McCabe says Rosenstein knew of two Trump Cabinet members could back 25th ...

Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, now claims that the deputy attorney general had two Cabinet members in mind when he floated a plan to invoke the 25th amendment and remove Donald Trump from office.

He told reporters on Thursday, according to Reuters, that he could not remember which Cabinet members Rod Rosenstein cited.

'I at no time got the impression that he had actually sought support or talked to those people about it,' McCabe said. 'It was simply Rod thinking off the top of his head - this is a thing that could be done.'

Asked previously about the Cabinet members who Rosenstein had in mind for the plot, in an '60 Minutes' interview, McCabe said the deputy attorney general did not assign specific votes to specific administration officials.

'Rosenstein was actually openly talking about whether there was a majority of the cabinet who would vote to remove the president,' CBS Correspondent Scott Pelley had asked.

McCabe told him 'That’s correct. Counting votes or possible votes.' Pressed by Pelley to say whether or not he assigned 'specific votes to specific people' in the conversation, McCabe said, 'No, not that I recall.'

The New York Times reported last fall that Jeff Sessions, who was the attorney general at the time, and John Kelly, then the White House chief of staff, were potential targets. They were both seen as Cabinet members who might support a resolution declaring Trump unfit for office.  

Cabinet members at the time, ranging from former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have said they had no knowledge of such a plot.  

The Justice Department has also denied on Rosenstein's behalf a belief that there was any 'basis to invoke the 25th Amendment' in the first place in the days that followed James Comey's dismissal from the FBI.

In an interview on Thursday on 'Today,' Pompeo, the CIA director at the time, claimed he wasn't too familiar with McCabe's various interviews on his book.

He stuck to the Trump administration line that it's 'sad' that the DOJ inspector general had to 'declare that he wasn't credible' after so many years inside the law enforcement organization.

'That's unfortunate. So I don't put a lot of stock in the things Mr. McCabe said,' he asserted.

Pomepo brought up the 25th Amendment as he dodged a question about his own knowledge of a counterintelligence investigation into the sitting president's relationship with Russia.

'I did see some remarks about the 25th amendment,' he offered. 'I've been in the Cabinet for, since almost opening day for the Trump administration. I mean that's just ludicrous,' he said of McCabe's revelation that the Department of Justice kicked around ways to invoke it. 

Pompeo insisted: 'I've never heard any discussion about it by anyone, any of my fellow Cabinet members, or anyone else that's serving in the executive branch.' 

The Trump ally had previously rejected any notion of talks about the 25th Amendment, which lays out a constitutional process to remove the president from office, in September, when the New York Times reported accusations that were similar to the ones in McCabe's book. 

McCabe had softened the claims, which CBS publicized before the segment had aired and the full context of the comments were known, only to add fuel to the fire on Thursday when he told reporters that Rosenstein provided the names of two Cabinet officials he believed would be on board.

A narrowly drawn statement from a McCabe spokeswoman after the episode only said that 'at no time did Mr. McCabe participate in any extended discussions about the use of the 25th Amendment, nor is he aware of any such discussions.' 

'At no time did I ever perceive that there was a legitimate effort underway by Rod or anybody else to remove the president under the 25th Amendment or in any other way,' McCabe later told NPR. 

He did not say he was unaware of the people that Rosenstein might have approached.

Donald Trump signaled his outrage on Monday as he called the plot and another allegation in McCabe's book 'treasonous.' McCabe also said that Rosenstein, who is leaving DOJ now, wanted to secretly record Trump in the Oval Office and gather support for removing him from power. 

McCabe said during the '60 Minutes' interview that Rosenstein was 'absolutely serious' about wearing a wire around the president.

He also claimed that Rosenstein at one point tried to gauge support among members of Trump's Cabinet for using the Constitution's 25th Amendment to terminate his presidency.

Trump said in response: 'Wow, so many lies by now disgraced acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. He was fired for lying, and now his story gets even more deranged. He and Rod Rosenstein, who was hired by Jeff Sessions (another beauty), look like they were planning a very illegal act, and got caugh.

'There is a lot of explaining to do to the millions of people who had just elected a president who they really like and who has done a great job for them with the Military, Vets, Economy and so much more. This was the illegal and treasonous 'insurance policy' in full action!'

The president's reference to an insurance policy recalls a series of text messages between former FBI attorney Lisa Page and former senior FBI agent Peter Strzok. 

Invoking the 25th Amendment would have allowed Trump's adversaries in his own administration to remove him from office with a majority vote of his Cabinet and the backing of Vice President Mike Pence. 

Previewing the '60 Minutes' episode, Scott Pelley, a correspondent for CBS, made it sound like Rosenstein and McCabe had plotted to approached Mike Pence, the Vice President of the United States, and asked him to invoke the 25th Amendment.

'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,' Pelley reported on CBS 'This Morning' last Thursday.

Pelley said McCabe told him they were 'counting noses' of Cabinet officials who would vote to remove Trump after he fired James Comey in May of 2017.

'This was not perceived to be a joke,' Pelley asserted on CBS.

The journalist said the conversation took place in the eight days between Comey's dismissal and the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel. 

Trump met with the Russian ambassador the day after he ousted Comey, the former FBI director, and the Russian foreign minister at the White House. 

His campaign, several of his associates, including his one-time National Security Advsior Michael Flynn, were under federal investigation for improper contacts during the election with Russia at the time. 

'The highest levels of American law enforcement were trying to figure out what to do with the president,' Pelley reported.

McCabe is the first person to confirm that the 25th Amendment came up in the meetings. The ex-law enforcement official was later fired himself over conversations with the media that an inspector general deemed inappropriate.  

Reacting to McCabe's claims in an interview with https://twitter.com/MSNBCPR/status/1096080136494039040 Pence said that the suggestion that Trump is unfit for office is 'absurd,' given his record of accomplishments. 

'I couldn't be more proud to stand with him. The words and the writings of a disgraced FBI agent won't change that fact for the American people,' Pence said.

He further claimed that he had 'never' heard of the Justice Department plot that McCabe described before, affiriming that it never left the idea stage. 

'I have

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