Today, the Department of Justice Inspector General’s office released their much anticipated report that led to the firing of then Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, on March 18th, 2018, two days before he was officially set to retire.
The full report, which totals about thirty five pages, can be found Here.
The summary from inside the report showed that the OIG found that McCabe lacked candor on at least 4 occasions, 3 of which were under oath.
Lack of Candor
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1. with then-Director James Comey on or around Halloween. (pg 22)
“We found that, in a conversation with then-Director Comey shortly after the WSJ article was published, McCabe lacked candor when he told Comey, or made statements that led Comey to believe, that McCabe had not authorized the disclosure and did not know who did. This conduct violated FBI Offense Code 2.5 (Lack of Candor – No Oath).”
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2. in Interview under Oath with INSD Agents on May 9th, 2017. (pg 27)
“We also found that on May 9, 2017, when questioned under oath by FBI
agents from INSD, McCabe lacked candor when he told the agents that he had not authorized the disclosure to the WSJ and did not know who did. This conduct violated FBI Offense Code 2.6 (Lack of Candor – Under Oath).”
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3. in Interview under Oath with OIG Investigators on July, 28, 2017. (pg29)
We further found that on July 28, 2017, when questioned under oath by the OIG in a recorded interview, McCabe lacked candor when he stated: (a) that he was not aware of Special Counsel having been authorized to speak to reporters around October 30 and (b) that, because he was not in Washington, D.C., on October 27 and 28, 2016, he was unable to say where Special Counsel was or what she was doing at that time. This conduct violated FBI Offense Code 2.6 (Lack of Candor – Under Oath).”
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4. in Interview under Oath with OIG Investigators on Nov, 29, 2017. (pg31)
“We additionally found that on November 29, 2017, when questioned under oath by the OIG in a recorded interview during which he contradicted his prior statements by acknowledging that he had authorized the disclosure to the WSJ, McCabe lacked candor when he: (a) stated that he told Comey on October 31, 2016, that he had authorized the disclosure to the WSJ; (b) denied telling INSD agents on May 9 that he had not authorized the disclosure to the WSJ about the PADAG call; and (c) asserted that INSD’s questioning of him on May 9 about the October 30 WSJ article occurred at the end of an unrelated meeting when one of
the INSD agents pulled him aside and asked him one or two questions about the article. This conduct violated FBI Offense Code 2.6 (Lack of Candor – Under Oath).”
President Trump had this to say in reaction to the reports findings,
DOJ just issued the McCabe report – which is a total disaster. He LIED! LIED! LIED! McCabe was totally controlled by Comey – McCabe is Comey!! No collusion, all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2018
I’m just going to drop this here, page 35 of the linked official report from the OIG’s office,
“First, with regard to his claim of having told Comey that he had authorized the disclosure, Comey stated precisely the opposite in his OIG interview, and the chronology and circumstances then existing (as described above) make it extraordinarily unlikely that McCabe did so and that Comey would simply have agreed after the fact with McCabe’s disclosure and thought it was a good idea. As detailed above, the overwhelming weight of evidence supported Comey’s version of the conversation and not McCabe’s.”
The report then goes on to say that then Deputy Director McCabe violated the FBI’s media policy,
“As the FBI’s Deputy Director, McCabe was authorized to disclose the existence of the CF Investigation if the “public interest” exception found in Section3.4 of the FBI’s then-existing Policy on Media Relations applied. Similarly, the Department’s U.S. Attorneys’ Manual included a public interest exception to the general prohibition on disclosing information about an ongoing criminal investigation. However, we concluded that McCabe’s decision to confirm the existence of the CF Investigation through an anonymously sourced quote, recounting the content of a phone call with a senior Department official in a manner designed to advance his personal interests, was clearly not within the public interest exception. We therefore concluded that McCabe’s disclosure of the existence of an ongoing investigation in this manner violated the FBI’s and the Department’s media policy and constituted misconduct.” for more details see page 35 of the linked report.
The bulk of the report focuses on the details of each bullet point I listed. As a reminder, McCabe’s ‘lack of candor,’ stems from a leak to the WJS, about an on-going investigation into the Clinton Foundation. This has nothing to do with Mueller, Russia, or collusion of that sort. This report shows that the IG found that McCabe leaked information about an ongoing investigation into the Hillary Clinton Foundation and then showed lack of candor when discussing the matter with both then FBI Director James Comey and when questioned under oath by the office of the IG.
“The inspector general utterly failed to support the decision to terminate Mr. McCabe. In written submissions to the OIG and DOJ, we demonstrated that the charges were unsupported by the evidence and that the OIG’s conclusions and the FBI-OPR proposal to terminate Mr. McCabe were unjustified.”
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