Former FBI deputy director fired just before retiring

WASHINGTON – Attorney General Jeff Sessions late Friday night fired former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, a little more than 24 hours before McCabe was set to retire.

Sessions announced the decision in a statement just before 10 p.m., noting that both the Justice Department inspector general and the FBI office that handles discipline had found "that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor – including under oath – on multiple occasions."

He said based on those findings and the recommendation of the department's senior career official, "I have terminated the employment of Andrew McCabe effective immediately."

The move will likely cost McCabe a significant portion of his retirement benefits, though it is possible he could bring a legal challenge. McCabe has been fighting vigorously to keep his job, and on Thursday, he spent nearly four hours inside the Justice Department pleading his case.

An email notifying McCabe of the move was sent to his work account and his lawyers just minutes before Sessions' statement was made public, though McCabe learned of the firing from press accounts, his spokeswoman said.

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McCabe said in a lengthy statement that he was "being singled out and treated this way because of the role I played, the actions I took, and the events I witnessed" when the president fired James Comey as the FBI director.

"The big picture," he said, "is a tale of what can happen when law enforcement is politicized, public servants are attacked, and people who are supposed to cherish and protect our institutions become instruments for damaging those institutions and people."

Michael Bromwich, McCabe's attorney, said that he had "never before seen the type of rush to judgment – and rush to summary punishment – that we have witnessed in this case." He cited in particular President Donald Trump's attacks on McCabe on Twitter and the White House press secretary's comments about him on Thursday – which he said were "quite clearly designed to put inappropriate pressure on the Attorney General to act accordingly."

"This intervention by the White House in the DOJ disciplinary process is unprecedented, deeply unfair, and dangerous," Bromwich said.

McCabe has become a lightning rod in the political battles over the FBI's most high-profile cases, including the Russia investigation and the probe of Hillary Clinton's email practices. He has been a frequent target of criticism from President Trump, who said on Twitter in December that McCabe was "racing the clock to retire with full benefits."

McCabe's firing – which was recommended by the FBI office that handles discipline – stems from a Justice Department inspector general investigation that found McCabe authorized the disclosure of sensitive information to the media about a Clinton-related case, then misled investigators about his actions, people familiar with the matter have said.

He stepped down earlier this year from the No. 2 job in the bureau after FBI Director Christopher Wray was briefed on the inspector general's findings, though he technically was still an employee.

McCabe, who conducted interviews with several media outlets in advance of his firing, told the New York Times that the allegations against him were "part of an effort to discredit me as a witness" in special counsel Robert Mueller III's probe into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

"The idea that I was dishonest is just wrong," he said.

Through a representative, McCabe declined to be interviewed by The Washington Post on Friday.

Bromwich, who himself is a former Justice Department inspector general, suggested in his statement that office treated McCabe unfairly, cleaving off from a larger investigation its findings on McCabe and not giving McCabe an adequate chance to respond to the allegations he faced. He said McCabe and his lawyers were given limited access to the inspector general's draft report late last month, saw a final report and evidence a week ago and were "receiving relevant exculpatory evidence as recently as two days ago."

"With so much at stake, this process has fallen far short of what Mr. McCabe deserved," Bromwich said. "This concerted effort to accelerate the process in order to beat the ticking clock of his scheduled retirement violates any sense of decency and basic principles of fairness."

A spokesman for the inspector general's office declined to comment.

Some in the bureau might view McCabe's termination so close to retirement as an unnecessarily harsh and politically influenced punishment for a man who spent more than 20 years at the FBI. The White House had seemed to support such an outcome, though a spokeswoman said the decision was up to Sessions.

"We do think that it is well documented that he has had some very troubling behavior and by most accounts a bad actor," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday.

Trump and McCabe's relationship has long been fraught. The president has previously suggested that McCabe was biased in favor of Clinton, his political opponent, pointing out that McCabe's wife, who ran as a Democrat for a seat in the Virginia legislature, received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from the political action committee of Terry McAuliffe, then the state's governor and a noted Clinton ally. During an Oval Office meeting in May, Trump is said to have asked McCabe whom he voted for in the presidential election and vented about the donations.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz put McCabe in his crosshairs during a broad look at alleged improprieties in the handling of the Clinton email case. In the course of that review, Horowitz found that McCabe had authorized two FBI officials to talk to then-Wall Street Journal reporter Devlin Barrett for a story about the case and another investigation into Clinton's family foundation. Barrett now works for The Washington Post.

Background conversations with reporters are commonplace in Washington, though McCabe's authorizing such a talk was viewed as inappropriate because the matter being discussed was an ongoing criminal investigation. The story ultimately presented McCabe as a somewhat complicated figure – one who some FBI officials thought was standing in the way of the Clinton Foundation investigation, but who also seemed to be pushing back against Justice Department officials who did not believe there was a case to be made.

McCabe, who turns 50 on Sunday and would have then been eligible for his full retirement benefits, had quickly ascended through senior roles to the No. 2 leadership post. He briefly served in an interim capacity as the director, in the months between when Trump fired Comey from the post and Wray was confirmed by the Senate.

McCabe's team on Friday night released a bevy of statements from former national security officials supporting the former deputy director, including from former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper Jr.; former National Security Agency Deputy Director Richard Ledgett Jr.; former U.S. attorney Chuck Rosenberg; former FBI national security official Michael Steinbach; and former Justice Department national security official Mary McCord.

Steinbach said McCabe had "become a convenient scapegoat so that narrow political objectives can be achieved." McCord said she "never doubted his honesty or motivations, and can say without hesitation that he was one of the finest FBI agents with whom I ever worked." Notably absent was a statement from Comey, McCabe's former boss, though Comey did say after McCabe stepped down as deputy director that his second-in-command "stood tall over the last 8 months, when small people were trying to tear down an institution we all depend on."

Comey is still considered a key subject in Horowitz's probe of how the FBI handled the Clinton email case. His attorney did not immediately return a message seeking comment late Friday night.