Andrew McCabe didn’t mince words on Sunday. Sitting across from Jake Tapper on State of the Union, the onetime FBI deputy director — a veteran of more than two decades in the bureau who was dismissed in 2018 and now serves as a CNN correspondent — framed the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey as part of a broader pattern: not law enforcement, McCabe argued, but political retribution.
Tapper’s question was blunt and calibrated: in light of Comey’s indictment and the visible pressure President Trump has placed on federal prosecutors, what was McCabe’s read? McCabe answered with a single, consequential thesis — this isn’t justice; it’s vengeance. He called it the “revenge tour” the president promised on the campaign trail, and he suggested that Comey’s indictment is only the opening act.
There are two threads to McCabe’s warning worth unpacking. First is the legal-technical side: indictments of high-profile figures, especially former law-enforcement officials, are by themselves extraordinary. They invite scrutiny of prosecutorial discretion, evidentiary thresholds, and the appearance of impartiality. McCabe’s point is procedural but vivid — if the instruments of the Justice Department can be used to go after political adversaries, then the institution’s neutrality is compromised.
MCCABE: “His intention is vengeance. That is what he’s going after. I don’t think there’s anything that will stop him.”
TAPPER: “Are you worried that you’re going to become a target?”
MCCABE: “Of course. Who wouldn’t be, right?” pic.twitter.com/ag6Vm4dtnF
— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) September 28, 2025
The second thread is personal and immediate. McCabe didn’t couch his concern in abstract hypotheticals; when Tapper asked whether he feared becoming a target, McCabe answered plainly: “Of course.”
That admission crystallizes the human stakes: for officials who once operated under the arc of the bureau’s badge, the threat is not merely reputational. It’s the possibility that legal exposure can be weaponized against people who have been on the other side of Washington’s partisan divides.
Whether McCabe’s prediction comes true is, for now, unknowable. But the exchange underscores a broader political reality: this moment is testing long-held norms about how law enforcement and politics intersect.
If the Justice Department becomes an arena for settling scores, the consequences ripple far beyond individual cases — they touch recruitment, morale, public confidence, and the willingness of capable people to serve in careers where decisions are supposed to be apolitical.
McCabe’s framing is stark: he sees a pattern and reads intent. Others will see safeguarding accountability or correcting past excesses. The essential fact, as he laid it out, is that a former top official fears prosecution not because of fresh evidence he’s aware of, but because the atmosphere in which indictments are handed down feels transformed.
