Andrew McCabe, FBI Deputy Director, is officially stepping down. He will remain on FBI payroll until he is eligible to retire with full benefits which will be mid-March.
“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 on Dec. 23.
“FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!” he added.
Pressure has been mounting from the White House to fire McCabe, with spokesman Raj Shah saying that Trump “believes politically motivated senior leaders” of the FBI “have tainted the agency’s reputation for unbiased pursuit of justice” and that the new director he appointed will “clean up the misconduct at the highest levels of the FBI.”
As reported by NBC News:
McCabe has been at the center of ongoing tensions between the White House and the FBI and has reportedly been under pressure to quit from President Donald Trump, whose campaign is being investigated for possible collusion with Russia.
Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported that after Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey, he met with McCabe in the Oval Office and asked him whom he voted for in the 2016 election.
Trump, the officials told The Post, also vented his anger at McCabe over hundreds of thousand dollars in donations that his wife, a Democrat, received for her failed 2015 Virginia state Senate bid from a political action committee controlled by a close friend of Hillary Clinton.
A long-time career servant, McCabe had served at the FBI since 1996 under former directors Robert Mueller and Comey.
Trump was asked on Monday whether he knew McCabe was stepping aside and the president did not answer.