The Justice Department declined to pursue criminal charges against former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for allegedly lying to investigators about authorizing media disclosures, ending months of speculation about the high-profile investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C.
Attorneys for the former acting FBI director said they learned Friday morning from the DOJ that the case had been closed.
“That means that no charges will be brought against him based on the facts underlying the Office of the Inspector General’s April 2018 report,” Michael Bromwich and David Schertler said in a statement. “At long last, justice has been done in this matter. We said at the outset of the criminal investigation almost two years ago that if the facts and the law determined the result, no charges would be brought. We are pleased that Andrew McCabe and his family can go on with their lives without this cloud hanging over them.”
The decision not to pursue criminal charges was relayed to McCabe’s team by two attorneys with the Washington office’s fraud and public corruption section — section chief J.P. Cooney and Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Gaston.
“We write to inform you that, after careful consideration, the government has decided not to pursue criminal charges against your client, Andrew G. McCabe, arising from the referral by the Office of Inspector General,” prosecutors said. “Based on the totality of circumstances and all of the information known to the government at this time, we consider the matter closed.”
The Washington office has been in the middle of a political firestorm all week after it recommended a prison sentence of up to nine years behind bars for convicted former Trump associate Roger Stone — only to have Attorney General William Barr walk it back to a suggestion of three to four years.
“I’m gonna do what I think is right,” Barr said on Thursday but pushed back against President Trump for tweeting about the case. “I cannot do my job here at the department with a constant background commentary that undercuts me.”
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report in 2018 detailing multiple instances in which McCabe “lacked candor” with FBI Director James Comey, FBI investigators, and inspector general investigators about his authorization to leak sensitive information to the Wall Street Journal that revealed the existence of an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
Comey said he did not permit McCabe to tell the media, and Horowitz wrote that McCabe’s actions were “designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of Department leadership” and “violated the FBI’s and the Department’s media policy and constituted misconduct.”
McCabe’s legal team said his story changed because he was surprised by and unprepared for the question during his May 2017 interview and was preoccupied with other major events. They said once Comey was fired later that day, he didn’t think about his answers again as he dealt with leading the bureau for a time.
Horowitz concluded that McCabe’s account of his May 2017 interview “was wholly unpersuasive” and believed the former FBI leader misled his team too.
“It seems highly implausible that McCabe forgot in May what he recalled in detail during his November inspector general testimony,” Horowitz said. “In our view, the evidence is substantial that it was done knowingly and intentionally.”
McCabe was fired and is suing the Justice Department for wrongful termination, seeking to regain his job and back pay and claiming that Trump was behind the firing.
The former FBI deputy director claims that being fired was part of a broader plan by Trump to “discredit and remove DOJ and FBI employees who were deemed to be his partisan opponents because they were not politically loyal to him” in the suit against the DOJ, Barr, and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
“Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI — A great day for Democracy,” Trump tweeted just after midnight after McCabe’s 2018 firing. “Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!”
McCabe also accused then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, along with Wray and others, of serving as Trump’s “personal enforcers” rather than as “the nation’s highest law enforcement officials” and of catering to Trump’s “unlawful whims” instead of “honoring their oaths to uphold the Constitution.”
McCabe caught Trump’s attention during his time working alongside Comey, whom Trump also fired.
For months, McCabe’s lawyers repeatedly expressed frustration with the Justice Department, denying that McCabe did anything wrong and saying that “this investigation has been fatally flawed from its inception.” McCabe said he would “absolutely not” accept a plea deal.
The judge overseeing a Freedom of Information Act case related to McCabe slammed the DOJ for its delays last year.
