Ex-FBI deputy director McCabe reportedly misled investigators

BY Eric Tucker and Mary Clare Jalonick / Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Andrew McCabe, the fired FBI deputy director, misled investigators and his own boss about his role in a news media disclosure about Hillary Clinton just days before the 2016 presidential election and authorized the release of information to “advance his personal interests,” according to a Justice Department watchdog report.

President Donald Trump, already furious over a forthcoming book from fired FBI Director James Comey, lashed out after the report’s release by saying McCabe had “LIED! LIED! LIED!”

The inspector general report concludes that McCabe allowed FBI officials to speak with a Wall Street Journal reporter for a story about an investigation into the Clinton Foundation, violating agency rules, and then misled FBI officials when questioned about it. It also reveals starkly contradictory accounts from McCabe and Comey about how the conversations with the reporter had come to take place.

McCabe, who was fired just two days before his scheduled retirement, denied the report’s allegations in a detailed rebuttal statement. He says that when he believed his answers to the inspector general were misunderstood, he went back and tried to correct them.

McCabe’s statement notes that as deputy director he had full authority to authorize sharing information with the media and says he permitted subordinates to do so in this case to correct a false narrative that he had tried to stymie an FBI probe into the Clinton Foundation.

The conversation “was done to protect the institutional reputation of the FBI as a non-political and professional investigative agency, and therefore was squarely within the public interest exception to the FBI’s prohibition on sharing sensitive material,” the statement says.

McCabe has also said his dismissal was part of the Trump administration’s “ongoing war” on the FBI and special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and that he was singled out because of the “role I played, the actions I took, and the events I witnessed in the aftermath” of Comey’s firing.

The inspector general report does not square with the Republican narrative of the FBI as a politically biased institution since the Oct. 30 story contained derogatory information about Clinton and underscored FBI interest in investigating her foundation. But its conclusion may also be hard for Democrats to embrace given its harshly critical suggestion that McCabe had put his personal reputation above the interests of the FBI.

Regardless, the report immediately provided fodder for Trump’s public attacks on McCabe.

The president has made a concerted and Twitter-driven effort to impugn McCabe as a partisan hack, accusing him of covering up unspecified “lies and corruption” at the FBI and calling his firing a “great day for Democracy.” On Friday, Trump called the inspector general report a “total disaster” and said “McCabe is controlled by Comey.”

“No collusion, all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!” Trump tweeted.

A lawyer for McCabe, Michael Bromwich, said he’s considering filing a defamation lawsuit against Trump and his “colleagues.” He sarcastically thanked Trump in a Twitter post Friday for “providing even more material” for the lawsuit he’s considering.

The inspector general report was sent to congressional committees and obtained by The Associated Press.

The findings, which had trickled out in news reports over the last month, led FBI disciplinary officials to recommend that the Justice Department fire McCabe. Attorney General Jeff Sessions dismissed him March 16 for what he described as a lack of candor.

McCabe, appointed deputy director in 2016, had been a close Comey ally and passionately defended him in a congressional hearing two days after his firing. He could be an important witness for Mueller, who is investigating Trump for possible obstruction of justice, including his motivation for firing Comey in May 2017. The Associated Press has also confirmed that McCabe kept personal memos detailing interactions with the president and they have been provided to the special counsel’s office.

Yet the report suggests that the two men were at odds over how the conversations with the reporter unfolded.

McCabe told the inspector general that he had told Comey after the story was published that he had authorized officials to share details of a conversation he had with a top Justice Department official about the Clinton Foundation investigation. He said Comey thought it was a “good” idea to rebut a narrative that the FBI was succumbing to political pressure.

But Comey, for his part, told investigators that McCabe did not tell him that he had approved sharing details of the call and had left him with the opposite impression.

“I don’t remember exactly how, but I remember some form or fashion and it could have been like ‘Can you believe this crap? How does this stuff get out’ kind of thing?” McCabe is quoted as saying in the report. “But I took from whatever communication we had that he wasn’t involved in it.”