Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired by the Trump administration after he admitted to an unauthorized leak to the media, was ripped on social media after making a false claim about his old agency during a CNN interview.

McCabe, who was hired by the liberal network as an analyst after his firing in 2018, said during an interview Tuesday the FBI never made a determination about the motivation behind a man who opened fire on Republican lawmakers practicing for their annual bipartisan softball game one morning in 2017. Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana was critically wounded in the shooting and nearly killed by a far-left supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The comments centered around Attorney General Merrick Garland’s comments earlier Tuesday that the Justice Department was focused on “domestic extremism” that includes all ethnic and religious groups. During his remarks, Garland recalled the incident involving Scalise, noting that the shooter, James Hodgkinson, asked a bystander specifically if the players on the field were Republicans before opening fire.

Garland “came right out and said our biggest hotspot right now is racially motivated, ethnically motivated extremists,” McCabe said. “And we all know that the broad, broad majority of those are white supremacists — people who are targeting people of color and immigrants and things like that.

Disgraced former FBI agent Andy McCabe on the congressional baseball shooting: “The FBI still doesn’t exactly know what that shooter was up to. They never really uncovered the sort of detailed evidence that laid out a specific plot or an objective." pic.twitter.com/tLH9rQVqtF

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 15, 2021

“But he brought the other side of the equation into it by referring to the shooting of the congressional baseball practice, and he did it very carefully by saying the shooting by someone only…who committed the shooting only after he confirmed that the players were Republican,” McCabe noted further.

“I think that reflects the fact that FBI still doesn’t exactly know what that shooter was up to. They never really uncovered the sort of detailed evidence that laid out a specific plot or an objective,” he claimed.

In fact, in mid-May the FBI reversed course after earlier determining that the shooting was a “suicide by cop” — Hodgkinson was summarily killed by police who arrived on the scene within moments — and reclassified the attack as an act of “domestic terrorism.”

During the attack, lobbyist Matt Mika and two U.S. Capitol Police Officers, Crystal Griner, and David Bailey, were also wounded. Police found a ‘hit list’ of GOP lawmakers in Hodgkinson’s possession after he was killed.

Two days before the shooting, Hodgkinson took to Facebook to post, “Trump is a Traitor, Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy,” and “It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.,” as well as additional, radical anti-Trump messaging including, “Trump is Guilty & Should Go to Prison for Treason.”

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), who was at the baseball field during the shooting, revealed the FBI’s misclassification during a House Intelligence Committee hearing in April, and brought it up to Director Christopher Wray.

“Director, you want suicide by cop, you just pull a gun on a cop,” Wenstrup said. “It doesn’t take 136 rounds. It takes one bullet. Both the DHS and the [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] published products labeling this attack as a domestic violent extremism event, specifically targeting Republican members of Congress. The FBI did not.”

As for the claim that white supremacists account for the most domestic terrorist incidents, Wray could not give Rep. Elise Slotkin (D-Mich.) even a ballpark figure on the number of cases the FBI is investigating, leaving critics to doubt the claim’s validity.

FBI Dir. Wray confirms that white supremacists make up the largest share of racially motivated terrorists in the United States pic.twitter.com/tLXEnHAggF

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) September 17, 2020

Meanwhile, the pushback on McCabe online was swift.

“He literally said what he wanted to do before he opened fire. He was targeting Republicans for assassination. Either McCabe is lying(again) or the FBI is utterly worthless,” one user wrote.

“It doesn’t take Colombo to figure out the plot or objective in that case. My, how that institution has fallen,” said another user.

“Let me get this straight, the FBI is certain that a rope hanging from a garage handle is racism but they can’t figure out the motive of an armed man who specifically asked where the Republicans are? #DefundTheFBI,” another wrote.

“The shooter had been parked their [sic] for days, & asked to make sure it was Republicans on the field before getting his gun out of his van. McCabe is a joke!” added another.

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Jon Dougherty

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Jon is a staff writer for BizPac Review with 30 years' worth of reporting experience, as well as an author and U.S. Army veteran. He has a BA in political science from Ashford University and an MA in national security studies/intelligence analysis from American Military University.

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