Comey comments upset Mccabe
Pair recall their conversation on article differently
WASHINGTON — Andrew McCabe, the former FBI deputy director, is “very upset and disappointed” by comments made by his former boss James Comey that contradict his account of a disclosure to the news media, Mccabe’s lawyer said Friday.
“Andy has at all times attempted to, and believes he’s been successful in, playing it straight with Jim,” Michael Bromwich told reporters as he again attacked an internal investigation process that led to Mccabe’s firing from the FBI last month and a criminal referral to federal prosecutors.
The disagreement involves conflicting recollections about a conversation the two men had following an October 2016 Wall Street Journal story about an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
Mccabe said he told Comey that he had authorized FBI officials to share information with the reporter — specifically, details of a heated phone conversation with a senior Justice Department official — in order to push back against a story he felt was going to be unfair to the bureau and inaccurate.
Comey, however, has said McCabe did not acknowledge having done so and left the impression that he didn’t know who had shared the information with the journalist.
The Justice Department’s inspector general concluded that Mccabe misled officials under oath about authorizing the disclosure. Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired him last month, and the inspector general’s office in recent weeks referred the matter to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington for a possible criminal investigation.
Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general himself, said Friday that the threshold for criminal referrals is very low and that they very rarely end up in prosecutions. He said the investigation that led to Mccabe’s firing was “deeply flawed,” ”unprecedented” in its speed and accelerated so that Mccabe could be dismissed before he could retire with full benefits.
Separately Friday, Bromwich announced the creation of a legal defense fund and said he was working with the law firm of Boies Schiller & Flexner to consider possible lawsuits on grounds such as wrongful termination and defamation.