Andrew McCabe lost an appeal to try to block formal charges being filed against him. McCabe met with the DOJ lawyers to discuss the potential charges and his attorney’s tried but failed to get Andy off the hook. According to new reports, U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu is recommending that the DOJ charge Andy.
McCabe was the former deputy and the acting director of FBI reportedly took his case all the way up to the Deputy AG Jeffrey Rosen only to get it brought back down to earth.
He faces charges stemming from misleading investigators to possibly leaking. AG Barr will make the final call.
Fox News reported that a source close to Andrew McCabe’s legal team said that they received an email from the Department of Justice which said, “The Department rejected your appeal of the United States Attorney’s Office’s decision in this matter. Any further inquiries should be directed to the United States Attorney’s Office.”
McCabe, who was recently hired as a paid CNN commentator, spent 21 years in the FBI. He became the acting director in 2017 after President Donald Trump fired former director James Comey.
One month ago, a source close to the process said that McCabe had a “target on his back” because of the Justice Department inspector general findings.
Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired Andrew McCabe in 2018 after the inspector general found he had repeatedly misstated his involvement in a leak to The Wall Street Journal regarding an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
The IG report faulted McCabe for leaking information to Wall Street Journal reporter Devlin Barrett for an Oct. 30, 2016 story titled “FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe.” The story, which was written days before the presidential election, focused on the FBI announcing the reopening of the Clinton investigation after finding thousands of her emails on a laptop belonging to former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, who was married to Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
The Journal’s account of the call says a senior Justice Department official expressed displeasure to McCabe that FBI agents were still looking into the Clinton Foundation, and that McCabe had defended agent’s authority to pursue the issue.
That leak confirmed the existence of s probe, as the report claimed, which then-FBI Director Comey had up to that point refused to do.
The report stated that Andy McCabe “lacked candor” in a conversation with James Comey when he said that he had not authorized the disclosure and didn’t know who had done so. The IG also found that he also lacked candor when questioned by FBI agents on multiple occasions since that conversation.
