The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump

by Andrew G. McCabe

Many of Sessions’s questions were awkward. He would ask a question that was implicitly critical of the Department of Justice and look at those of us from the FBI expectantly, as if we could or should answer the question with our Justice colleagues sitting right there in the room. We would simply say, That’s not our area of responsibility. An example: He expressed frustration that many U.S. attorneys, in cases where the death penalty was an option, were not recommending or pursuing the death penalty. It’s nonsense, he would say. We have this law, and if we have the law then we’ve got to start using it. Sessions spent a lot of time yelling at us about the death penalty, despite the fact that the FBI plays no role of any kind in whether to seek the death penalty—that’s a job for Justice. All the people on Sessions’s side of the table would look at their laps. No one would chime in and try to answer his questions, calm things down, redirect the conversation. We were always hanging out on a limb.