Ex-FBI official troubled by ‘enormous’ 'implications' of Trump’s next attorney general

Former FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe called the implications of the actions President-elect Donald Trump’s next attorney general takes while in office – and whether they make it known they will carry out the president’s bidding – “enormous.”

Speaking to CNN’s Anderson Cooper Thursday night, McCabe, who Trump famously fired hours before he was scheduled to retire in 2018, told the host that he believes the rule of law will look “very different” under Trump’s second term.

“I think that the entire administration of the Justice Department, the leadership of the department, the way they think about their mission, all of these things could be fundamentally changed in ways that we have not seen since the imposition of the civil service regime so many years ago,” McCabe said.

But it was Cooper’s question about the importance of Trump’s choice for attorney general that seemed to concern McCabe the most — a decision he said would be “critical.”

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“We have enjoyed attorneys general, whether you like them or not personally, our attorneys general since the Nixon era have been committed to this idea that the department should act independently when it comes to making decisions about investigations and prosecutions,” McCabe said.

If that tradition changes in the next Trump administration, and the department is taken over by an individual “who is open about the fact that he is there to do what the president tells him, the implications for that, on individual cases and prosecutions and people who are affected by those actions are enormous," he said.

McCabe noted that it would also set a worrying tone in the department “where people will be afraid to stand up and take independent action to push back against politics when the facts of the law don't call for that sort of action.”

He concluded the interview by saying that he has “every reason to believe” that Trump would follow through on his threats of insisting vengeance against his political foes.

Watch the clip below or at this link.