Fired former former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe filed suit in federal court Thursday, accusing President Trump of causing his subordinates at the Justice Department to participate in an “unconstitutional plan and scheme” to have him fired.
McCabe was fired the same day he planned to retire.
His firing was part of a broader plan by Trump to “discredit and remove DOJ and FBI employees who were deemed to be his partisan opponents because they were not politically loyal to him,” he said in the suit against the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr, and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
McCabe also accused then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, along with Wray and others, of serving as Trump’s “personal enforcers” rather than “the nation’s highest law enforcement officials” and of catering to Trump’s “unlawful whims” instead of “honoring their oaths to uphold the Constitution.” McCabe caught Trump’s attention during his time working alongside former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump also fired.
McCabe said that his firing was unjust, and is asking the judge to compel the Justice Department to provide him with back pay, his full pension, and to expunge his record.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a 39-page report in February 2018 detailing multiple instances where McCabe “lacked candor” with then-FBI Director James Comey and with investigators related to him greenlighting the disclosure to the media of sensitive information related to the FBI’s investigation into matters related to Hillary Clinton. Comey says that he did not give McCabe permission to leak to the media.
Sessions fired McCabe the next month, stating that McCabe “made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions.”
McCabe alleged that in 2017, Trump was determined to have him fired as soon as possible so he couldn’t get his full retirement benefits, claiming Trump wanted to punish him for his “refusal to pledge partisan allegiance to Trump”, for Trump’s “misperception” of his partisan affiliation, and for his “lawful exercise of his First Amendment-protected rights of expression and association.”
Trump worked to have him fired using two main lines of attack, McCabe said, first by “singling him out for his alleged but non-existent association with Trump’s political opponents” related to McCabe’s wife’s political activity, and second by promoting the “false and unreasonable view” that working on the Trump-Russia investigation was evidence of his “affiliation with Trump’s partisan opponents in the Democratic Party.”
McCabe’s wife, Jill McCabe, took approximately $675,000 in campaign funding from the Virginia Democratic Party for her 2015 state senate campaign, which she lost. Trump viewed this as proof of the deputy director’s bias.
“How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin’ James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife’s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation?” Trump tweeted in 2017.
Sessions announced McCabe’s firing around 10 p.m. on Friday, March 16, 2018, but McCabe contends that he had already officially retired, saying in his complaint that he’d started “terminal leave” two months earlier and finished his final week at the FBI at the close of normal business hours earlier that day. And McCabe said today that, even if Sessions had made the announcement before 5 p.m. it wouldn’t have mattered, because the press release was not a “legally valid or effective method” for removing a federal employee.
“Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI – A great day for Democracy,” Trump tweeted just after midnight after McCabe’s firing. “Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!”
After special counsel Robert Mueller’s report was released earlier this year, McCabe said that impeachment proceedings should begin against Trump “immediately.”
McCabe is likely being scrutinized by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz as part of the DOJ watchdog’s investigation of allegations of abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The surveillance warrant applications targeting Trump associate Carter Page required the approval of top members of the FBI, the DOJ, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and the current and former government officials involved will likely face tough questions over their actions.
Former FBI Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson testified to the House Judiciary and Oversight committees last year that McCabe and then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates approved the application before it got to her desk, an unusual process that led her to not second-guess her higher-ups.
Horowitz’s next report is expected to be released around Labor Day.
