The attorney for former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe says his client’s termination was “deeply disturbing,” unprecedented, and reason to make all federal employees fearful.
“I have never before seen the type of rush to judgment – and rush to summary punishment – that we have witnessed in this case,” former Inspector General for Department of Justice and attorney Michael Bromwich wrote in a statement Friday after it was revealed late in the evening that McCabe’s employment had been terminated before his 50th birthday Sunday, when he intended to officially retire and get a full pension.
“The result of this deplorable rush to judgment is to terminate Mr. McCabe before his long-anticipated retirement and deny him of the full pension and retirement benefits he would have otherwise earned through his 21 years of devoted service to the FBI and this country,” he continued.
McCabe’s firing by Attorney General Jeff Sessions less than 48 hours before his planned retirement was “deeply disturbing,” said Bromwich, who is representing McCabe in this matter. “This distortion of the process begins at the very top, with the President’s repeated offensive, drive-by Twitter attacks on Mr. McCabe,” the attorney explained.
President Trump celebrated McCabe’s ouster, calling it a “great day for democracy,” topping off a long string of attacks by the president on McCabe.
As Bromwich noted in his statement, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Thursday that McCabe had some “very troubling behavior” and called him a “bad actor,” sending a strong message to Sessions that the administration wanted him gone. “This intervention by the White House in the DOJ disciplinary process is unprecedented, deeply unfair, and dangerous,” he explained.
Bromwich argued that McCabe and his counsel were given short notice and limited information when the Office of the Inspector General issued a draft report for its probe into McCabe and therefore wasn’t able to put together a proper presentation to defend his work. He argued that “this process has fallen far short of what Mr. McCabe deserved.”
“This concerted effort to accelerate the process in order to beat the ticking clock of his scheduled retirement violates any sense of decency and basic principles of fairness,” he said. “It should make all federal government employees, who continue to work in an Administration that insults, debases, and abuses them, shudder in the knowledge that they could be next.”
Bromwich served as the Inspector General for the DOJ from 1994 to 1999.
