Nick Fondacaro reported that the networks skipped over the bombshell -- yes, bombshell -- that the judge overseeing the FISA court unleashed a harsh critique of the FBI late on Tuesday. So we wondered if they all kept skipping it on the morning shows. The answer is Yes, with an asterisk. CBS This Morning gave it ten seconds in their top-of-show clip melange called "Eye Opener." Don't blink, you'll miss it!
REPORTER: The FISA court slammed the FBI for mistakes it made in surveillance warrants for former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
ANDREW McCABE: Anyone who reads that report is shocked and horrified.
That's 29 words. It certainly doesn't capture any context, that McCabe is expressing shock and horror at a report on what...McCabe and his boss Jim Comey did. McCabe drew several pointed questions from Wolf Blitzer near the end of The Situation Room on Tuesday.
WOLF BLITZER: This is very serious misconduct on your watch.
ANDREW MCCABE: Very serious. Very serious.
And I can tell you, Wolf, that everyone who I know, everyone in the FBI, anyone who reads that report is shocked and horrified by what they've seen in the recitation of the 17 errors. Shocked because we all believed, I certainly believed that the procedures we had in place were enough to guarantee that accurate information was going to the court. And horrified because it cuts against one of our most fundamental duties and that is to be perfectly accurate and truthful and complete with the court at all the times. That didn't happen.
BLITZER: The then-FBI Director Jim Comey, he says it was sloppiness. But this wasn't just sloppiness. These were brutal mistakes, deliberate errors, concealments involving search warrant surveillance activities of an American citizen.MCCABE: They were very, very serious mistakes.
So Blitzer asked McCabe what his greatest mistake was, and McCabe drew a blank!
BLITZER: What's the biggest mistake you made?
McCABE: The biggest mistake we made. The biggest mistake, I think, is the process that was in place essentially left so much responsibility on the lowest level of FBI agents and supervisors involved in a process. Once those mistakes are baked in, they become very, very hard for the layers of oversight to uncover.
PS: On Thursday's Fox & Friends, the hosts played snippets of Andrew McCabe's FISA interview on CNN and ripped him for trying to blame everybody else, with guest Brett Tolman, a former federal prosecutor. Tolman underlined that the FBI leaders have to sign off on all the evidence, and double-check it.
