The former deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has said top US law enforcement officials discussed using a constitutional mechanism to remove Donald Trump from office in 2017 after the president fired James Comey, then the bureau’s chief.

Andrew McCabe, who was himself fired from the FBI last year, told CBS’s 60 Minutes that Department of Justice officials talked about whether the vice-president and cabinet members could be persuaded to invoke the 25th amendment to the constitution, which provides for removing the president if he is incapacitated, the network said in previews of an interview due to air on Sunday.

The comments by Mr McCabe are the first on-the-record corroboration of reports last year that justice department officials including Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney-general, discussed invoking the 25th amendment in May 2017 after Mr Trump fired Mr Comey and said in a television interview he had been thinking about the Russia investigation when he did so.