Attorney General Jeff Sessions Fires Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, McCabe Issues Blistering Statement

After months of public pressure by the president, Attorney General Jeff Sessions late Friday fired deputy director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, just two days before he was set to retire after having spent more then 20 years in government service.

Officially McCabe’s abrupt departure from his role as deputy director, as cited by Sessions and backed by career disciplinary officials at the FBI, stems from his allowing of the leak of some information to the press during the 2016 presidential election pertaining to the corruption investigation into the Clinton Foundation. Later, when questioned by internal investigators, McCabe appeared to have been not fully candid about certain key aspects of the 2016 leak, though he later claimed it was unintentional.

“After an extensive and fair investigation and according to Department of Justice procedure, the Department’s Office of the Inspector General provided its report on allegations of misconduct by Andrew McCabe to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility,” Sessions said late Friday in a statement. “The FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility then reviewed the report and underlying documents and issued a disciplinary proposal recommending the dismissal of Mr. McCabe. [Both] reports concluded that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions.”

President Donald Trump has not been shy about his disdain for McCabe who he frequently taunted  on Twitter and in private. McCabe’s wife was also a frequent target by the president during the campaign, where he berated her for accepting campaign donations from longtime Clinton ally Terry McAuliffe, when she ran as a Democrat for a seat in the Virginia State Senate.

McCabe, after news of his firing broke, released a fierce rebuke calling his firing apart of a larger effort by this administration to discredit law enforcement and the special counsel’s investigation.

“This attack on my credibility is one part of a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals more generally,” said McCabe. “It is part of this administration’s ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation, which continue to this day. Their persistence in this campaign only highlights the importance of the Special Counsel’s work.”

President Trump has been tweeting frequently since Friday nights firing in an effort to defend his administration’s actions, claiming that McCabe was part of the Comey-alligned Democrats who worked as apart of the “deep state,” populated by holdovers from the Obama administration and who are determined to undermine Trumps presidency.

Like James Comey, the former Director of the FBI, McCabe kept detailed notes about his meetings with the president. The memos, if authenticated, could serve to strengthen Comey’s account which described repeated requests by the president to clear his name, and to shut down the criminal investigation into Trumps former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Article by Eric Silverman