Andrew McCabe, the fired FBI deputy director, was accused by the Department of Justice's inspector general of lying, and now he's been referred to federal prosecutors.
The IG's report on the FBI's onetime second-in-command concluded he lied about media contacts. The IG found McCabe "lacked candor, including under oath, on multiple occasions" in connection with a disclosure to the Wall Street Journal in violation of FBI codes.
Now, the IG has referred McCabe to federal prosecutors to decide whether he will be charged.
McCabe was fired March 16 by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, hours before he was to retire with a pension. He had been at the center of several scandals, including the release of information to a reporter. He also created a conflict of interest when he investigated the Hillary Clinton email scandal while his wife received some $600,000 in political campaign donations from Clinton's friends.
Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, which continues to investigate Clinton and some of her allies, said Sessions "did the right thing in firing Andrew McCabe for repeatedly making statements to investigators that 'lack candor.'"
But Fitton noted the FBI and DOJ are still withholding McCabe's text messages.
"The FBI is not above the law," he said.
His organization has gone to court multiple times to demand the agencies make public the text messages and other documents. Some texts already uncovered indicated FBI agents were working during the 2016 presidential campaign on a "backup plan" to bring down Trump if he were elected.
The Washington Post explained the referral came some time ago, even though the IG report was made public only a week ago.
The IG review found that at the time McCabe made false statements that were leaked to the Wall Street Journal, the FBI was looking into the Clinton Foundation, an issue on which the bureau previously refused to comment.
McCabe's lawyer claimed this week that Comey is not telling the truth about the leaks in his interviews over the past week regarding his new book.
Comey claimed he had asked the IG to look into the leaks, but Michael Bromwich, McCabe's lawyer, said in a statement, "Neither Mr. Comey nor the OIG is infallible, and in this case neither of them has it right."
The IG's referral followed a request this week by 11 Republican members of Congress to begin a criminal case against McCabe as well as Comey.
The IG report also concluded McCabe's disclosure about the Clinton review "violated the FBI's and the Department's media policy and constituted misconduct."
The IG found that in late October 2016, McCabe authorized the disclosure to a reporter of an Aug. 23, 2016, telephone call between McCabe and the then-principal associate deputy attorney general "to rebut a narrative that had been developing" following a Wall Street Journal story "that questioned McCabe's impartiality in overseeing FBI investigations" into Clinton's email server.
The article claimed McCabe had ordered the termination of the Clinton Foundation investigation due to Department of Justice pressure.
The IG found McCabe misled others in his responses at least four times.
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