Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe appeared on CNN Thursday evening saying that he is feeling “better, but not “free” from President Donald Trump’s anger.
Recently, the Justice Department reversed McCabe’s firing for lack of candor and reinstated his pension.
Speaking with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, McCabe said the reversal of the firing “is the current Department of Justice standing up for fairness and the rule of law.”
From Washington Examiner:
McCabe’s settlement with the Justice Department followed a wrongful termination lawsuit from 2019. The Justice Department will reverse McCabe’s firing, provide him back pension payments totaling an estimated $200,000, pay $539,000 to McCabe’s defense team, and provide him with a plaque of his FBI badge and Senior Executive Service cufflinks.
After the Justice Department decided not to pursue charges against McCabe in February 2020, McCabe also headed to CNN, where he said, “I don’t think I’ll ever be free of this president and his maniacal rage that he’s directed at me and my wife.”
Following the reinstatement of his pension Thursday, Cooper asked McCabe whether he felt free now.
“I mean, I feel better, but I don’t feel free,” McCabe said. “I mean, I don’t kid myself to think that the president is going to put aside his horrific judgment, his constant lying, and his tormenting of me and my family. I’m sure this will just add another log to the fire. He’ll probably be saying all kinds of things about it tomorrow. But you know what, I’m just to the point where I don’t care. I don’t care what that guy has to say.”
McCabe was fired in March 2018 by Attorney General Jeff Sessions after DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz determined he repeatedly “lacked candor” with investigators, though McCabe denied any wrongdoing. The Trump-era Justice Department decided in early 2020 not to prosecute McCabe.
Horowitz released a report in 2018 detailing multiple instances in which McCabe “lacked candor” with FBI Director James Comey, FBI investigators, and inspector general investigators about his authorization to leak sensitive information to the Wall Street Journal that revealed the existence of an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
Cooper asked what the DOJ settlement meant for McCabe’s family.
“Oh, my gosh. Anderson, I can’t tell you what this has been like going through,” McCabe said. “What this whole vindictive campaign has put my wife through. My children. My parents. So, to have a settlement of this lawsuit — and one that so clearly indicates this should never have happened — it is both an incredible relief, it’s satisfying, but it’s also, you know, it’s also kind of sad. I mean, like, this should never have happened.”
McCabe told Cooper, “[Trump] demanded this, and Jeff Sessions complied, and the rest of the Department of Justice complied as well.” He also said Horowitz “delivered a truncated, rushed, unfair report that left out material evidence.” Horowitz is widely respected by both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill.
McCabe said on CNN that he never misled anyone on purpose.
“I was asked in two different interviews about what I knew about a release of information to a journalist of a story in October of 2016. And in both cases, I misspoke and then immediately after corrected the record, reached out to the folks that I had spoken to, and pointed them in the right direction — told them exactly what happened,” McCabe said Thursday. “Never at any time did I intentionally mislead anyone about anything.”
Horowitz’s report specifically concluded that when McCabe told the FBI in May 2017 that he did not know who authorized the disclosure to the Wall Street Journal, “it was not due to a lack of memory” but rather “the evidence is substantial that it was done knowingly and intentionally.”