Fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe shares some harsh words for former Attorney General Loretta Lynch in his new memoir.
In “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump,” McCabe gripes about Lynch’s refusal to recuse herself from the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized email server and her infamous tarmac meeting with former President Bill Clinton.
Excerpts from the book, due out Feb. 19, were reported Tuesday in a review by The Guardian, which obtained an early copy.
McCabe writes Lynch and her deputy, Sally Yates, saw “the investigation of Hillary Clinton … likely nominee of the Democratic party, who was being supported by the president of the United States, to whom they owed their jobs … as a case they could handle without prejudice.”
In what he described as a “feckless compromise” and “the worst possible choice afforded by the situation,” McCabe says Lynch and Yates “designated career professionals in the National Security Division as decision-makers in this case but didn’t unambiguously commit to abide by those people’s decisions.”
McCabe also criticizes Lynch for her 2016 Phoenix airport meeting with Bill Clinton amid both the emails and Russia investigations. “The tarmac meeting was a horrible lapse in judgment by Loretta Lynch. She should have recused herself … she did not – she made things worse,” McCabe writes.
Lynch has been singled out by former FBI Director James Comey as being one of the main reasons he went ahead with a controversial July 2016 press conference to announce the result of the FBI’s Clinton emails investigation where he said that his agency would not recommend criminal charges against anyone involved with Clinton’s private email network, even after finding that Clinton’s team was “extremely careless” in handling classified emails.
During testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2017, Comey said Lynch requested he minimize the Clinton emails investigation, urging him to call it a “matter” instead of an “investigation.”
“The attorney general seemed to be directing me to align with the Clinton campaign strategy. Her ‘just do it’ response to my question indicated that she had no legal or procedural justification for her request, at least not one grounded in our practices or traditions. Otherwise, I assume, she would have said so,” Comey later recounted in his memoir, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.
Comey also said he had seen material that he thought might cast “serious doubt” about Lynch’s independence.
Lynch shot back at Comey in April 2018 with a lengthy defense of her actions. “The Justice Department’s handling of the Clinton email investigation under my leadership was no exception,” she said.
Comey’s decision to go public with the FBI’s recommendation of no charges for Clinton miffed McCabe. He writes in his book that in “retrospect,” “perhaps I would have said to Comey, ‘Don’t do it. Let’s be the normal [special counsel] Bob Mueller, say-nothing FBI of old.’”
McCabe, a 21-year veteran of the FBI, was fired on March 16, 2018, two days before he planned to retire on his 50th birthday and collect a full pension, after the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General determined that he misled investigators about the role he had in leaking information to the Wall Street Journal in October 2016 about the investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
He “lacked candor” on four occasions when interviewing with internal investigators, the IG report said.
In April, it was revealed that the Justice Department IG had referred its findings to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington for possible criminal charges. Federal prosecutors used a grand jury to investigate McCabe.
Comey was fired by President Trump in May 2017, leading to Mueller’s appointment to lead the Russia investigation and, reportedly, an expansion of that probe looking into whether Trump attempted to obstruct justice by ousting Comey.
McCabe briefly served as acting FBI director after Comey was fired until August 2017, when Christopher Wray was confirmed.
