Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was fired just two days to his retirement. Attorney General Jeff Sessions rejected an appeal that would have let him retire last weekend, firing him on Friday. He had previously been recommended for dismissal by FBI disciplinary officials. He denied the accusations and had appealed last week to the Justice Department.
The Justice Department inspector general discovered that McCabe authorized two FBI officials to talk to a reporter about two Clinton related investigations for an October story in 2016. He failed to be direct and clear about the authorization and on multiple occasions, had shown a lack of forthrightness under oath. It caused the dismissal, says Sessions, on Friday. McCabe’s attorney relayed publicly “that Mr. McCabe advised Director Comey that he was working with colleagues at the FBI to correct inaccuracies before the stories were published and that they remained in contact through the weekend while the interactions with the reporter continued” as emails have shown, although, Comey was misled by McCabe about the authorized interactions.
Comey also responded “no” and “never” when asked if he had “been an anonymous source in news reports about matters relating to the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation?” or if he had ever “authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation?” by Sen. Charles E. Grassley. This caused Trump to take to Twitter again and say that both the former director and former deputy director “committed many crimes!”. He even suggested the ex-director be jailed and called him a liar.
McCabe has been blunt about the incident. He claims he was fired in “an effort to discredit him as a witness” in the Russia collusion case and that it was in an aim to impede Special Counsel’s Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation.
