Mccabes forthcoming book is called the threat, that details his decision to launch the inquiry after the day of the firing. Mccabe describes his First Encounter with trump on the day he took over at the bureau. After comeys departure, quote, the president said, people are really happy about the fact that the directors gone, and its just remarkable what people are saying. Have you seen that . In that interview mccabe recounted his concerns about trump and the need to protect the larger investigation. I was speaking to the man who had just run for the presidency and won the election for the presidency and who might have done so with the aid of the government of russia, our most formidable adversary. That was something that troubled me greatly. I was concerned that i was able to put the russia case on absolutely solid ground in an indelible fashion that were i removed quickly or reassigned or fired that the case could not be closed or vanished in the night without a trace. I wanted to make sure that our case was on solid ground. And if somebody came in behind me and closed it and tried to walk away from it, they would not be able to do that without creating a record of why they made that decision. Scott pelley of 60 minutes reveal what had mccabe told him about conversations during those eight days, again, may 2017 among Top Justice Department officials about trump and his fitness for office. There were meetings at the Justice Department in which it was discussed whether the Vice President and a majority of the cabinet could be brought together to remove the president of the United States under the 25th amendment. The highest levels of american Law Enforcement were trying to figure out what to do with the president. Pelley added that mccabe confirmed a New York Times report last year about such conversations and that the Deputy Attorney general Rob Rosenstein suggested wearing a wire in meetings with mr. Trump. Rosensteins Office Issued the following response, quote, the Deputy Attorney general never authorized any recording that mr. Mccabe reference as he has stated. There is no basis to invoke the 25th amendment. Andrew mccabe also writes about his discussions with rosenstein about protecting the russia investigation writ large. In a conversation on may 12th of 2017, mccabe says he told him i feel strongly that the investigation will be best served by having a special counsel. Robert mueller, of course, was appointed five days later on may 17th and the world changed for donald trump and many others. Mccabes thoughts on trumps leadership and personality are evident in this book. He writes, quote, people do not appreciate how far we have fallen from normal standards of president ial accountability. Every day brings a new low with the president exposing himself as a deliberate liar wholl say whatever he pleases to get whatever he wants. If he were on the box at quantico, the fbi polygraph, he would break the machine. Trump attacked mccabe repeatedly for months and while also raising questions about the credibility of federal Law Enforcement, mccabe was fired last year on the eve of his retirement for not being forthcoming with officials about his disclosures to the media. Tonight trump responded to mccabes revelations with this quote, he was a big part of the crooked hillary scandal and a puppet for leakin james comey. Mccabe is a disgrace to the fbi and a disgrace to our count. All of this unfolded on the same day of william barr. Barr was sworn in the Oval Office Late this afternoon which means hell now be overseeing the mueller investigation. Lets bring in our lead off pooh panel, peter baker for the New York Times, clint watts, a former fbi special agent and author of messing with the enemy, Barbara Mcquaid, former u. S. Attorney for the Eastern District of michigan and matthew miller, former chief spokesman for the Justice Department. Clint, i would like to begin with you given your fbi experience, do the extreme maeshs, tra fracas going on, does that read true to form to you . Yes. It is interesting how many ways they explored to deal with the situation. Do we do a special counsel . Yes or no . Do we pursue the 25th amendment, yes or no. Do we take memos . Do we wear a wire . There is something going on in those days after comey was fired where they were that concerned that they needed to do something quickly. Something that you have not seen before. What i also find interesting is these two individuals, rosenstein and mccabe, were put in unprecedented situations. We are going to evaluate this here tonight and well see a lot of news stories about this. But think about being those two individuals, rosenstein thinks maybe he got set up to be the fall guy for getting rid of comey and at the same time, mccabe watching his boss get fired and they have been rooking into it for months and seeing him come in and say on tv, well, i did this because of russia. What else are you to think . You are put in an unprecedented situation. I am curious of what the Mueller Report if we get to see what it will show about those days were like. Forgive the inane tv question but how does it make you feel . These are your people at the fbi and the men and women you work with. You can see the kind of urgency in mccabes eyes as he speaks. Yeah. It must have been a shocking turn of events where everyone is trying to figure out whats the appropriate thing to do. I have a very small time to respond. There are other bizarre things that happened. An unsecured phone call from the president don trump. Highly unusual. You are wondering who else is listening to my phone call right now. The president called me on an unsecured line. Everything is abnormal. To think the stress that these people are under the organization with the president who does not know what hes doing or does know what hes doing for bad purposes. It is really remarkable. All right, to our other former fed, how real does it read to you of this perceived urgency to lock down, clamp down and protect the integrity of the investigation. I think that part of the story rings very true. The firing of james comey really rattled the fbi, contrary to President Trumps statements, the people i know in the fbi very much admired jim comey, so that was a startling turn of events. It also makes me wonder what else andy mccabe and others knew about this investigation that is not known to the public. Of course, they had access to foreign intelligence and surveillance and other information from the intelligence community. Thats not known to the public, sometimes we refer to these books like andy mccabe has written as tellall books. But when you work for the fbi or an organization like that, its really more of a tell some book because youre not permitted to disclose classified information even in your book and they are subject to review by the fbi. They were startled of what was known publicly and it is quite likely that they know more facts that caused them to be more startling. Thats a great point. The expression tip of the iceberg comes to mind. Matt miller in the same vein, you are a communications guy. That rosenstein statement, talk about a tough spot, was notable for what it did not say. The nixon era phrase nondenial denial with a tip to ben bradlee does come to mind. It denied a bunch of things that were not alleged. What andy mccabe said in his interview today and what the New York Times reported a couple of months ago was not that Rod Rosenstein was authorized to wear wires or that he believes today the 25th amendment was appropriate. It was he discussed it in that meeting. I think the spot rosenstein is in, im confused why hes still continuing to have this fight over that conversation. Hes by all accounts in his last day of the Justice Department that hes going to be gone soon. But i think what we really get from those eight days is this tension between the fbi and the Justice Department and the Deputy Attorney general who in some way was cracking a bit under pressure. He had seen himself be used by the president i think a little bit naive by him to write this memo but he to some extent knew why the president was firing comey and let himself be used. He saw his reputation really tattered. He saw himself being attacked by people and he didnt know what to do to restore his reputation. I think ultimately the thing he did was to decide to appoint the special counsel. That helped rebuild him but during that period, you see the tension between the fbi and the Justice Department and the new Political Leadership and the career people at the Justice Department. You also see a Deputy Attorney general who was straining under the pressure and trying to figure out what he should do going forward. Which brings us to you, peter baker. No love lost between mr. Mccabe and President Trump. Trump fired him 26 hours before his retirement kicked in. That was not a love letter on twitter. Yet, what is going to be like when the president has to endure this book tour hasnt started yet. It kicks off sunday night on 60 minutes. Hes going on a number of broadcast on this network for starters. The president is trying to undercut mccabes credibility from the start. He called him disgraced on twitter today and what hes referring to is the predicate for mccabe being fired was a finds by the Justice Department that he wasnt fully candid with investigators looking into leaks of information to reporters prior to the 2016 elections. So because in effect he was fired for not being fully honest, his own credibility is at issue. I think you will hear a lot about that from the president in the coming days. Hes also focused on the fact that mr. Mccabes wife ran for office and in virginia ran for the state or maybe state senate as a democrat and received hundreds of thousands of dollars in Campaign Contribution from Terry Mcauliffe who is a former governor for virginia and a friend of the clintons. In his mind this is a biased person. What mccabe is doing is having a chance to tell the story on his own terms and people can judge him and iself. Theyll watch him on this network and take their cone measure of him remember than just read what i said about him on the newspaper on twitter. I have to ask you of this other vignette that emerged from the book in a book review. This is Jeff Sessions over at the fbi talking about the bureau. The fbi was better off when you all only hired irishmen. Sessions said in one diatribe about the bureaus workforce, they were drunks but they could be trusted, not like all these new people with nose rings and tattoos. Who knows what they are doing. Peter, how do we process that little vignette . It is obviously a pretty stark and colorful scene. I dont know about the context. Its hard to portray the people who were involved in this particular scenario as people with nose rings and so forth. Comey and mccabe, all the people who were involved in the investigation are longtime veterans of the bureau, very Straight Arrow types or at least thats the perception they had in their careers prior to all this. White shirts and suits and ties and knotted up to the top. These are not young characters like that. These are traditional fbi agents. Now, again, the trump people will make them out to be biased individuals but the people who have known them for many years talk about their long careers and professional investigations. I think whatever sessions meant by that could not apply to them. Barb, i have to ask you, whats the chance the new real attorney general, mr. Barr, has an 8 00 a. M. Staff meeting in a soundproof skiff at doj tomorrow where hes going to be sharing the keys to the kingdom, everything that is known thus far about this president on this matter, how is that going to work because thats going to instill him with certain knowledge thatll make this continually interesting. Thats a safe bet that one of his first orders of business is to get a full briefing on whats going on in this case. No doubt that the public knows a fair amount about the case, but there is likely exponentially more evidence that Robert Mueller has uncovered. I think it would be part of his responsibility to find out what is going on in this investigation and what is Robert Muellers plan, making sure they have a good working relationship and how theyre going to go forward and so no doubt william barr has a lot on his plate as he begins his new job as the attorney general. But this, im sure, will be among his top priorities. Clint, not for nothing, barr and mueller have been friends for decades, attending weddings of each others kids, that kind of thing. What happens did muellers life get any more confusing or easier with the raising of the right hand of the attorney . It is about competence. Theyll trust in each others abilities. I dont know if it got easier. Maybe the pathway forward, there will be some sort of structure thats laid out between the two of them. This is the way the investigation will go. These are the decisions that will be made. The entire whitaker period was just a lame duck attorney general situation where nothing was really going to move forward. I think weve seen that with the investigation. I am hoping that well get clarity and decisiveness and we get some sort of certainty to the public that will be carried through properly. Matt miller, what do you think matt schlapp is talking about tonight in this tweet that broke globally, matt schlapp happens to be married to one of the leading comp advisers to thiS White House. Mueller will be gone soon. Why do you think he would say a thing like that . It is a tough couple days on twitter for white house spouses. Yesterday you saw the spouse of the White House Communications director seeming to link the arrival of the new attorney general with the end of the mueller investigation. I guess the best spin you can put on that is that hes reacting to public reports, Matt Whitaker among others saying mueller appears to be at the end. I dont believe thats what bill barr is there i dont think hes there to end the mueller robe or clamp down any appropriate way. Thats why the president hired him. The president was aware of the memo he had written and the aggressive stance he had taken that he believed the special counsel was pursuing and thats why he got the job. I think hell be mistaken in his interpretation but i do think there are questions about whether barr is going to allow the release of muellers final report to him or some version of that report that he then writes for the public. If he gets into a fight with the white house where the white house wants to take aggressive views of their powers, thats a place where barr pledges to congress to be transparent are going to come up in opposition to his longstanding views of president ial power and, you know, well have to see how that shakes out. Peter, i never try to ask you to express a judgment. Do you have any sense that the investigation has entered any kind of new phase . Did anything change effectively today or this week . Well, the difference between bill barr and Matt Whitaker in terms of overseeing the investigation probably are not terribly significant. Once the management of this left Rod Rosensteins hands, i think thats the bigger change. Bill barr presumably has more authority and more clout in making a decision like the one we are talking about right now. I think bob muellers office had been aware of the sort of damocles thats been hanging over them quite a while. I imagine rushing to get whatever they can and taking some sort of precautions or plan b in case they find the plug pulled on their operation. Our thanks to our group. Peter baker, clint watts, Barbara Mcquaid and matt miller. Thank you all. Coming up well have the latest on the other big news of this day. That funding deal that prevents another shutdown. Two reporters right now in the thick of it will join us tonight. Later why some very smart people are asking out loud whether Paul Manafort could be a russian agent. If you were watching us last night, you witnessed this moment and what it all could mean for donald trump as the 11th hour is just getting starting on this consequential thursday night. I have a just had an opportunity to speak with President Trump and he, i would say to all my colleagues, has indicated hes prepared to sign the bill and hell be issuing a National Emergency declaration at the same time. I have indicated to him that i am going to support the National Emergency declaration. Emergency declaration sounds like a great idea. The Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell turned some heads on the hill today when you heard him say that trump would sign the agreement and, oh, by the way, hes going to declare a National Emergency to fund his border wall. Both the senate and the house have passed the funding bill. The president is going to sign it. We learned torrent he plans to hold an event tomorrow morning at 10 00 a. M. Eastern time in the rose garden on the topic of border security. Our friend, peter baker, reports tonight, quote, the Emergency De