In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley (MO) asked the FBI to answer questions related to its “disturbing” counterintelligence probe of President Trump early on in his tenure.
In the letter — the second Hawley has sent on this topic — the freshman senator said he was prompted to renew his requests after former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe confirmed that the FBI launched the probe after Trump fired then-FBI Director James Comey and some in the Justice Department considered invoking the 25th Amendment to oust Trump.
“I am disturbed by these accounts of blatant political bias within the FBI,” he wrote in the letter shared with TPM. “Mr. McCabe launched an investigation to gather information that he intended to block the President from accessing and actively explored ways to force the President from office. These actions directly threaten the constitutional structure of the executive branch and place the political accountability of executive branch agencies in serious question.”
Hawley — the chair of the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, which has oversight over the FBI — joins the chorus of Trump allies expressing outrage over McCabe’s revelations in his recent press tour for his new book. McCabe confirmed that the FBI launched a counterintelligence probe into Trump, that some in the DOJ wanted to use the 25th Amendment to oust him and that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein floated wearing a wire while speaking to Trump.
Hawley, who pulled off a win over incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) in the 2018 midterms, likely fueled by Trump’s support of his candidacy, asked Wray to answer a series of questions related to the probe, including information on McCabe’s conversations about the use of the 25th Amendment.
Read the letter below:
