Andrew McCabe’s legal team blasted the Justice Department on Thursday amid news of a possible impending indictment, labeling the investigation into the former FBI deputy director as “fatally flawed” and calling for an investigation into possible grand jury leaks.
McCabe was fired from the bureau last year for allegedly misleading investigators about his authorization of leaks to the media.
His attorneys, Michael Bromwich and David Schertler, said they’d spent the last week trying to get answers from DOJ about the status of the investigation and claimed they’d been met with no information despite what they saw as a flurry of improper leaks to the media.
Bromwich and Schertler said they want an investigation into the leaks as well as an inquiry into the public disclosure of an email they’d received from Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen telling them their request to appeal the decision by the U.S. attorney to indict McCabe had been denied. The prosecutors reviewing the case recommended charges be brought, and McCabe’s legal team appealed that decision to Rosen, who rejected it.
McCabe’s attorneys said Thursday that more than a dozen reporters told them on Sept. 11 a grand jury was being convened and that McCabe was expected to be indicted that day, then were told it would happen the following day.
“The reporters could only have obtained this information from personnel at the Department of Justice or the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and such leaks are prohibited by rules governing grand jury secrecy,” McCabe’s lawyers claimed.
Reporters told them the next day the grand jury had voted not to indict McCabe, they said, though they “have no idea whether this was accurate information.”
McCabe’s lawyers said DOJ emailed them just after noon on Sept. 12 that DOJ rejected their indictment appeal, and the content of that email was then leaked to the media within a half-hour.
“These leaks in violation of DOJ policy are particularly ironic given that the entire predicate for any false statements charges that might be brought against our client is an authorized disclosure of information that he directed be made in October 2016,” McCabe’s lawyers wrote.
The former FBI deputy director was fired in 2018 after Michael Horowitz, DOJ’s inspector general, released a report that detailed multiple instances where McCabe “lacked candor” with then-FBI Director James Comey and investigators and concluded McCabe greenlighted disclosures to the media of sensitive information on an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation “in an attempt to make himself look good.”
DOJ did not immediately return the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
“What little information we have has come from the news media,” McCabe’s lawyers said. “This is not how the Department that we both served for decades should be handling an investigation such as this.”
McCabe’s lawyers called for DOJ to close the inquiry.
But Horowitz’s report concluded that “the evidence is substantial” that McCabe misled investigators “knowingly and intentionally”, and DOJ’s watchdog stood by the conclusions of his report while testifying in front of the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.
McCabe was also likely scrutinized by Horowitz as part of his investigation of allegations of abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
