Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said special counsel Robert Mueller came close to showing a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia but couldn’t make the final link.
“I’m sure they uncovered whatever evidence was there for them to uncover,” he told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Thursday. “It’s almost tantalizing, right? You have two sides that are working towards a common goal, that is getting President Trump, or then-candidate Trump, elected. What we clearly have is those two sides are working to mutual benefit. The Russians absolutely wanted Trump to be the victorious candidate in the election, and certainly the campaign had the same desire.”
Yet sharing the goal for Trump to win the presidency, even if the two sides acted in ways to benefit each other, is not enough to prove conspiracy, said McCabe, who was fired in 2018 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
“You have to show, in the words of criminal prosecution for conspiracy, an agreement between the two, and that was the last piece of evidence, it’s that final kind of keystone in the bridge, if you will, that the team didn’t seem to feel confident that they had,” he said.
“There are places in the report where director Mueller evaluates the evidence they have and says you know, it is not clear to us that the intent to obstruct was present in this particular circumstance. So he very much gives the president the benefit of the doubt when it’s a ball up in the air and it’s a 50/50 call, he comes down clearly on the side it’s not all there,” McCabe said.
Mueller’s nearly 450-page report, released in a redacted form Thursday, described “numerous links” between the Trump campaign and Russians, but Mueller said “the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges.” The special counsel also detailed numerous instances of possible obstruction of justice, but did not make a conclusion on whether Trump obstructed the investigation. Attorney General William Barr instead made the conclusion, determining Trump did not obstruct justice.
