“There were meetings at the Justice Department at 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,” Mr. Pelley said. “These were the eight days from Comey’s firing to the point that Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel. And the highest levels of American law enforcement were trying to figure out what do with the president.”
Former law enforcement officials said the comments were made during a pair of meetings on May 16, 2017. Mr. McCabe and his former colleagues kept contemporaneous memos on their interactions with Mr. Trump and Justice Department officials.
According to one of those memos written by Mr. McCabe, an excerpt from which was provided to The New York Times, the former F.B.I. agent wrote that “we discussed the president’s capacity and the possibility he could be removed from office under the 25th Amendment” and the deputy attorney general indicated he looked into the issue and determined he would need a “majority or 8 of the 15 cabinet officials.” Mr. McCabe added that Mr. Rosenstein suggested that he might have supporters in the attorney general and secretary of Homeland Security.
Mr. Rosenstein had disputed the account about the wire and the 25th Amendment.
A former Justice Department official who was present at the time when Mr. Rosenstein proposed wearing a wire said the deputy attorney general had made the remark sarcastically. The Justice Department provided an anonymous comment from the official. But Mr. McCabe said the idea came up repeatedly and was taken seriously, Mr. Pelley said.
Mr. McCabe is the first person involved in these meetings who has spoken publicly about them.
Mr. Pelley said, “They were counting noses. They were not asking cabinet members whether they would vote for or against removing the president, but they were speculating ‘This person would be with us, this person would not be,’ and they were counting noses in that effort.”
“This was not perceived to be a joke,” Mr. Pelley added.
In a statement released on Thursday morning in the wake of the interview with Mr. Pelley, a Justice Department spokeswoman said: “The deputy attorney general again rejects Mr. McCabe’s recitation of events as inaccurate and factually incorrect.”
The spokeswoman added that as Mr. Rosenstein “has stated, based on his personal dealings with the president, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment, nor was the deputy attorney general in a position to consider invoking the 25th Amendment.”