President Trump made an unusual request of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe during a phone call last year, NBC News reported Monday.
Apparently incensed by the image of James Comey boarding an FBI plane the day after Trump fired him as FBI director, Trump called McCabe, then the acting director of the bureau, to express his outrage, NBC News reports.
McCabe told the president that though he had not greenlit Comey's flight, "if anyone had asked, [I] would have approved it," NBC News reports. That prompted Trump to be "silent for a moment," NBC News says, before he turned to insulting McCabe's wife, telling McCabe to "ask his wife how it feels to be a loser."
McCabe reportedly replied rather neutrally, saying, "Okay, sir." McCabe's wife Jill ran for state Senate in Virginia in 2015, losing her bid. Trump has launched months of attacks against McCabe because his wife accepted campaign funds from former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), a supporter of Hillary Clinton, during her run.
An unnamed White House official denied the report to NBC News, saying, "This simply never happened. Any suggestion otherwise is pure fiction." The FBI declined to comment to NBC News. McCabe resigned as deputy director of the FBI on Monday.
Read more at NBC News.