A top lawyer at the Department of Justice, who recommended then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe be fired for a “lack of candor,” is stepping down.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Tuesday that Scott Schools, the associate deputy attorney general, would be leaving July 6 to take a position in the private sector.
A source told NPR, which first reported the resignation, that Schools was not being pressured to leave.
“Scott Schools has been a fabulous lawyer for the Department of Justice for close to twenty years, rising through the ranks at the Department to become our most senior career attorney,” Sessions said in a statement.
Schools has counseled former acting Attorney General Sally Yates on her congressional testimony in 2016 and was one of a few top Justice Department lawyers to be regularly briefed on the status of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, NPR reported Tuesday.
The resignation comes as the Justice Department has faced months of sharp criticism over its handling of the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server and Mueller’s inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
Sessions said Schools will be temporarily replaced by Bradley Weinsheimer, and Weinsheimer will have no role in overseeing Mueller’s investigation. Weinsheimer has been at the Justice Department for 27 years. Most recently he was part of the DOJ’s national security unit.
Rachel Brand, the third-most senior official at the Justice Department, resigned in February.
