Trump got his vengence on Mccabe, but will Mccabe make him pay?

Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired Andrew Mccabe as deputy FBI director Friday night, mere hours before Mccabe would have earned his full retirement benefits. And President Donald Trump’s tweets about Mccabe’s situation pretty much erase any doubts that he applied political pressure on Sessions’ decision.

Trump has derided Mccabe for months, even highlighting his retirement timetable three months ago.

“FBI Deputy Director Andrew Mccabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!” Trump tweeted in December.

And the president tweeted again shortly afreport ter midnight Saturday morning: “Andrew Mccabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI - A great day for Democracy. Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made Mccabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!”

It’s readily apparent why getting Mccabe fired might send a message that Trump likes. But might it also come back to bite Trump?

Trump has now, after all, cemented the enemy status of a top-ranking official at the FBI (its No. 2) and one-time acting director. He previously did that by firing Mccabe’s superior, former FBI Director James Comey, and Comey has rewarded that decision by leaking unhelpful things and testifying about Trump in a negative light. He is now set to release a book.

But the Mccabe and Comey situations are also somewhat different. Trump arguably terminated Comey more out of fear of how he was conducting the Russia investigation; he appears to have gone after Mccabe due to a vendetta and possibly to send a signal to others in law enforcement who might run afoul of him. Trump’s successful push to get Mccabe fired is also undeniably more personal in nature, given Mccabe was ousted just 26 hours before he was to gain full retirement benefits. Mccabe was already basically out the door, and firing him now — regardless of how valid the reasons in the yet-to-be-released inspector general’s — comes off as even more spiteful.

And it was made abundantly clear Friday night that Mccabe is incensed by the decision. He released a lengthy statement deriding his firing as “slander.”

“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,” Mccabe said. “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.”

That’s significantly more full-throated than even Comey was after his firing. The question now is: What does Mccabe know, and how hard does he push back?