FBI ‘gobsmacked’ after Trump admitted he fired Comey over Russia probe: McCabe

Fired acting FBI director Andrew McCabe described how agents reacted after President Donald Trump admitted in a television interview that he had fired FBI director James Comey over the Russia investigation, and said the president left the agency "no choice" but to launch an investigation of their own.

"We were gobsmacked," McCabe said, and set the context after host Katy Tur ran a clip of Trump's infamous interview with NBC. "This was immediately two days after the firing of Jim Comey, very shortly after I directed the team to go back and reevaluate what we were doing and come to me with a recommendation for additional steps to take."

McCabe said that that very day during testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, he was "already being publicly pressed about whether or not there had been any effort to impede" the Russia investigation.

"We were incredibly concerned of the step that is the president had taken to fire Director Comey" after the FBI refused his request to drop their case against his National Security Advisor Mike Flynn, who has since pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his interactions with Russian ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak.

"When we heard that statement and of course the later comments that the president made to the Russian foreign minister in the Oval Office," McCabe said, "we knew we had no choice but to then start investigating in earnest of the president of the United States."

Watch the video below.