Former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe has reiterated his belief that President Donald Trump might be a Russian asset.
Speaking on Anderson Cooper 360 on Tuesday night, McCabe suggested the president's alleged links with Russia could amount to something more sinister than previously believed.
"I think it's possible," he replied when the CNN host asked if he still believed Trump was a Russian asset.
McCabe also said he was eager to see the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
"I think that's why we started our investigation, and I'm really anxious to see where director Mueller concludes that."
It did not take long for the White House to respond to McCabe's comments, with Kellyanne Conway dismissing the former FBI acting director as a liar.
"It's hardly worth dignifying with a response," the White House counselor to the president told CNN's Cuomo Prime Time on Tuesday night when asked what she thought about McCabe's comments.
"He [McCabe] is a known liar and leaker. He said, 'I think it's possible, but I can't say that is a fact,' then why the heck are we talking about it?"
Conway also said that McCabe's comments didn't carry any weight, as they came from a man who had "lied under oath and acted without candor" and "had compromised the honesty and integrity" of the bureau.
The remark referred to the fact McCabe remains under federal investigation for the way the FBI handled the investigation into the Clinton Foundation
In his new book, The Threat, McCabe describes at length his time in the bureau under Trump.
McCabe, who was deputy director of the FBI until he replaced James Comey as acting director when Comey was fired by the president in May 2017, was fired himself on March 16, 2018, a little more than a day before his scheduled retirement.
During his appearance on CNN, McCabe defended his track record at the FBI, insisting he had to make some very difficult decisions.
"Like all the men and women in the FBI, people across government and the military, I did my job," he said.
"I stood up to the obligations of my office. When we were presented with facts, we made hard decisions. Decisions we knew would be tough on the organization, would be tough on us personally and look what I have gone through as a result of those decisions.
"But we did them anyway because we were committed to our responsibilities and serving this country."
McCabe's book, released on Tuesday, and became an immediate best seller on Amazon, while its revelations have sparked nonstop headlines.
On Sunday, McCabe described a "bizarre" interview he had with Trump in which the president estimated that 80 percent of FBI staff had voted for him in the 2016 election.
"He asked me if I thought that was true," McCabe said. "I said, 'I have no idea who people in the FBI voted for. It's not something that we discuss at work."
