Attorney General Jeff Sessions is currently reviewing a request to fire former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, who has been on a leave of absence from the bureau since January and is set to officially retire on Sunday.
According to people inside the Justice Department who spoke to The New York Times, McCabe is expected to be fired before the end of the work week, though no official decision has been made yet.
The Justice Department inspector general is probing McCabe’s decision to allow members of the FBI to speak with reporters about its probe into the Clinton Foundation in 2016. According to The New York Times, the IG office has found that McCabe was not forthcoming during the review and the report findings ignited an FBI disciplinary process that recommended McCabe be fired.
Sessions will get to decide whether to accept the recommendation, a move that would threaten his ability to collect a pension after his 21-year career with the FBI, according to the Times.
McCabe took a leave of absence in January following reports that President Donald Trump and Sessions tried to pressure FBI Director Chris Wray to fire McCabe. Wray reportedly threatened to resign if he was forced to fire the deputy director.
As TPM and the Times reported in January, the forthcoming report from the IG fueled McCabe’s decision to leave the bureau before his retirement in March.
The IG was probing a variety of different moves made by the FBI during its investigations during the 2016 election, including its handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe and whether McCabe should’ve recused himself from the investigation, given his wife ran as a Democrat for public office in 2015. Trump has repeatedly bullied McCabe and that perceived conflict of interest on Twitter.
Read the rest of the Times report here.
