Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe disagreed with House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff on Sunday over whether the bureau set a precedent in turning over evidence in the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized private email server.
During the first interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Schiff argued the Justice Department must release special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report on the Russia investigation, no matter what the evidence shows, because it released materials in the Clinton case, despite prosecutors not bringing charges.
“I’m not sure that [former FBI Director James Comey’s] decision to announce it in July is a precedent,” McCabe told “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos afterwards.
“However, I think that it is a very concerning and now recent precedent the volume of information that the FBI turned over to Congress in the wake of, after the investigation was concluded. That is something that concerned me greatly at that time, and I thought, you know, this is a practice that will be hard to step away from,” he said.
Mueller, who reportedly is winding down his sprawling Russia investigation, is required under Justice Department guidelines to submit a confidential report to Attorney General William Barr upon completion of the inquiry. The report must explain why prosecutors decided or chose not to bring charges against any matters under investigation. Justice Department regulations do not require Mueller’s report to be shared with Congress or with the public, but the attorney general must file his own report to lawmakers and inform them whether the department prevented Mueller’s team from taking any action.
Stephanopoulos said Justice Department officials are also not required to release any evidence relating to anyone not prosecuted in the case.
McCabe has been highly critical of the way his former boss, Comey, handled the Clinton emails investigation in his new book, The Threat, and the accompanying media tour. He wrote in his book that in “retrospect,” “perhaps I would have said to Comey, ‘Don’t do it. Let’s be the normal [special counsel] Bob Mueller, say-nothing FBI of old.’”
In a stunning public admission in July 2016, Comey announced his agency would not recommend criminal charges against anyone involved with Clinton’s private email network, even after finding that Clinton’s team was “extremely careless” in handling classified emails. Notes from the case were submitted to Congress later that summer. However, less than two weeks before the presidential election, in which Clinton was the Democratic nominee, Comey once again shook the political spectrum when he informed Congress the FBI was reopening its investigation into Clinton’s email server. The FBI closed the inquiry again just days before the election took place. This controversial move has prompted Clinton and her allies to blame Comey, in part, for contributing to her 2016 defeat.
Republican lawmakers have argued over the past couple years the DOJ has not turned over enough materials in the investigations, hindering their role in overseeing the department.
