The Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General has officially sent a criminal referral for the now-former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Specifically, Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report last week wherein he stated that McCabe “lacked candor” on multiple occasions.
https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/984863243821813761
In March, Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe, prompting McCabe to state:
This attack on my credibility is one part of a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals more generally. It is part of this Administration’s ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation, which continue to this day. Their persistence in this campaign only highlights the importance of the Special Counsel’s work.
In addition to this, the IG has determined that McCabe was NOT authorized to disclose the existence of the investigation. Citing that it was not in the departments “public interest” exception for disclosing an ongoing investigation.
The disclosure to the Journal was made “in a manner designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of department leadership,” the report said.
From the report:
This misconduct report addresses the accuracy of statements made by thenFederal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to the FBI’s Inspection Division (INSD) and the Department of Justice (Department or DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) concerning the disclosure of certain law enforcement sensitive information to reporter Devlin Barrett that was published online in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on October 30, 2016, in an article entitled “FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe.”
A print version of the article was published in the WSJ on Monday, October 31, 2016, in an article entitled “FBI, Justice Feud in Clinton Probe.”
This investigation was initially opened by INSD to determine whether the information published by the WSJ in the October 30 article was an unauthorized leak and, if so, who was the source of the leak. On August 31, 2017, the OIG opened an investigation of McCabe following INSD’s referral of its matter to the OIG after INSD became concerned that McCabe may have lacked candor when questioned by INSD agents about his role in the disclosure to the WSJ.
Shortly before that INSD referral, as part of its ongoing Review of Allegations Regarding Various Actions by the Department and the FBI in Advance of the 2016 Election, the OIG identified FBI text messages by McCabe’s then-Special Counsel (“Special Counsel”) that reflected that she and the then-Assistant Director for Public Affairs (“AD/OPA”) had been in contact with Barrett on October 27 and 28, 2016, and the OIG began to review the involvement of McCabe, Special Counsel, and AD/OPA in the disclosure of information to the WSJ in connection with the October 30 article.