President Donald Trump did not believe his own intelligence officials about a North Korea intercontinental ballistic missile launch because of information he heard from Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe says in his new book.
The accounts in McCabe’s book, “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump,” were highlighted in a Thursday report by The Washington Post.
McCabe noted that Trump dismissed intelligence reports in a July 2017 briefing that North Korea had test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile. According to McCabe, Trump called the launch a “hoax.”
“He thought that North Korea did not have the capability to launch such missiles,” McCabe said. “He said he knew this because Vladimir Putin had told him so.”
The Hill noted The White House was asked to comment and pointed to an earlier statement that McCabe “has no credibility.”
On Thursday, the Justice Department rejected a claim by McCabe about Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s offer to wear a “wire” to secretly record Trump in a bid to remove him from office. The department called it “inaccurate and factually incorrect.”
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