 Andrew G. McCabe, the acting director of the FBI, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. McCabe replaces Jim Comey, who was fired by Trump on Tuesday. As head of the FBI, Comey was leading an investigation into whether or not members of the Trump campaign had colluded with Russian intelligence officials to influence November's presidential election. Comey had also led an investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. We are joined on Capitol Hill by Mattithaia Schwartz, who writes for The Intercept, which is quickly becoming the most serious website out there. I thank you for taking time to join us. Oh, thanks for having me. I'm so happy to be here again. Well, thank you. Again, thank you. And I'll praise you in a little while. You were at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings listening to acting FBI chief McCabe. But before we get to that, how big a story is this becoming? It's a very big story and it's still getting larger and it's moving very quickly. And this is, I think, without a doubt, both the firing of Jim Comey and the manner in which it was done are the craziest things that we've seen Donald Trump do and the riskiest things. And we've seen him do a lot of crazy and risky things, but this is the biggest thing we've seen so far. And he's really, you know, it's a huge gamble on his part that he will be able to get past this and survive it somehow and get an FBI director who's further under his thumb and that this won't bring the rush of stuff to a boil, which is we've been seeing that blowback for the last couple of days. And the question is whether he'll be able to tamp that down, which we've seen him trying to do for the last 12 hours. This last old interview, he's trying to get back on top of the cycle again. So there's a there's a sort of a lot of back and forth happening. It's very choppy. You're on Capitol Hill right now. What is McConnell's stance on this? Are the Republicans going to rally around Trump? I mean, not too many of them are calling for a special prosecutor. The Republicans just keep saying, well, we need to know more. That's right. McConnell and the Republicans do largely seem to have Trump's back. I think we did see one Republican congressman from the Freedom Caucus, Justin Amash, start to talk about it was either a special counsel. I think it was a special counsel. I don't I don't think it was impeachment. We did hear something interesting today after immediately, you know, after the hearing, Senator Burr, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, actually said that he really respected Comey and that he was, you know, implied that he was sorry to see him go. And that that kind of broke with what, you know, the president's been saying, you know, kind of saying that the guy, you know, dragging the guy's record through the mud and saying that he lost everyone's confidence. And so so there's these sort of quiet murmurs about the president's rhetoric and his tone. We saw some others from from Lindsey Graham and a judiciary subcommittee hearing. That was that was the one where we heard from Yeats on Monday. And Graham was saying, you know, we really need to get to the bottom of this Trump Russia stuff. He wasn't happy with how the Flint thing had been handled. But then it's funny, you don't hear these guys talk about a special counsel. You certainly don't hear them talk about impeachment. You don't even hear like Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer talking about impeachment yet. So it's still it's still unclear which way the whole thing is is going to break. I think the public is pretty infuriated by all this. But the the congressmen and senators are still kind of, you know, waiting to see. And and and yeah, the Republicans are still are still standing behind Trump. Well, come he was largely yeah, come he was supposed to testify on Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee. What was he going to testify about? According to Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, who's the Democratic Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, today they were going, you know, Warner said in his statement that he was going to ask Comey some very hard questions about, you know, what he's been turning up in the Trump Russia investigation and where things stand. We know pretty clearly now that Russia made serious attempts to influence the outcome of the 2016 election in Trump's favor, what we don't know and what Comey and it wasn't investigating with the FBI. So that's getting is was there a collusion between members of the Trump campaign and and and the Russian government. Do we know that seem to be. Go ahead. Go ahead. Do we know if it's more than just leaks that the Russians committed? No, we don't. We don't. I mean, I think are there rumors that it was more than hacking? I think, you know, you'd want to look at money. There you hear a lot of people speculating about, including, you know, senators about talking about shell corporations, talking about who is who's buying all these condos and Trump Tower. It's very hard to figure out exactly who because of the, you know, LLCs and straw buyers and so on. So but then but then there's a question like at what point does it become a conspiracy? I mean, you can scratch anywhere in any condo building and in any congressman's pocket probably and find Russian money and Chinese money. You know, there's you know, there's Russian and Chinese plutocrats everywhere. Now, at what point, what point are they like government agents? That's that's that's that's another question. And it's a pretty hard one to answer to. Right. It is. We're behind it. It would please please it is against the law for a foreign government to donate hard money to a politician. That's correct. And we know that that that that General Flynn had to amend some of his ethics filings, Flynn being Trump's former national security adviser, who resigned in disgrace after warnings from the Department of Justice. He was vulnerable to blackmail due to statements he made that weren't accurate about his own contacts with the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak. But I'm sorry, just it is very confusing. But but we do know that Flynn was not honest on on some of his forms and omitted money that he'd taken from Turkish interests and also from Russian interests during his time out of government. And then we and then had to amend those statements later. We know also that he was paid, I think, upwards of $40,000 by the Russian government to appear at this gala for Russia today in 2015, I believe, which is not long ago, where he sat next to Vladimir Putin, could that be an oversight by Flynn in terms of the forms? Yeah, I'm not. I'm just playing devil's advocate. Yeah, I suppose I suppose it could be. I mean, they do have an awful lot of people, both at the White House and at the office on government ethics, whose sole job it is to help these people fill out these forms. And this is the most important job of Mike Flynn's life. So I don't see why he wouldn't want to be thorough about it. And we also know that the Turkish interests actually paid him to write an op-ed against this of this person, Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania, who's hostile to the current head of Turkey, Erdogan. And we know that these folks paid Mike Flynn and then Mike Flynn wrote an op-ed supporting their position. And, you know, I mean, is it is it illegal? It is actually to file these forms inaccurately. But I think the thing that the law that Flynn is most likely to have violated is the Logan Act, which prohibits that prohibits private citizens from making negotiating a position with a foreign government that's different from the official position of the U.S. government. And the time in which Flynn may have violated this would have been during the transition during these calls with Kifliak when the Obama administration was imposing sanctions on the Russian government or their interference in the election. Putin, you will remember, you'll remember, said, well, we're not going to retaliate. And what we didn't know then is that Flynn was actually on the phone with Kifliak, the Russian ambassador during that time. And we don't know exactly what was said, but we do know from from solid leaks and reports that some of what was discussed did have to do with those sanctions. And it's easy to see how that could be a violation of the Logan Act, because we can really, you know, our system depends on on there being only one president at a time. Another key question is, was Flynn acting on his own knowledge during these conversations? Or was he acting on the behalf of other folks in the White House who we'd looped in, in which case, you know, he'd be kind of more of a fall guy figure, you know, getting fired for it later on, saying the Pence didn't know anything about it. But that all that all remains to be seen. And I know I know it's awfully complicated. I hope I'm giving not too much detail. Now, you're fantastic. And it is complicated. And I thank you for saying that it's complicated. Last week, Comey amended his testimony, which the Republicans used against him. What did he amend? And why would the Republicans have used that against him? Um, let's see if he he had he said something about Huma Abedin's emails, Huma Abedin was Hillary Clinton's you know, very close aide for a long period of time, worked with her on the campaign. And I believe Comey made a flip in his testimony and overstated the number of emails which Huma Abedin had forwarded to her husband because those emails were discovered on her husband's laptop. And this presented Trump with with with, I think, what he took to be the fact that he had to amend his testimony gave him a window in his mind to, you know, that he could pounce on that and then choose this moment to get rid of Comey. I mean, that's sort of a guess connecting the two things. But one did happen pretty quick after the other. But that was the error that he made was how many emails did Huma Abedin forward to her husband's laptop? It was a minor oversight by Comey, right? That's right. It was it was pretty minor. It did, though, sort of dig up these old wounds over Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. And there is pretty wide consensus among Democrats and Republicans that Comey talked about that investigation too much before the election. And Trump sort of tried to use this, I think as as as the impetus to to hope that that stuff could be dredged up and then Comey could be fired and Trump used the memo written by the current deputy assistant, the deputy attorney general about Comey's actions during the election to sort of provide a rationale for why he was why he was firing Comey. We're talking with Matt Ifay as Schwartz. He's the national security reporter for the Intercept, which is quickly becoming one of the great sources of information. The Web, the intercept dot com. You write for the intercept that McCabe, who is the new acting FBI head, that he contradicted two White House key points. The first one being that Trump maintained he fired Comey because Comey no longer had the confidence of the rank and file inside the FBI. What did McCabe have to say about that? McCabe said that the rank and file are stand firmly behind Comey, that he considers it a personal honor to serve with Comey and that Comey's reputation internally was and remains incredibly strong. So I think that was in a very sort of slow way. McCabe was pushing back on these kind of ad hominem attacks on on on on Comey's character that Trump can't seem to separate, you know, who someone is from the performance of their duties. And and I think that I think McCabe was was was was pushing back on that a little bit. You also write that White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the investigations to Russian interference in our elections was a small concern for the FBI. What did McCabe say about that? Yes, I think she said it was a small one of the smaller things on their plate. And then that that quote was brought up her father's Mike Huckabee. And he has a his plate has so many large things on it. Russia pales in comparison. Sorry, go ahead. I can't resist. No, no, no. So yeah, no, it's fine. So that yeah, that was Senator Angus King from Maine brought that up. And he's, you know, there are other Democrats who are noisier and do a lot of grandstanding. Senator King always has some of the sharpest questions that these intelligence committee hearings that, you know, just in the ones that I've been to Angus King from Maine. Yeah, is he a Republican or Democrat? He's an independent, I believe, actually. Or maybe he's a Republican who caucuses with the I think he's an independent. I think he's an independent who caucuses with the Democrats. But so he asked, well, is it true, you know, that with the White House is saying this is a small one of the smaller things on the plate? And here McCabe said, no, it's a very significant investigation. So so that that's very different from what Sarah Sanders said. Although to tell you the truth, you know, a lot of these things that with the White House, the White House press spokespeople, Sanders and Spicer, they don't have a lot of credibility. I think they often don't actually know what's going on. And they're often put in tough spots by the press corps and just have to say whatever comes on the top of their head. So so, you know, I don't think anyone when she when when when she said that the first time, oh, it's not one of the larger things on the ice plate. I don't think anyone took that seriously before, you know. Wasn't Spicer hiding in the bushes after Comey was fired? Yeah. And I wasn't I wasn't there. But my understanding is that he made a deal with the people there, not to photograph him hiding in the bushes and that if he. No, this is this is this is pretty consistently, you know, told this way, you know, by the law, the press were there. You know, if you guys don't photograph me, then then after that, he was willing to talk to them. So should it be too bad? We don't it's too bad. We don't have a photo, you know. But yeah, so it goes. He seems to be in the spotlight a lot less often now. I guess there are rumors that Trump's thinking about getting rid of him. The White House press office says that it's because Spicer has Navy reserve duty that seems to be happening more and more often lately. We'll see. We're being told that Comey had asked for more resources to investigate the Russian story. What do we know about that? Did McCabe give any indication as to whether or not he would be asking for more resources and is the request for more resources an indication into how wide a scope this investigation will be? So those reports came the day after from the New York Times and the Washington Post. There's probably something to him. I mean, who doesn't want more resources? I want more resources. Right. So so what does that mean then? McCabe, well, at first, people said more money, but then then the justice just backed out on that. And they said, well, no, it's more prosecutors. Comey wanted more prosecutors. But now McCabe, McCabe today, his line was that, you know, we have everything we need, you know. But I think some of that it still could be true that they need more resources and more prosecutors. I mean, my interpretation is that McCabe to a certain degree, this is his debut and he really wants to be a good soldier for the bureau and represent the building and say, hey, look, you know, we're going to do our job. We're going to get this done. We have what we need. You know, I'm not I'm not I'm not a crybaby is where I am now. I'm going to, you know, just follow the facts where they lead. And this isn't about Jim Comey. We have a job to do. And that's that's the line that you want the FBI to take, which is what we heard from kind of from Sheriff Gore is that this is he this is what you want from an FBI director, someone who's independent, someone who is above the fray, someone who's not going to go pit for tat with Donald Trump or see this, you know, see the Comey thing. I mean, if it's not really the FBI director, the acting FBI director's place to use the dismissal of Comey, you know, as a window to bang on Trump publicly, right? That's something that you'd expect maybe lawmakers to do, but not the acting FBI director. He's got to he's got to do the job. And part of that is, you know, maintaining some kind of professional relationship with the with the rest of the executive branch. And, you know, other people are going to remember what happened, but it's sort of his job to move to move on first and foremost. And I think Mckay did a good job of that. We're talking with Mattify as Schwartz. He's a national security reporter for The Intercept, TheIntercept.com. You write that Trump has said repeatedly that Comey told him, I think, three times that he was not under investigation for the Russian hacking. What did Mckabe say? Yeah. What did Mckabe say about that? And how appropriate is that? How appropriate is that for a president to ask an FBI chief whether or not he's being investigated? You know, I think a lot of conversations that we don't know about happen beyond closed doors, it is probably inappropriate. But I think there's probably inappropriate conversations that happen in the White House every day. They only become notable when the president chooses to memorandize them in a letter and is visible of someone that he was having these like these chats with. It actually is not supposed to happen. And the FBI is supposed to be independent. I think they're former FBI directors who would sort of log their coming and goings within the White House. I know this happened during Clinton's years to make sure that there was a record that they hadn't done anything appropriate. So today we heard Trump say that these three conversations, two were by phone, one was over what he called a quote, very fine dinner. This was an interview with Lester Holt and that that I, you know, that he sort of would ask whether he was the target investigation and come he would would would tell him that he wasn't. And so Mckabe was asked that today, whether whether that's true or not. And Mckabe said, you know, that he couldn't couldn't answer that or, you know, declined to answer that. And he declined to answer whether or not Trump is under investigation. No, he declined to answer whether or not. I mean, they should have asked him that question. I'm not even sure they did. That would have been a good one. He declined to answer whether whether Trump's statement that Comey had said to him three times that he's not the target investigation. He declined to say whether that was true or not, whether the whether Comey had told Trump that or not. What what happens if they do appoint a special prosecutor? He would have a special prosecutor to be under the purview of the Justice Department, but separate from the FBI and the Justice Department. Is that how a special prosecutor would work? Yeah, pretty pretty much. Although I think the law is changing such a way that that conceivably the the the deputy attorney general could fire the special prosecutor at any point. So he would he would serve under the deputy attorney general. Normally he'd serve under the attorney general, but we know Jeff Sessions has recused himself from these these Trump Russia matters. So it would be unlikely that Sessions would would be the one to dismiss a special prosecutor. But yeah, so like a special in fact, I guess the right terms of special counsel, I don't even know the differences, but you're supposed to call a special counsel now. But but but yeah, I mean, so a special counsel is not like a panacea. It wouldn't be completely, you know, independent of the executive branch. It would have a lot more, you know, resources and it would, you know, have sort of like a freedom to roam, I think, in terms of like how depending on how it's it's sort of, you know, brief was drawn up because the FBI, you know, has sort of had specific specific duties and protocols. And as we saw with Ken Starr, you know, and Bill Clinton, you know, a special prosecutor can sort of start in one place and then do a little bit of a do a little bit of fishing and turn to a bit more of a dragnet type investigation where you just want to come up with something. Yeah, as I remember, he still had an answer to Janet Reno. The special prosecutor. That's right. That's right. That's right. And of course, what they ultimately got Clinton for wasn't any misconduct that he had committed before the special prosecutor even got rolling. What they got him for was obstruction of justice, I think with it, with the special prosecutor's witnesses, if I'm remembering right. So it sort of creates a lot of opportunities for for for presidents to make mistakes once, you know, there's someone whose job it is, whose entire office it is to, you know, go after them, essentially, whereas like the FBI, you know, yeah, go ahead, go ahead. You wrote something that I was kind of surprised by. And I want to ask you about Rod Rosenstein. He's the new deputy attorney general. Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself from this Russian investigation. And you write that Rod Rosenstein, the new deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein wrote a memorandum assessing Comey's performance at the FBI. Trump used that memo to justify firing Comey. And I didn't know this until I read your piece today in the intercept. You write that Rod Rosenstein almost quit when he heard that his memo was being used as the justification for firing Comey. What's in the what's in the memo? Why didn't he quit? And what does this say about Rod Rosenstein? Well, we don't, you know, I did. We don't know that for sure. You know, as I said, this is sort of an anonymous source. Said this to the Washington Post. So it's credible, but it's not totally backed up and it's not totally triangulated. But but but the story and it was it was good enough for the Washington Post is that Rosenstein was angry that he was kind of being used as the prime mover for Trump's decision to fire Comey. And if you go and read his memo, it doesn't actually say that Comey should be fired. It talks a lot of talks about ways that Comey screwed up. But it doesn't say that he should be gone rid of. And then after that, Washington Post story came out yesterday. It was interesting. You saw the White House actually issued a new timeline came out of the press office where they said, well, what Trump did first was make it the decision. And then he sat down with the sessions and talked about it. And then they talked to Rosenstein. And then he like called them back in. So and then Trump said the same thing to Lester Holt today. So I guess it is a pretty credible report because we've seen the White House modify its storyline. In the beginning, they were putting in on Rosenstein. Now they're putting in on Trump. Right. It was a decision in search of a justification. I want to thank you for taking time to be with us. Can you spare a few more minutes? Because I wanted to tackle one more area. Sure. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. You're being incredibly generous with your time. And I your coverage at the intercept has been just great and clear. And one of the things I appreciate that you keep saying while talking to me and while writing that it's hard to keep track of this because you you have all people. You've you were a tribute writer of the New York Times. You've written for the New Yorker. You're a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. I mean, you're, you know, pretty, pretty smart. And for you to say it's hard to keep track of. I think that encourages my listeners and especially me to follow this and be more forgiving of myself when I have trouble keeping track of this. You write and I'm going to get you. Oh, no, please, please, please. You write and I thank you for this. And this is why I called you. You wrote this week. This is what you wrote in the intercept. This week, FBI Director James Comey joined Mary McCord, Sally Yates and Preet Bharara as senior law enforcement officials who either resigned under Trump or were fired outright as new officials are appointed to take their places. And this is why I called you. You write as new officials are appointed to take their places. It's getting hard to keep track of who's responsible for the Trump Russia investigation. Thank you for saying that. And then you mentioned the three officials. And if you have time, I'd like to go over them and then I'll excuse you. But sure, sure. You mentioned the three officials we should be keeping an eye out for. You were going to say something and I interrupted you. Oh, yeah, I just think this. Yeah, well, I appreciate the compliment. And I think this is something that we need to be very wary of. I think it may be by design on the part of the White House to sort of keep all these balls moving in the air and sort of keep this rotating cast of characters going, and it's just another way for the president to sort of dominate the news and, you know, and sort of impose his will upon the system, at least in the public consciousness. And, you know, and what he's doing is he's he's going through people very quickly and he's using he's really redlining the sort of statutory limit of his powers. Now, the president does have the ability to get rid of an FBI director. It's never been done before, but it is something he can do. So it's not breaking the law. But but but but but you know, Trump is plays a very it's a very sort of, you know, aggressive game of poker that he plays. And he is he is really, you know, kind of trying to just like max out his authorities and getting rid of someone like James Comey, who predates his rule and has a mind of his own is a part of that. But but I'm sorry, but please, please go on. Well, let's go through these three names very quickly. I knew who Sally Yates was in Pre-Burrara, but who was Mary McCord? So that's a story that I was actually the first to break, because I was the first to hear about it. She was the head of the National Security Division, which is a component of the Department of Justice. So she was an assistant attorney general who reported to Jeff Sessions and who was a career public servant and who was one of the most senior people in charge of the Trump Russia investigation. And then she announced that she'd be leaving to take a position, I believe, in academia and then Dana Buente is now is now I think he's acting National Security Division head. So he he's he's the sort of interim in charge of her role in the interim. So there's a National Security Division within the Justice Department that would investigate the tampering of an election by a foreign. Yeah, we decide so they would work with the FBI and they would decide which laws have been broken and whether or not to bring charges and whether the evidentiary standard had been met. And part of their purview is counterintelligence investigations, which is basically if there are spies for foreign governments who are trying to mess with the U.S. in one way or another, economic espionage, election tampering, intelligence gathering, what have you. Counterintelligence is, you know, bringing cases against those spies or people who've declassified information and so on. So this is what the that's part of what the National Security Division does. And why was she why did she disappear? We don't know. She hasn't talked about it. So we don't know if she was fired or we don't know. Ah, it's pretty clear that she wasn't fired. Or if she was fired, she was extremely quiet about it. But, yeah. OK, and Preet Bharara and Preet Bharara was, as I remember, a pretty well respected federal prosecutor here in New York City who was putting or trying to put some Wall Street people behind bars. Yeah, and he's someone who we haven't heard the last from. You know, he's definitely a politician in addition to being a public servant. And we'll probably see him running for governor or senator or something like that at some point just based on, you know, what he's done since he's left and the speeches he's given. But so, yeah, so Trump hired, I think, all of the U.S. attorneys after taking office, which is within his rights to do and isn't so unusual. I think he kept one, Dana Guente, and then he did. He was, I think, going to keep Preet Bharara, but then that fell through. And then Bharara wouldn't resign. And so Trump had to had to call and fire him. So that was like a little little kerf luffle kind of in the beginning of the right after the transition. And do we know whether or not Preet Bharara was on the on the trail? Wasn't he looking into? You know, that's a good that's a very good question. That's a very good question. We don't know. There are rumors that he was. We don't we don't know. We know that there is there is, you know, a grand jury meeting in the Eastern District of Virginia at the courthouse in Alexandria, and they're looking at Michael Flynn. And, you know, Comey came this and then it's been reported there been subpoenas issued about Flynn. And that's all coming out of Eastern District of Virginia. We know that for sure. But there's also been talk that the Southern District of New York, which is where Preet Bharara was, was also looking at it. But that one that is that is that's not confirmed. Do we know how many do we know how many grand juries are looking into this? Uh, at least one. And when you fire all the prosecutors, does that mean we have no prosecutors or we have acting prosecutors? Um, I think you have acting prosecutors. So in the Southern District of New York, I think they're waiting for Trump to appoint someone. I think the Senate has to confirm that appointment if I'm not mistaken. In the meantime, Preet Bharara's deputy is running is running the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. And that's how it works. OK, you know, all the different all the different U.S. Attorney's offices around the country. I think there's there's a few dozen. And I don't know how many appointments Trump's made to the spot. Right. So I have a lot of listeners who when they heard that Trump had fired all the prosecutors, they began practicing inside trading and smuggling heroin into the United States. So but so they should be cautioned. There's there's still our prosecutors know everything that we know. They know everything still keeps going. I mean, you know, the turnover hasn't it obviously has an effect. But, you know, there's like a you were at about Sally, please. You had a busy week this week. Sally Yates, who was the acting attorney general when Trump came into office, he fired her. She testified, I believe, on Monday you were there. Who did she testify before? She was testifying before the Judiciary, the Senate Judiciary subcommittee. So it's the Senate Judiciary Committee. They have a subcommittee on crime and terrorism. And they brought her in to talk to them about the Flynn-Russia stuff. And this was the first time that we heard Sally Yates' side of that story, you know, firsthand, although a lot of parts of it have been reported quite accurately in the press beforehand. But she was the one who warned she was the one who won one. She was the one who warned the Trump White House that Michael Flynn was could be blackmailed by the Russian government. And then the Trump White House did nothing with that information for 80 days until the Washington Post was about to publish, you know, the fact that Yates had warned them and then finally they let Flynn go. The thing that I don't understand about the blackmail is they could blackmail Flynn for lying to Mike Pence. That was the only thing that they could blackmail him over. Right. I mean, or I think, you know, you're right. You're right. You're right to be. It is a little it is a little hazy. I think there was broad sentiment among the intelligence community that Mike Flynn was a bad apple and had been compromised by the Russians. And I think this sort of blackmail narrative is an expression of that. But what it is essentially is that, you know, you had Mike Pence go on TV and say that, you know, Flynn's contacts with the Russian ambassador were innocuous and they never talked about sanctions. And then, you know, these people who are listening to Kislyak's phone and the intelligence community have transgressive conversations. They know that they were talking about sanctions. So so their story was that, well, look, the Russians could then go to Mike Flynn and say, you know, we have proof that you lied to your boss. I say I say do what you want. But but there's also like soft blackmail where you just sort of a looter gesture to what you might know or you do it in a winking way. You know, supposedly the people, some people who are good at it. This is how they do it. So that's a blackmail story. There's something a little bit. It doesn't I see but this but that was I think Yates, you know, was 100 percent behind it, though. I mean, she's she's she struck me as sort of like a real true blue public servant, but that is ultimately and she consulted with other people at the Department of Justice and other people in the intelligence community and got a lot of people to sign off on the on the fact that this was a problem before she took it to the White House. She did not. She she went through the established channels and did what she was supposed to do and and and and brought it to them in the right way. Well, you've been very generous with your time. And I wanted to ask you for three more names, three people we should keep an eye on very quickly. Who is Dana Buente? You mentioned him earlier and tell us why he matters and why we should keep an eye on him. We've talked about Rod J. Rosenstein. You wrote a great piece about these three people. And this is one of the reasons I couldn't wait to talk to you. Just very quickly tell us about Rod Rosenstein and Andrew McCabe, the new acting FBI head. How independent. So these are so these are these are go ahead. How independent? Yeah, how independent do we think they are? I mean, as independent as they want to be, but they haven't been under this kind of scrutiny for very long. And it's harder for someone, people who don't have the same public stature as a Jim Comey or as a Robert Mueller or, you know, as a George Tenet, you know, to, you know, to stand up to the White House. And we all know that like George Tenet kind of got rolled on the WMD thing anyway. So like, you know, so these guys, you know, going to have to grow an awful lot of spine pretty quick. So there's three of them. There's the most important one is Rob Rosenstein. Rod Rosenstein, who's the deputy attorney general. Now, Jeff Sessions has recused himself from everything to do with Trump Russia. Jeff Sessions, the attorney general. Rod Rosenstein is deputy. So Rosenstein, then it falls to him to oversee the Trump Russia investigation within the Department of Justice. Dana Blente actually has two jobs that relate to the Trump Russian investigation. One is he's the U.S. Attorney in charge of the Eastern District of Virginia, which is where this grand jury is meaning to investigate Michael Flynn. Two is he took over Mary McCord's job and he's also the acting head of the National Security Division. So he has a lot of control, you know, over where this will go. Important thing to remember. I mean, these are like, you know, independently minded people who've gone to law school, been doing this for a while, but both Rosenstein and both both Rosenstein and Blente are Trump appointees. So they're both in their current jobs because Trump chose them to be in those jobs. He did not fire Dana Blente. He fired like all the U.S. attorneys. And he chose to appoint Rosenstein to be, you know, deputy AG under sessions. So, you know, that's worth noting. The third one is Andrew McCabe. He was Comey's deputy and now he's the acting FBI director. Trump will almost certainly choose, nominate, you know, someone else to replace him. They'll have to go through Senate confirmation. In the meantime, McCabe will be running the FBI. How frightened are these people getting fired? I always assume that if you're Comey, you can go get a job someplace else. Is it ego, loyalty? Is he upset that he was fired? I mean, if you were I don't really know. Yeah, I always think if I get fired, it's terrifying. But if you're the head of the FBI, the sky opens up for you, right? And you get I think it depends. I think it depends on the on the circumstances. I think if Comey could play out the election campaign again, I think he, you know, he said the opposite of what I'm about to say. But I think he would have done some things differently around the Clinton emails, the Clinton email investigation. You know, he we sort of saw his voice go up a few notes when he walked through this, like, do I conceal or do I disclose that? And it is, you know, testimony a week ago about a decision to talk repeatedly about the status of the investigation in violation of, like, longstanding in FBI traditions to not talk about what they're working on. So. But in a way, he was trying to compensate for president reluctance to say what he knew, which is that the Russians were trying to tilt the election. And, you know, there was a lot of conversation happening behind the scenes and, you know, Comey sort of, I think, did what he would he thought to be right. But the consensus is that he is that he screwed up. Matathias Schwartz, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Matathias Schwartz is a national security reporter for The Intercept, TheIntercept.com. Read them every day. Can you stay on the line for a second? Thank you, Matathias. Stay with me for one.