But also to be able to do it on the hundredth anniversary of the new school. Congratulation on your i anniversary and thank you for making me part of it. Tonight i would like to talk to you a pit about loyalty. And about how my experiences in the fbi, shared me the majesty and the power of loyalty at its best. And the danger and manipulation of loyalty and pursuit of selfinterest. The motto of the fbi his fidelity bravery, and integrity. The begins with fidelity. What is that. The quality or state of being faithful. And one is faithful. Well according to merriamwebster, phyllis steadfast ands affection for allegiance and loyal. I think its appropriate that the fbi, you begin swearing an oath of loyalty to the concepts and the principles that we dedicate ourselves to. When youre in the course of our career. Might be getting to place on a hot sunday night in july of 1996. I had been suffering as a miserable attorney. Other miserable attorneys in the blaudience was and more this is new yorky, city so i know there are some here. A failure. E. [laughter] i really locked onto the idea of becoming an agent. While i was in moscow. The fbi was on a hiring freeze so i graduated from law school i went to workee for a small firmn camden, new jersey. Wonderful town. I immediately put my application in as soon as they started accepting them. And i waited, and i waited. I remember, most viscerally, on april 19th, 1995, sitting in my office the day that timothy mcveigh, drove a ryder truck up to the front of the Federal Building in oklahoma, city. Detonated that truck killing a 160 americans and injuring about 500 others. And i spent the entire day, sitting in my office staring at the wall listening to the radio. I cannot break away from the coverage of that if it. It was somethingra about what ws happening on the ground that it couldnt explain it to myself at times, but i knew i wanted to be there. The need to be a part of that. To be in the rubble in spite of the smoky halls, helping those innocent people who had been touched. Dreadfully by terrorism, and most important being part of that team was going to have the responsibility to find this people responsible in bringing them to justice. So remember that time is being particularlyem tough. Waiting for the fbi to give me a call. I did get it eventually in july of 1996. So on that sunday night, i packed my stuff drove down to quantico, virginia. Its a very regimented place. You know told exactly where to be and every minute of the day and you must be harley and dovulate, the whole 9 yards. So as soon as we got there, we were told we have a off an hour to eat and put on a suit and tie the report to the classroom. We were sworn in as special agents training at the fbi. Your very first night in the fbi, you dont sleep until you gather together with your class of 40 or so, and you hold up your right hand and take the following oath. You begin by staying, i enter mccabe, he was a name, dont get hung up on that. Do solemnly swear, that i will support and defend the constitution of the United States a against all enemies foreign and domestic. And that i will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. That is a phrase that gets me the most. Everybody thinks about the first clause the i will defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. This very powerful but its the second cause really defines what you do as an fbi agent. I will bear truth faith and allegiance to the same. That same constitution, that binds us all to the principles of freedom, fairness, and justice. That is the source, that is what you become loyal to. We do make that oath. Notably, there is no president in that oath, there is no Political Party in that oath, there is no race, no gender, no sexual orientation. It is simply the pledge of loyalty to the document the binds us together as americans. It is the same oath that every Public Servant in the United States government takes. In each of us, it carries the same meaning. Basically, that we will do our job, whatever it is, in accordancece with the principles of that constitution for the betterment of all americans. I started to learn how this happens when i had the opportunity, my first office of an assignment right here in the big apple. New york city field office, not is it too far out down broadway from where we are sitting tonight. Ii was first assigned there is n agent on the Russian Organized Crime Task force. I know, ironic right. [laughter] coincidence or not. I am not sure. But there, i had the opportunity to work alongside other people who had taken the same oath as me. People who share the same values, and the dedicated themselves to those values in a daytoday loophole. Also had the opportunity to work for leaders. They shared me by example what it meant to be loyal to those concepts, to those ideals and those values. And i have the ability to interact with and help victims ofan crimes. Intrinsically new that our loyalty to those concepts meant that we would help them. No matter who they were, where they were from, or with their immigrant ration status was. Or anything else. Probably the best example i can give you of this is my first big case on my squad. It is still very new in the new york office, new enough that i was showing up at work early the new yorkin office test. I was nots seasoned enough to realize that there are days dragged on into the evenings and it was better to come in a little bit later. Nevertheless, i was the only one there when the phone rang one morning. And on the phone, i hear this gravelly voice of a man with a heavy russian accent who said to me, will first i had to introduce myself. I said, hello mccabe, fbi. The giggled music and believe i was actually staying it. [laughter] the man on the other and said, i think i am being racketeers. Extraordinary, i never thought of that word as a verb and sort of that way. But okay, lets go with it. So i talked to him and he laid out a story for me. The phillies was a furniture nistore owner. In a store in brookland, he was russian, he was here on a green card and i here for monday years and he was part of a community ofrd other Furniture Store owne. All russian, hardworking people, not making a lot of money making their way in this countryf paying taxes. Living their lives in the same way that all of us do. Earlier in his career, he had a partner, guy named demetri. Dimitri left the store, quebec to russia and spent a year in moscow and then returned to brookland with a new approach to live. Dimitri decided he had become a gangster. Monday brits and run himself a small group of thugs and he said about doing what gangsters do. Which is taking advantage of people in their own communities and extorting them for things like protection money, and collection kidnapping and things like that. So demetri had come to felix and said, im going to get all of the Furniture Store owners together and therell going to start paying me for protection. I need you to help me with this. I need you to call them altogether. Felix was outraged. He was nervous, and family and children and demetri knew them well, where he lived. But he was outraged and humiliated by what demetri was demanding from him and his friends. And remembering him staying to me on the phone, i dont need him clause i have you. And i know that moment, like the fact that he came from a place where he could never have that loophole of faith and trust in the Law Enforcement officers that he interacted with daytoday, but here it was w different here he had that sort of faith and trust in our syst system, he knew that as a member of this esteemed institution, the fbi, that i wouldtu remain loyal to my oath. And to those principles that i did my organization is for. And that i would actually help them. And we did. And that was why felix was inclined when we asked him to go to a meeting to organize this racket, wearing a concealed recording device. He didnt want to do it, he was scared but he trusted us and he did it anyway. That is why we need came out of that meeting, and demetri said to him on the street, referring to ahe woman who on store who refused to pay, i want the woman beaten and i want her in the hospital for at least two weeks. That went out recording, we were able to make what turned out to be an unbelievable case. But the experience is like that, working cases with people that we interacted with across every sector of live in t the city, we saw the value and strength that our own loyalties place and the people that we worked with. And how the translated into justice. I also had the chance at the time here in new york and of course later headquarters to work for great leaders. Leaders who taught me about creating environments of trust within the people you lead. So my first leader here in new york was a guy named ray carr, he was ours watch supervisor. Alleged in the new york city field office. Ray would come in every morning around eight or 830 and he was in the office until 830 or nine by 30 10 oclock every night. In the last few hours of every day, ray would spend just talking to us. Talking to us about her cases, talking to us about her informants, listening to us complain about her prosecutors, which we did fairly frequently. But also talking to us about her wives and her kids and the renovations we are trying to do ourselves on our first houses. And how do you put a deck on the back in the backyard. He was just there for us. He was a guy who connected with us on a very personal loophole. And he exemplified a loophole of excellence and honesty and integrity that we all aspire to mimic in our own lives in a way that we worked our own cases. Later when i move to headquarters, i had the opportunity to work recklessly for monday years with director muller. So the mistaken describe director muller to him as he is exactly the guy you heard about. He fits the description to a t. People really got this guy figured out. He is the consonant investigator. The prosecutor, the cross to get diameter, director muller, never met a case that he didnt love and he wanted to get right down in the weeds of every one of them. They would use that knowledge, to grow us at the table in the morning. He would ask us questions, constantly challenging our knowledge of the facts, and both of or not we have followed up on the things that he had asked us to do the day before, and above that, was mildly terrifying and stressful at the time i realized later as a leader in the fbi, and what he was doing was teaching us and communicating the loophole of excellence and the loophole of understanding that he demanded of each of us. Run a business with no margins preventing acts of terrorism, its not like you can get most of them. You have to get them all. In understanding this demands, erector roller communicated to us exactly how much emphasis he placed on our expertise. But is also incredibly fairminded. And off of hed push you to the limits at the table, he was the same guy who called me the day after my i got hit by a car riding my bike, he called me to find out how he was doing. Heavily on painkillers at the time so it is a strange conversation that i cannot exactly recount at this moment, but another caring moral leader with integrity who served as a great example to the people he led. D. So you can imagine my shock when on the evening of may 9th, 2017, after having been informed maybe a off an hour earlier, by the attorney general that he had had fire the fbi director, i received a call my staff received a call and said, the president would like to see you in the oval office. So i had never been to the oval office. And into a thousand meetings in the white house and the situation room, and members of the National Security council. Some of which were attended by president obama. I had never met with a president in the oval office. Simply as a career government survey, going to the oval office, is an aweinspiring if it. No matter who is sitting in the office at the time. I walked in, President Trump was seated behind the desk. The incredible solid ornate beautiful resolute desk. He popped up quickly and came around the desk with a hand out his fingers all stretched out at me and immediately shook my hand and began talking. I knew surprised. [laughter] President Trump is an overwhelming communicator. The big man and he speaks loudly, and constantly. He launched into a tirade of really statements, not so much questions, just statements which i later learned was his way of informing me of the facts that he wished me to adopt. He said, so glad you are here, this is going to be great, but got rid of dummy this thing his going to be great every savvy, did you hear everybody is happy about this. Im sure everybody is happy about it. Seen people that are happy about it they have about this. What you think about is great isnt terrific. Fortunately he did end with a question. I didnt really know how to respond to his assertions. He said, i heard you were part of the resistance. Totally caught me offguard. Im not sure what you understand sir. He said, i heard you know part of the group that didnt like jim tony. You didnt approve of what he did. In these cases and you didnt agree with him and you didnt agree with his decisions and you objected to the way that he worked these cases. Is that right. I said, no star that is not right. Cli work very closely with joan coming in and we work on those pieces together. I was a part of most of those decisions, i agreed with most of them. I know some people have disagreements with the way that we handled some of our hard decision but i was part of that team and i dont think you are correct about that. So the moment, my impulse was simply to made it through the question honestly. Thats what we do. It was only later that i realized that this was my loyalty test. Jim coming with had curiously had his and his private dinner with the president shortly after his inauguration. For the president came right out and set a t need you to be loya. So there was no interpretation need it there. It was pretty direct. I realize that this was my version of that same loyalty test. The president clearly laid out the i dont want to call facts he wished i would adopt and then gave me that opportunity, hung that lifeline in the water to say you know either with us or against us. It didnt even occur to me at the time to respond to that. In any way other than correct. So the course of other several interactions withns him, the net morning on the telephone, and the later that day in the afternoon, and a followup meeting i had with him a few weekss later. I saw things about President Trump his leadership style that i had never seen in the fbi. As all the way that his staff and advisors would sit at attention in a small row of chairs gathered in front of the resolute desk. As all the way that he tried to manipulate he and his advisors try to manipulate me into inviting him to speak at the uber building that week. I saw the way he reflectively again and again came back to references about my wife failed Political Campaign in a state of virginia and 2015. And consistently referred to it as a mistake that i made. Leaders dont, this was not a leader who is creating an a environment of trust. These were obvious efforts to coerce me into a position to take that loyalty id had with the course of my career and shifted the loyalty to a person rather than to an ideal and rather to the constitution. You know we all know how the story plays out proportionally. Over the days that followed those meetings, i had the opportunity or the obligation to make a series of decisions in the cases we were working that ultimately i believe is what led to my own firing from the fbi. In some way. Those decisions have been characterized as acts of treason. We have been referred in the group of us that worked on those issues have been referred to as plotting to overturn the presidency. And of those words are nice. I think there intentionally weapon eyes together people his attention to a certain set of talking points. To draw in viewers and listeners and clicks on the internet. Ill leave it up to you. Im going to tell you exactly what we saw and exactly what we knew at that time and what we thought about the decisions we were making and you can be the judge as to both of or not those decisions were an act of professional integrity and effect loyalty to the responsibilities that we had at the time. Or some sort of treasonous. When ask you for a minute on your investigators had and think about the fact that we had in our hands over the period leading up to the firing of jacoby and immediately after. Keep in mind, the standard for opening fbi case, has given to us by the attorney general and the attorney general guidelines. Is when we have information credible articulable information to indicate that a threat to National Security might exist within a federal crime might have taken place. Medicine standard to open a fold field would investigation. The most robust and capable investigative activity we might have. So go back in time, three investigators plans, after the fall of 2014. In the fall of tran14, and then through 2015, we knew that the russian government was behind an aggressive series of Cyber Attacks that were focused on institutions government institutions in dc at the highest loophole, academic institutions, and also political think tanks. We were sure why they were doing it, but we knew that they were behind this activity. Like his sister 2014 and 2015. It is 2016, we see the aggressions and the targeting of the activity becomes more specific. We then uncover science the Democratic National committee may be a target of this lien russian activity. Through. A system source we dont communicate very well with the dnc and telling them that they should check their systems and see if they see actual evidence of this sort of probing and intelligence collection of and we know the adversary engages them. Then as get deeper in 2016, we see that activity is focused specifically on emails at the dnc and other places associated with Hillary Clinton and her campaign. Unbeknownst to us, in may, 2016, an individual with a Truck Campaign and george papadopoulos, has a meeting with a friendly foreign diplomat in which he tells that diplomat but the russians have informed them that they have a lot of negative information about clinton, and they offered to help the campaign with that and using that information. We dont know this may. You enter june and july and what happens. Now we see the information we know the russians have taken is actually weapon eyes. His released on the eve of the convention in an effort to harm senator clinton. Staying that activity, a friendly foreign diplomat realizes the significanc