Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe with immediately effect just two days before his retirement
Friday, March 16, 2018
 |
| Photo by: Alex Brandon FILE - In this June 7, 2017 file photo, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe appears before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on Capitol Hill in Washington. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Friday, March 16, 2018, that he has fired former FBI Deputy Director McCabe, a longtime and frequent target of President Donald Trump's anger, just two days before his scheduled retirement date. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File) |
VietPress USA (Mar. 16, 2018): Andrew George McCabe[4] (born March 18, 1968) is an American attorney who served as the Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from February 2016 to January 2018.
From May 9, 2017, to August 2, 2017, McCabe was the Acting Director of the FBI after James Comey was dismissed by President Donald Trump. U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions stated that McCabe was one of several candidates under consideration for Director. President Trump ultimately chose Christopher A. Wray, the former Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Criminal Division, to succeed Comey. Once Wray was sworn in, McCabe returned to the position of Deputy Director.
On January 29, 2018, McCabe stepped down from his position as Deputy Director of the FBI.
On March 16, 2018, Sessions fired McCabe only 26 hours before his scheduled retirement. According to Sessions, both the Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz and the FBI's disciplinary office had found "that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor - including under oath - on multiple occasions." McCabe denied that he had ever been dishonest and charged that his firing was a politically-motivated "effort to discredit me as a witness" for the Special Counsel investigation of Trump-Russia ties and specifically of Trump's firing of Comey.
The Wall Street Journal published on October 20, 2016, an account of Justice Department and FBI internal deliberations regarding an investigation of the Clinton Foundation that began in 2015. Four FBI field offices — New York, Los Angeles, Washington and Little Rock — were pursuing the investigation, with some field agents advocating that it be aggressively continued, while some supervisors and prosecutors believed there was insufficient evidence and that the investigation was too expansive. In July 2016, McCabe decided that the New York FBI office would continue investigating, with assistance from Little Rock. The Journal reported that a senior Justice Department official called McCabe to express his disagreement with this decision, with McCabe reportedly asking, "Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?," to which the unnamed official replied, “Of course not.”
Trump has criticized McCabe on several occasions, including reportedly calling him to complain that Comey had been allowed to fly home from Los Angeles on a government plane after his abrupt dismissal, and suggesting that McCabe ask his wife "how it feels to be a loser. In January 2018 it was reported that Attorney General Sessions had been pressuring FBI Director Wray to fire McCabe. However, Wray refused and reportedly threatened to resign if McCabe was removed. Some Trump supporters have characterized McCabe as belonging to a secretive "deep state" that seeks to subvert the president. The Nunes Memo, which alleges improper activities in seeking a warrant to surveil former Trump associate Carter Page, asserts that McCabe "testified before the [House Intelligence] Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information," which dossier many Trump supporters insist is completely false. However, McCabe's testimony was in classified session and no public transcript is available to confirm the Nunes memo assertion; disclosing contents of the classified testimony would be unlawful. The Nunes memo also asserts that a text message from Peter Strzok discusses "a meeting with Deputy Director McCabe to discuss an “insurance” policy against President Trump’s election." However, The Wall Street Journal reported on December 18, 2017, that Strzok associates said the "insurance policy" meant the FBI continuing its investigation into possible collusion between Trump and Russians, in case Trump won the election against long odds. The person Strzok had texted, Lisa Page, had previously suggested there was no urgency to the investigation because Hillary Clinton was certain to be elected.
McCabe announced his resignation as deputy director on January 29, 2018, and had been on leave until his scheduled retirement date on March 18, 2018. On March 14, 2018, the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility recommended that McCabe should be fired because of an internal report that he misled investigators about his decision to allow FBI officials to give information about the Clinton Foundation investigation to the media. The decision of whether to fire him was up to Attorney General Sessions, who fired him on March 16, 2018. McCabe told The New York Times, "The idea that I was dishonest is just wrong. This is part of an effort to discredit me as a witness." McCabe was dismissed less than two days before he would have collected a full early pension for his FBI career. He may have to wait until age 57-62 to begin collecting pension benefits (Wikipedia).
Lest than 2 days before Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, today Attorney General Jeff Sessions official fired him with
mimediately effect.
Read this news on The Washington Times at:
VietPress USA News
oOo
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe sacked by AG Jeff Sessions
- The Washington Times - Friday, March 16, 2018
www.Vietpressusa.us
