Natasha Bertrand talked to Andrew McCabe for The Atlantic. Here’s a striking bit:

Bertrand: Some question now why the public should believe your recollection of events when the Justice Department’s inspector general concluded last year that you had lacked candor when describing your interactions with the press. How would you respond to that?

McCabe: It was very hard to leave the organization that I loved, and still love to this day, under those circumstances. To spend 21 years as an FBI agent, living under the ideals of fidelity, bravery, and integrity, and then to be branded a liar the day before you were gonna retire. It was very tough. But in some ways, it’s also entirely predictable. The facts are that this president has a long and illustrious history of attacking the credibility of people who say things that he doesn’t like, and I believe strongly that that’s what’s happened here. Firing me for lack of candor was a perfect way to undermine my ability to, who knows, provide testimony against him, to tell these stories that I’ve now told in the book. I never, ever intentionally misled the FBI inspection division, the office of the inspector general, or any director of the FBI, ever. Not ever. I completely reject the findings, the conclusions, and the recommendations in that [inspector general] report. I am very familiar with investigative reports. I’ve been writing them and reading them for 21 years. That is not an investigative report. That was a pretext to reach the conclusion that was being demanded by the president of the United States.

I wondered about that at the time. Trump was jumping up and down hoping to get McCabe fired, and then McCabe was fired. So…was the inspector general report just faked? And if so, how? The word was, as I remember it, that inspectors general don’t do that; that they’re independent and incorruptible and all that. Why isn’t it an investigative report? Why didn’t anyone do anything about it? Could anyone do anything about it? How did any of this work? I want to know. I wanted to know then and I want to know now. Was Trump really able to demand and get a faked-up inspector general report so that McCabe would be fired the day before he retired? If so, how? Why didn’t they all just say no?

Why is it so easy for Trump to do all this and get away with it? I still don’t understand it, two years in.