Important points:
In his 60 Minutes interview, former acting FBI director McCabe said:
There were a number of things that caused us to believe that we had adequate predication or adequate reason and facts, to open the investigation. The president had been speaking in a derogatory way about our investigative efforts for weeks, describing it as a witch hunt… publicly undermining the effort of the investigation.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/thoughts-andrew-mccabes-60-minutes-interview (emphasis added).
Is not this statement troubling, if not Orwellian? Think or speak the wrong thing—and the government investigates you? In a 2017 blog post on New Reform Club, I wrote about this issue as follows: