FBI’s McCabe plans retirement for early next year
WASHINGTON — Andrew McCabe, the FBI’s deputy director who has been the target of Republican critics for more than a year, plans to retire in a few months when he becomes fully eligible for pension benefits, according to people familiar with the matter.
McCabe spent hours in Congress last week, facing questions behind closed doors from members of three committees. Republicans said they were dissatisfied with his answers; Democrats called it a partisan hounding.
McCabe, 49, holds a unique position in the political firestorm surrounding the FBI. He was former Director James Comey’s right-hand man, a position that involved him in most of the FBI’s actions that vex President Donald Trump and in the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, a matter that still riles Democrats.
McCabe won’t become eligible for his full pension until early March. People close to him say he plans to retire as soon as he hits that mark. “He’s got about 90 days, and some of that will be holiday time. He can make it,” one said.
A spokesman for McCabe declined to comment, as did an FBI spokesman.
Word of McCabe’s plans drew a response Saturday from Trump, who in a Twitter post characterized the move as “racing the clock to retire with full benefits.”
When Trump fired Comey in May, McCabe stayed to run the agency until a new director was in place.
“Andy’s in a difficult position now … because of the hyperpartisan political environment,” said John Pistole, who held the FBI’s No. 2 job for six years under former Director Robert Mueller. Mueller now serves as special counsel, running the investigation into whether any Trump associates conspired with Russian agents to interfere with the 2016 election.
Pistole said McCabe “is weathering the storm.”
Within the agency, there is praise — but also some criticism — for how McCabe has handled his role. Still, he has become a lightning rod in the political storms buffeting the bureau. Conservatives have called for heads to roll at the FBI, and McCabe is atop the lists of many. But current and former FBI officials said it would be dangerous to appease those demands.
“It would send a terrible message to move him now, but it’s also a terrible situation he’s in,” said one law enforcement official.
The pressure on McCabe has only intensified. He got an eight-hour grilling from the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday and returned to Congress on Thursday to face more than nine hours of questions from the House Judiciary and Oversight committees.
Other senior FBI officials, including those who worked closely with McCabe and Comey, are expected to face similar questioning from Congress next year.
Republicans are focusing in particular on the FBI’s relationship with the author of a dossier containing allegations against Trump. The bureau offered to pay the author of that document after the election to keep pursuing leads and information, but the agreement was never finalized, The Washington Post reported earlier this year.
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has called for McCabe’s ouster, saying he “ought to go for reasons of being involved in some of the things that took place in the previous administration. We want to make sure that there’s not undue political influence within the FBI — the [Justice] Department and the FBI.”
Democrats emerging from Thursday’s questioning of McCabe urged him to resist Republicans’ calls to step down, saying the GOP’s new focus on McCabe smells of political opportunism.
“Mr. McCabe should in no way be fired by biased political commentary,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas.
Trump and his supporters have made clear they want McCabe gone, but as a civil service employee, he can’t be fired outright without a clear finding of major wrongdoing.
Republicans have attacked him after reports that his wife, a Democratic candidate for a Virginia Senate seat in 2015, had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from the political action committee led by a close ally of the Clintons. He had also been part of discussions with Justice Department officials that critics said prevented FBI agents from more aggressively pursuing their investigation of the Clinton Foundation.
After reports about those issues surfaced in October 2016, then-candidate Trump singled out McCabe for criticism, and congressional Republicans demanded detailed answers from the FBI about his role in the Clinton probes — questions they insist remain unanswered.
In a separate Twitter post on Saturday, Trump expressed his incredulity once more, asking how “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?”
The donations came from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s political action committee and the Virginia Democratic Party before McCabe was promoted to deputy director and a supervisory role in the Clinton email investigation.
McCabe’s role is being examined by the Justice Department’s inspector general, who has said a report on how the Clinton probe was handled should be finished by spring.