Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe may sue the Trump administration for defamation and wrongful termination, his lawyer said.
McCabe’s attorney, Michael Bromwich, told reporters Friday that his lawyers are still working on a time frame for when they intend to file the lawsuit. The legal team, though, “want[s] these to be solid. We’ll file when we’re ready,” Bromwich told reporters, according to Axios.
Bromwich accused McCabe’s detractors, which includes President Trump, of “continuing slander.”
“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” the lawyer said, according to Axios. “It does damage not only to Andy McCabe individually but also to the FBI as an institution.”
The Justice Department’s inspector general found McCabe lied on four different occasions, including three times under oath, about talking to the press about the FBI’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation. McCabe repeatedly said he did not authorize the disclosure of the information to a reporter with the Wall Street Journal by FBI officials, which was not true.
The watchdog also determined that McCabe misled former FBI Director Jim Comey about what he authorized FBI aides to tell the reporter.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe last month.
The circumstances surrounding what McCabe told Comey has led to a back-and-forth between the two former FBI officials. McCabe maintains he informed Comey following the article’s publication that he approved FBI officials to disclose information to the Wall Street Journal reporter. But Comey said McCabe did no such thing and indicated he was unaware of who shared the information with the reporter.
Bromwich said Friday that McCabe is “very upset and disappointed” by recent comments made by Comey regarding recollections about the disclosure to the press.
“Andy has at all times attempted to, and believes he’s been successful in, playing it straight with Jim,” he said.
Bromwich, though, noted that “nobody’s memory is perfect, people are infallible.”
