Trump attacks FBI, and his lawyer says Russia probe must end

Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on March 16, shortly before McCabe was set to retire. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)   

President Trump escalated his assault on federal law enforcement agencies Saturday while one of his attorneys -John Dowd- argued that the controversial firing of a top FBI official was reason to end the Justice Department special counsel’s expansive Russia investigation.   

After Attorney General Jeff Sessions acted late Friday night on Trump’s publicly stated wishes to fire former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe —just hours before he was set to retire with full benefit — the president celebrated the ouster as a triumph that exposed “tremendous leaking, ­lying and corruption” throughout law enforcement.   

The move emboldened Mc­Cabe, who said in a public statement that his dismissal was a deliberate effort to slander him and part of an “ongoing war” against the FBI and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 elections.   

Like former FBI director James B. Comey, who was fired by Trump last year, McCabe kept contemporaneous memos detailing his fraught conversations with the president, according to two people familiar with the ­records. The danger for Trump is that those memos could help corroborate McCabe’s witness testimony and become damaging evidence in Mueller’s investigation of whether Trump has sought to obstruct justice.   

Dowd said in a Saturday morning statement, “I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier.”   
Leonnig March 17