Former FBI Director James Comey “excluded” his deputy, Andrew McCabe, from a meeting regarding the the FBI’s investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized email server, according to the released Justice Department inspector general’s report released Friday.
The explanations for why McCabe, the FBI deputy director, was blocked from the discussion differ, but Comey claims it was “out of an abundance of caution because of appearance issues” from the leak of sensitive information to the Wall Street Journal that pushed back against a report about large donations McCabe’s wife received from Democrats during her bid for the Virginia State Senate.
One day before Comey would send a letter to Congress to inform them that the probe was being reopened, Comey held the meeting with the team tasked with investigating the emails. Upon the suggestion of the then-FBI general counsel, he asked McCabe, who was out of town but had called in, to leave the call.
“On October 27, 2016 at 10:00 a.m., Comey held a meeting with the Clinton E-mail Investigation team to discuss obtaining a search warrant for a set of Clinton related e-mails the FBI had discovered on a laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner, and taking additional steps in the Clinton E-mail Investigation,” the inspector general report says. “Special Counsel attended the meeting. McCabe was out of town, but joined the meeting via conference call. Shortly after the meeting began, the then-FBI General Counsel (“FBI-GC”) suggested, and Comey agreed, that McCabe should leave the call.”
Comey told the IG’s team that McCabe was “very unhappy” about being asked to drop off the call. The report says the special counsel, which is actually McCabe’s then-special counsel (not special counsel Robert Mueller), also left the meeting.
“After discussions between FBI and Department leadership, on October 28, 2016, Comey sent a letter, over Department objections, informing Congress that the FBI was taking additional steps in the Clinton E-mail Investigation,” the report says.
Comey and McCabe offered different explanations for why McCabe was excluded from the call.
“McCabe told the OIG that the reason stated on the call for dropping him related to the potential for discussion about classified information,” the report says.
“However, Comey,” the report goes on to say. A name appears to be redacted next, and that is followed by: “and Special Counsel all told us that Comey asked McCabe to leave the call out of an abundance of caution because of appearance issues following revelations in the WSJ October 23 article about the campaign donations from McAuliffe-associated PACs to McCabe’s wife.”
The report says McCabe broached the topic of his exclusion later that day with Comey and the FBI general counsel, after which he texted his special counsel saying, “I spoke to both. Both understand that no decision on recusal will be made until I return and weigh in.”
A couple days later, on Nov. 1, the report says “McCabe sent e-mails to FBI executives and officials overseeing the [Clinton Foundation] Investigation and the Clinton E-mail Investigation informing them that he was recusing himself from those investigations.”
The general counsel referred to in the report would appear to be James Baker, who was reassigned late last year over his apparent role in leaking the infamous “Trump dossier” to the media came under scrutiny.
Comey would go on to announce that the Clinton case was closed a second time on Nov. 6, just two days before the 2016 election, keeping the same recommendation that was reached the first time that no charges be brought against Clinton. Clinton and her allies have heaped blame on Comey for contributing to her loss in the 2016 presidential election due to the optics of how he handled the emails case.
McCabe became acting director of the FBI on May 9, 2017, when Comey was fired by President Trump. McCabe served as acting director until Aug. 1, 2017, when Christopher Wray was confirmed by the Senate as the new FBI director, after which McCabe resumed his duties as deputy director. He served in that position he held until Jan, 29, 2018.
McCabe was fired from the FBI last month, 26 hours before his planned retirement.
The Justice Department’s inspector general’s report, which led to McCabe’s firing, found McCabe “lacked candor” on four separate occasions, including three times while under oath, in connection with the disclosure to the Wall Street Journal leak.
One of those occasions involved McCabe misleading Comey about what he authorized the FBI aides to tell the reporter.
The IG finally determined that as deputy director, McCabe was authorized to make the disclosures if they fell within the “public interest exception, since the Justice Department and FBI prohibit “such a disclosure of an ongoing investigation.”
“However, we concluded that McCabe’s decision to confirm the existence of the [Clinton Foundation] Investigation through an anonymously sourced quote, recounting the content of a phone call with a senior Department official in a manner designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of Department leadership, was clearly not within the public interest exception. We therefore concluded that McCabe’s disclosure of the existence of an ongoing investigation in this manner violated the FBI’s and the Department’s media policy and constituted misconduct,” the IG report said.
The inspector general, Michael Horowitz, is expected to release a larger report in the coming weeks on the FBI’s actions during the 2016 presidential election.
The McCabe report’s release comes just days before Comey’s tell-all memoir is set to hit bookshelves on April 17.
Responding to Trump, who celebrated McCabe’s ouster as a “great day for democracy,” Comey issued a stern warning last month: “Mr. President, the American people will hear my story very soon. And they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not.”
