR. MCCABE:

I

MS. SPEIER

MR. MCCABE

I
I

 I

195

MS. SPEIER: And as it related to Atorney General Lynch, you didn't

inform her about this untilAugust of 2016?
I may not be saying you specifically.

MR. MCCABE: l'm not sure that's

right. I think it was

probabty July.

MS. SPEIER: So lwas briefed and my recollection is that this was around

August of last year. This is her testimony. "l received a request for a confidential
meeting with Deputy Director McCabe." This is Loretta Lynch's testimony to us.
But she is under the impression that it was in August.

MR. MCCABE: I could find out the

date. We obviously

have the date.

MS. SPEIER: But it was for a substantial period of time after you received
it, and after it was the tipping point for Director Comey to have that press

conference.
MR. MCCABE: I don't know that lwould refer to it as the tipping

point. lt

was definitely a factor that he considered. I'm sure it had an impact on his

decision. But MS. SPEIER: lt says

- this is Director

Comey. "lt had a huge impact on

rny decision to step away and announce the results separately because I thought it

was going to come out any day."
MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MS. SPEIER: That was his testimony May 4th.

Okay. Now, one of the issues we have spent little time on in this entire
investigation is probably the one that's the most important to the American
electorate, and that is voting machines,
Now, the lCA, in its original report that it provided all of us, made the

I

 I

196

statement that, in fact, the Russians got into voting records in a number of States,
, but that it did not appear that they

got into the election

machines. ls that an area of review that you undertook, or was that Homeland
Security?

MR. MCCABE: So it is work that we did, and we did to some extent jointly
with DHS, but our cyber folks were basically alerting us to the Russian cyber
activity that we were finding in different States around the country, in which we'd
see Russian cyber activity hitting on essentially election-related systems, none
that were involved in tallying votes, but like voter registration databases and things
of that nature. So that's on the one hand.
On the other hand, we thought it was important to find out more about

potentialvulnerabilities in voting machines themselves, so we took it upon
ourselves to go out and figure out who made those machines, were they are kind
of industry leaders that were responsible for the majority of the machines out

there. That's, of course, what we determined. And then we met with those
companies to better understand whether or not -- you know, just how vulnerable
those machines might be.
MS. SPEIER: And you came away with the impression that they weren't

very vulnerable it sounds like.
MR. MCCABE: They certainly could

be.

But they

- the voting machines

were not, under normal circumstances, connected to the internet. So it's not that
you couldn't get malware on a voting machine, but you'd have to do it with some
physical presence.
MS. SPETER: There was a hackathon in Las Vegas earlier this year called

Defcon

(ph). They had purchased 10 voting machines, and before the weekend

I

 I

797

was over, they were able to hack into every one of

them.

Did you ever

contemplate interviewing any of those hackers? Did you have any FBI agents
there to observe their efforts?
MR. MCCABE: lt's certainly possible. I'm not aware of that, but that's
possible.
MS. SPEIER: Were you aware of the fact that these election companies

do not allow those cities, counties, States, that contract with them to red team the
software or the machines?
MR. MCCABE: l'm not aware of that.
MS. SPEIER: Does that concern you in terms of the reliability of these

machines?
MR. MCCABE: Oh, I mean, I think we are concemed about those
machines and the entire process. I think we discovered that its certainly possible
to introduce mahrvare to those machines in a way that would provide someone the
opportunity to corrupt the way the machines are used and tally votes.
MS. SPEIER: One of the hackers I talked to, I asked the question: The

I

And his response to me was, there's no way they could

tell.

Does that

bother you?
MR. MCCABE:

Sure. Yeah.

MS. SPEIER: All

right.

I have one last

question. Do I have

- 6 minutes.

Okay. One last question. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, is that an area in which
you have jurisdiction?
MR. MCCABE: Does the FBI have jurisdiction?
MS. SPEIER: Yes.

 I

198

MR. MCCABE: Yes, ma'am.
MS. SPEIER: Have you undertaken any investigations of realestate
holdings of Donald Trump under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act?

MR. MCCABE: As I sit here today, I'm not aware of any.
MS. SPEIER: All right, thank

you.

I yield.

BY

O

for the minority

Thanks.

I have a few mostly cleanup questions. The first is, our colleagues in the
majority asked you a question about 302s that have been made available to

certain mernbers and staff for the committee by the Department of Justice. Some
of them relate to debriefings Bruce Ohr, the DOJ ofiicial, received with regard to
his contacts with Christopher Steele. And based on what was represented by the

majority, it appears that at least one of thern, if not the first, occuned in

I,

!

I understand before the opening of the

2016.
So the question we have is, did the Bureau in any way rely on information

that Bruce Ohr received and provided to an FBI agent in the @urse of the
debriefing in

A
O

I

to decide to open the

I am not aware of that reliance.

Okay.

Related to that is whether or not any of the information that

Bruce Ohr provided in July of 2016, which we were only able to view on a

read-and-return basis at DOJ, so we don't have the materials in front of us,
whether or not the information about Bruce Ohr, Bruce Oh/s wife's relationship, or
work for Fusion GPS at allfactored into the decision on

I

 I
A

l'm not aware that it factored

1.99

in.

lwas not aware of that information

at all until I read it in open source last week. So, no.

O

Okay, there is a

- this is on a separate matter. There was a line of

questioning about whether or not the FBI ever had access to the DNC servers?

A
O

Yes, l'm aware of the line of questioning.

Yes.

So to be precise, we have received in the committee

testimony, including by the cybersecurity firm that the DNC contracted with named
CrowdStrike, that, in fact, it is not the best practice to provide access to the FBI of
the physical servers themselves which is actually would be an archaic means of
trying to determine whether or not there may have been cyber activity, foreign
cyber activity, but instead, that images are provided. And the term "images" was
described to us as a technicalterm, where it actually

- by imaging the servers,

you could actually have a broader -- sorry, a more comprehensive log of what
occurred that is more helpful, and that that imaging was provided to the

FBl.

Are

you aware of this information?

A
O
A

lam

not.

Okay,

That is consistent with my understanding of the fact that we review

logs. We don't go and grab people's servers and bring them

O

back to the office.

Right. This discrepancy or misunderstanding has led to public

debate as well about whether or not the FBl, and why not, so why did the FBI not
have access to the physical servers, and based on the testimony we have

received, it would suggest that that is not actually the route the FBI or the
cybersecurity firms

A

take. lnstead, they provide these digital

That's my understanding.

I

images.

 I
O

Moving

on.

200

Do you know what date the FB! opened an investigation

into the DNC hack itselP

A
O

I do not.

The public record, and l'm going to confirm this here, was that the

investigation .- that the FBI confirrned on July 25, o12016 so this would have been
But the FBI

confirmed publicly.on July 25, 2016, that it had opened an investigation into the
hacking of the DNC computer network. This was the same day that then

Candidate Trump tweeted, quote, "The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the
disastrous DNC emails which should never have been written, (stupid) because
Putin likes me."

One question that we have had is whether at some point the investigation
into the DNC hack became rolled into the Cl investigation that was open, the

umbrella investigation because ultimately it involved the same actors 6n the
Russian

side. So if you could speak

A

to that?

Yeah, so I wouldn't characterize it as rolled

into. The

investigation

of the DNC hack was being pursued by our Cyber Division with, of course, the
assistant, with the Washington Field Office, I think was the field office in kind
of

-

that had that investigation assigned to

them.

But there was a very high

degree of coordination between our Cyber Division at headquarters, and our
Counterintelligence Division at headquarters to ensure that my Cl folks'
understanding of the Russian target was informing what the cyber folks were

seeing and looking for, and what the cyber folks were finding as a result of the
Russian hacking activity, was informing how my Cl folks understood the threat and
the Russian's interest in influencing the elec{ion.

I

 I
O

I'm sorry, I believe our time is

201

up.

I will have

just have a few more

cleanup questions right after their questions.

A

Okay.

MR. GOWDY: Special Agent McCabe, I want to thank you for your lime.
It has been a long day, but it is an important fact pattem, and I appreciate the

manner in which you have treated it that way.
MR. MCCABE: Yes.
MR. GOWDY: I have only got a couple more areas and we will be able to

wrap them up in this time.
MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MR. GOWDY: Three of them are not comfortable for me to ask you about,

but it would be inesponsible for me not to.
MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MR. GOWDY: So we willget into it, and then we willclose with something

that's really important.
MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MR. GOWDY: Back to Direclor Comey's written testimony before the

Select Committee. On page 7

- you don't have to look at it.

You are welcome to

if you want to.

"ln an abrupt shift he turned the conversation to FBI Deputy Director
Andrew McCabe saying he hadn't brought up, quote, 'the Mc0abe thing'because
had said McCabe was honorable, although McAuliffe was close to the Clintons

and had given him (lthink he meant Deputy Director McCabe's wife) campaign
money."
What is, was, your relationship, if any, with Terry McAuliffe?

I

I

 I

202

MR. MCCABE: I have no relationship with Terry McAuliffe.
MR. GOWDY: Do you have a personal relationship with Secretary
Clinton?

MR. MCCABE: No, ldo not.
MR. GOWDY: Have you ever had any business transactions with former

Governor McAuliffe?
MR. MCCABE: Have I personally

-

MR. GOWDY: You personally.

MR. MCCABE:

-

had business transactions? Absolutely not.

MR. GOWDY: All

right. I want to go.

MR. BAKER: Let me ask you one question.
MR. MCCABE: I did, so I don't consider that to be a relationship, and its

certainly not a business transaction, but I dkl meet with

- I attended a meeting

with Governor McAuliffe as my wife was considering running for State senate in
Virginia in March of 2015. And I'm happy to go through all of the details about
that with you if you'd

like. We will be here for quite a bit longer, but l'm happy

to

cover that with you if you want to go into that area.
MR. GOWDY: ! don't know whether he is an attorney or

whether he did criminal

work.

not.

I don't know

He would have had no reason to contact you on a

professional basis given what he did before he was Govemor. I don'l even know
what he did, but

-

MR. MCCABE: No, I never -- t've never spoken to the man before that
meeting with him on March
MR. GOWDY: All

7,2015. And l've never

spoken to him since then.

right. I don't like quoting newspaper articles, but I think

I'm the only one in Congress who doesn't like doing it.

I

 I

203

MR. MCCABE: Just this one time.
MR. GOWDY: One

time. The texts came after a meeting involving Miss

Page, Mr. Strzok, and FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe according to people
close to the pair and familiar with their version of events. At the meeting Miss
Page suggested they could take their time investigating the alleged collusion
because Mrs. Clinton was likely to win, the people said."
The part of that that I'm going to ask you about is, this is reporting that
people close to either Miss Page or Mr. Strzok, or both, have said you were the
Andy McCabe and that the meeting was about the likelihood of her electoral
success and whether you could ramp up, or tap down the investigation into his
campaign.

MR. BAKER: Excuse

me.

For the record, what's the newspaper?

MR. GOWDY: Wall Street Journal.

MR. MCCABE: Well, I'm not familiar with that reporting other than what
you just

read.

I have no recollection of ever having participated in a conversation

with Lisa Page or Pete Strzok about ramping up or tamping down the investigation
of -- I can't remember how you referred to it there

-

of that would have been then

Candidate Trump, because of Hillary Clinton's possibility of winning the election.
I don't know who these people are who are reporting these things.

MR. GOWDY: That's the challenge with reporting is you don't have to list a
name.
MR. MCCABE: Yeah, I don't --

MR. GOWDY: lt's hard to cross-examine someone if you don't know who
they are.
MR. MCCABE: Yeah, I don't have any, as I've said before, I don't have

I

 2U

I
any idea what they are referring to in that text.

MR. GOWDY: And you don't recallthat conversation taking place in your
presenc,e, and whether it took place in your office without your

presence. You

wouldn't be able to speak to it anyway?
MR. MCCABE: I don't recallthat conversation taking place. I don't ever
recall hearing Pete and Lisa talk about making decisions in the investigative work
that we did based on their personal political beliefs. And I certainly never

engaged in that sort of talk or decisionmaking.
MR. GOWDY: ln October of 2016, Director Comey wrote Congress.

I

think his purported reason, what he said he felt like he had to do was supplement
testimony he had given before the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
I think, in particular, maybe Tim Walberg's line of questions, maybe Johnny

Ratcliffe. I don't remember who it was, But he felt the need to let Congress
know that the investigation had reopened.

Was there any discussion of notifoing Congress or supplementing the
record in a private way as opposed to a public letter?
MR. MCCABE: I cannot answer that because I did not participate in any of
the discussions around the first or second letters to Congress related to the
Weiner laptop.
MR. GOWDY: You were the Deputy Director at the time?

MR. MCCABE: Yes, sir.
MR. GOWDY: Why would he have not availed yourself of expertise on a

decision like that?
MR. MCCABE: Yeah, again, so this calls for a somewhat expanded

answer. So fee!free to cut me off if l'm going in places you are not interested.

I

 I

205

I insisted that Director Comey participate in a meeting on, I think it was

probably Thursday, October 27thit I have the day correct, to discuss the Weiner
laptop issue. I was scheduled to travel the next day, so I wasn't going to be there.

lwas going to callinto the meeting. When I called into the meeting, lwas
basically dropped from the

call.

I was told that they were concerned lhat there

might be classified material discussed as a part of the meeting, and therefore,

I

shouldn't be dialing in from an unclassified phone. And so I hung up.
And when I returned to the office the following Monday, that's when we

began a series of conversations, myself, Mr. Baker, and others, and ultimately the
Director, as to whether or not I should recuse from the midyear investigation as a
result of the public interest that had been generated by two Wall Street Joumal

articles. Ultimately at the Direclor's request, I recused from that investigation, and
then have not participated in it since then.
That was a request that I did not agree with, a request I did not support, a
recusal that I did not believe was called for, but I did it because Director Comey
asked me to do it.
MR. GOWDY: Well, what reason did he give you for asking you to recuse

yourself because you seem to feel pretty passionate that that was not necessary
for you to be able to do your job.
MR. MCCABE: Yeah. His reason was that the amount of kind of public
interest that had been generated by The Wall Street Journal articles put him in a

position where it would be, you know, kind of easier iust to kind of, if asked, to be
able to resolve the issue, I guess, by saying that lwas not involved in the

decisionmaking on the case going forward.
MR. GOWDY: I don't recallThe WallStreet Journal articles. I don't know

I

 I

206

what those articles, what would they have been about?
MR. MCCABE: There was an article -- I can't remember the dates on the

articles. I think the first one was maybe October 23rd, so it was the prior week
was the first article that The Wall Street Journal released about my wife and her
carnpaign and the fact that she had received campaign contributions from the

Virginia Democratic Party, which was controlled by Governor McAuliffe, and from a
PAC that was also controlled by Governor McAuliffe.
The following weekend, the same weekend of my travel and the meeting

that lwas dropped from, the Journal did a second article that basically plowed the
same ground, and then added a kind of a whole narrative involving the Clinton
Foundation case, and my involvement in that, and some back and forth that we
had with the Department of Justice over the Clinton Foundation case.

MR. BAKER: May I have a minute, Mr. Chairman?
[Discussion off the record.]
MR. GOWDY: ltake it you did not believe the recusalwas necessary or

warranted?
MR. MCCABE: That's conect. I also believed it would potentially harm
our -- the perception of our investigation.
MR. GOWDY: lf you recused yourself, or if you did not?

MR. MCCABE: lf ! recused myself it would, quite naturally
MR. GOWDY: Be like a tacit admission that something

-

-

MR. MCCABE: That's right. Thafs right, and it would cast the work that
we had done under undue suspicion.
MR. GOWDY: lt was kind of late in the game to do the recusal, wasn't it?

This was the Clinton email server investigation, right?

I

 I

207

MR. MCCABE: That's correct.
MR. GOWDY: That had ended and only reopened into the public's minds

eye because of a public letter that Director Comey sent to Congress.
MR. MCCABE: That's conect.
MR. GOWDY: All

right. I will treat you like I do every other witness.

l'm

going to ask you the same series of questions I ask every other witness.
MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MR. GOWDY: So no one can say I lreated you differently.

MR. MCCABE: I'm happy to take whatever questions you have.
MR. GOWDY: Three inflexion points I want you to focus on.

MR. MCCABE: l'm sorry?
MR. GOWDY: Three inflexion points. three kind of points that I'm going to

center these questions around.
Number one is the hack of the DNC server.
MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MR. GOWDY: Nurnber two

- they are not in chronological order - the

accessing of John Podesta's email.
MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MR. GOWDY: And third would be lhe dissemination by Wikileaks or

whomever, of the proceeds of those two unlawful acts.
MR. MCCABE: Okay.
MR. GOWDY: The hacking of the server, the accessing of Podesta's

email.

Do you have any evidence regardless of whether or not you believe it and

regardless of whether or not it comes from a source that would be admissible in
any court, so l'm giving you free rein to use hearsay, and even if you say I heard it

I

 r

208

like with the stuff with DOJ, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, heard it, read it,
maybe didn't believe it, Donald Trump colluded, conspired, confederated with
anyone to hack the DNC server.
MR. MCCABE: Do I personally have

-

MR. GOWDY: Or have you seen evidence?

MR. MCCABE: Right, have I personally seen evidence or information that
shows Donald Trump's involvement in the DNC hack?
MR. GOWDY: Yes.

MR. MCCABE: No, sir.
MR. GOWDY: His involvernent in the accessing of John Podesta's email?

MR. MCCABE: Do I personally see information or evidence that points to
President Trump's personal involvement in the hacking of John Podesta's email,

no, sir.
MR. GOWDY: Do you know whether or not it violates any criminal code

section to disseminate information that has been acquired via a hack? So in this
hypothetical, you didn't participate in the

hack. Someone else did

it.

But you are

going to participate in the dissemination of the proceeds.
MR. MCCABE: Yeah, I don't want to

- I don't want to speculate on that.

I

can't answer that for you definitively tonight.
MR. GOWDY: All

right. Well let me ask it differently. ls lhere any

evidence, do you have any evidence that Donald Trump himself participated in the
decision to disseminate or the timing of the dissemination of the information
gleaned during either of those two criminal acts, the hacking of the server and the
hacking of Podesta's email?
MR. MCCABE: I personally haven't seen information that would indicate

I

 I

209

that, that would indicate Donald Trump's personal involvement in those criminal
actions.
MR. GOWDY: Okay. Thank you, Deputy Director. That's all I've got.
MR. SWALWELL: I don't have any further

questions,I

BYI
O

lf I can just ask, you just answered three very narrow questions

about whether or not you were personally aware of any evidence that Donald J.
Trump himself was involved in either the DNC hack, the hack of the Podesta
emails, or, and to be precise, the dissemination once that information was hacked,
presumably to the entities like Wikileaks, the cutout entities thal ultimately
d

isseminated publicly.
lf we can take you back to have a broader question related to that, which is,

are you aware of whether the FBI had suspicions that the Trump campaign may
have received foreknowledge of, A, the existence of stolen information about

Clinton, possibty in the form of thousands of emails? I think the quote "thousands
of emails" comes from the statement of the offense that George Papadopoulos
pleaded guilty

A
O
A
O

to.

So I will leave it there, first.

l'm sorry, you lost me about halfway through.
Yeah, so just because the question you answered was very narrow?

Very narrow, that's right.
So the broader question is, whether or not the FBI was in receipt of

any information that pointed to the possibility that the Trump campaign or Trump
campaign associates had foreknowledge about the existence of the

-

of

information that may have been stolen from the DNC or the Clinton campaign?

A

I'm trying to

think. I don't

:

remember

that.

Can I have just a

 I

210

second?

O

Sure. And we have the statement of the offense, as well.

MR. BAKER: What document is that?
MR. SWALWELL: We willmark, without objection, exhibit 3, George

Papadopoulos' Statement of Defense.
[McCabe Exhibit No. 3
Was marked for identification.l
MR. MCCABE: Okay.
BY

O
A

The statement of Defense that George Papadopoulos pled guilty to.
Okay, so your question

is:

Does the FBI have this information now?

Oraml.-

0

So the question would be, and based on the same baseline that we

have applied for all of the other questions until the point that the special counsel,
Robert Mueller, was appointed, were you aware whether the FBI had knowledge
that the Trump campaign itsetf had foreknowledge before these emails were

published publicly, that they knew about the existence of these emails?

A

No.

I am not -- I am not personally aware of whether or not

the FBI

had information that would indicate that the Trump campaign had foreknowledge.
As close as I could get to that, and what I am aware of is the original statement
referred to us attributed to Papadopoulos, which was that the Russians suggested
that they could help with the anonymous release of inforrnation.

O
A
O

Okay. Thank you.
Yep.

One issue that we have had to clear up as well goes to the question

I

 ztl

I
of the

- whether or not lhe conversations between Michael Flynn and Ambassador

Kislyak in late December -.

A
O

Yes.
-- were ever quote "unmasked" and then leaked to the public, and

the then Director Comey, in testimony to the committee on March 2, 2016, went
into some detail quoting from what he called quote "lech cuts" and

-

MR. BAKER: 2016, or 2017?

I

t'm sorry, his testimony was on March

2,2017.

MR. BAKER: lthink you said 2016.

BYI
O

But it related to conversations in December of

specifically about these tech

2016.

He said

cuts: 'We did not disseminate this take in any

finished intelligence, although our people judged it was appropriate for reasons
that I hope are obvious to have Mr. Flynn's name unmasked." And he was
referring to those specific tech cuts.
"We have received testimony from other senior officials in the Obama
administration who have said that they themselves never saw any disseminated
reporting of those conversations either."

A

To my recollection, the best of my recollection is that the substance

or

in finished intelligence

products. However, they were shared with a small number of people outside our
organization.

I

 2t2

I
For instance, they calne up

- we found them through an effort -

getting into too long of an explanation

-

without

in an effort to respond to a tasking from

and so lhe results of what we found were communicated to the
Agency, who I think had the pen on that response.

-,

MR. BAKER: Excuse me.
[Discussion off the record.]
MR. MCCABE:

T

MR. BAKER: SMPs are standard minimization procedures.
MR. MCCABE: l'm

sorry. I should have

said

that. The SMPs are the

standard minimization procedures that are defined under the FISA Act.

BYI
O

Okay, the reason I ask is specific to the investigation of this

committee. There has been a prong that emerged as a result of the last
parameter that is part of the agreed parameters to the investigation that focuses
on possible leaks related to the lntelligence Community assessment, the ICA?

I

 I
A
O

213

Yes.

The prong that emerged was an investigation into whether or not

there was quote-unquote "improper unmasking" by senior Obama administration
officials, and that was premised on the leak of Mr. Flynn's name in press reporting,
I think beginning in

a report by David lgnatius in The Washington Post, and then

subsequent reporting. But all of it, this unmasking investigation was premised on
what we have learned since, and your testimony is consistent with this, that there
was never any intelligence product.
So no transcript or summary of Flynn's conversations with Kislyak that were
ever masked, and therefore, there were no unmasking requests that could have
been made for these nonexistent reports.
So we just want to make sure that we have for the record a clear as

possible understanding of exactly what the product was that was created, how it
was disseminated internally or discussed internally, and whether or not there was
any unmasking linked to that report?
lf you have anything else to add to that, but that was the reason for why

I

was asking the specific line of questioning.

A

I think your description is

accurate. lt's probably a misnomer to refer

to it as a product. lt wasn't an intelligence product as we use that

I

term. There

do not believe that that summary was ever masked. l'm also not familiar

with any requests that we received to unmask anything. I'm not -- l'm not aware
that

*

if we got one, it would strike me as unnecessary if nothing was masked.

I

 I
O

274

My final question, and we had an entire line of questioning that we

won't go into given the time, about the U.S. Govemment's response in 2016 and
what insight you could share about the role the FBI played, for example, in the

I,

in the interagency discussions, and ultimately, in the decisions that

led up to the removal of the 35 Russian intellQence officers or suspected
intelligence officers and the sanctions. We'll leave that to discussions with other
FBI officials to get a clear record of that

A
O
asked

-

Okay.

-

as

well.

But I did want to, just to clarify one matter that you were

about. You were read excerpts by both the minority and the majority from

the June 8,2017, oflicial submission written submission by Mr. Comey to the
Senate Select Committee on lntelligence?

A
O

Yes.

lt is part of a much longer transcript where Mr. Comey was asked

very specific questions about a variety of issues. But he was specifically asked a
guestion that our colleagues in the majority asked you to opine
question was from Senator

asked

-

Warner.

He was asked

-

on.

And the

this was Comey was

What was it about that meeting," and he's talking about the first meeting

on January 6th at Trump Tower

-

"What was it about that meeting that led you,

Mr. Comey, to determine that you needed to start putting down a written record?

And Mr. Comey responded the following: A combination of things. I think
the circumstances, the subject matter, and the person lwas interacting with.
Circumstances

first.

I

was alone with the President of the United States, or the

President-Elect, soon to be President.
The subject matter, lwas talking about matters that touch on the FBI's core

I

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215

responsibility and that relate to the President, President-Elect personally, and then

the nature of the person. I was honestly concerned he might lie about the nature
of our meeting, so I thought it important to document. That combination of things
I had never experienced before, but had led me to believe I've got to write it down

and write it down in a very detailed way.
I don't know if you have anything to add to that, but we wanted to make

sure that that was included in the record in terms of Mr. Comey's explanation as to
why he decided he needed to start creating a written record as early as the
January 6th meeting with the President-elect.

A
O

That's consistent with my conversations with Director Comey.

Thank you.

MR. SWALWELL: We don't have anything

further. Thank you again,

Deputy Director, for spending so much time with us today -MR. MCCABE: Sure.
MR. SWALWELL: .- and providing great insighl into our investigation.

Yield back.
MR. QUIGLEY: Thank you, sir, we are adjourned. We appreciate your
time.
[Whereupon, at 9:54 p.m., the interview was concluded.]

I