FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe stepping down amid DC pressure
Jan 29, 2018, 11:09 AM
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe reportedly decided to step down Monday amid pressure from Republicans, including President Donald Trump.
ABC News said several sources had confirmed the news.
McCabe has been in the spotlight since May, after President Donald Trump fired then-Director James Comey.
McCabe, a lawyer by training, was a fast-rising leader within the FBI. He was the assistant director in charge of the counterterrorism division at the time of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, later ascending to executive assistant director of the national security branch and moving on to lead the Washington field office, one of the bureau’s largest and most prominent offices.
He was named deputy director by Comey in early 2016.
Yet he became entangled in presidential politics with the October 2016 revelation that his wife’s state Senate campaign had received contributions from Clinton-ally Terry McAuliffe’s political action committee.
The FBI said that McCabe had consulted beforehand with ethics experts and was not at the time of the donations in a supervisory role in the Clinton email investigation. Nonetheless, Trump was able to use the contributions in the final days of the campaign — and as president — to attack FBI leadership as biased against him.
How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin’ James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife’s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2017
The Justice Department’s inspector general’s office had been scrutinizing the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email case, including McCabe’s actions.
“When we put all of our faith and our confidence in the Department of Justice and the FBI knowing that there should be no bias there, (Trump) is making the point that we need to be sure there’s no bias,” White House legislative affairs director Marc Short told “Fox News Sunday” in December.
It was known within the FBI that McCabe was eligible to retire this coming spring. It is standard for FBI officials to leave the bureau for new opportunities upon becoming retirement-eligible, and it was expected that McCabe — independent of the criticism from Trump — would retire to give the new FBI director a chance to select his own No. 2.
“We wish him well,” Short said of McCabe.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.