Andrew McCabe, the former number two at the FBI, leaked information about Clinton’s emails probe to the press and later misled watchdog investigators, according to a Justice Department review due to be released next month.
McCabe authorized the leak to the Wall Street Journal for a story about an ongoing investigation into the Clinton Foundation scandal in 2016, according to The New York Times and the Washington Post, who cited several sources familiar with the upcoming report. McCabe also misled the DOJ watchdog investigators about his improper media disclosure.
McCabe stepped down from his position as the FBI Deputy Director in January, amid concerns over a review by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
The report is part of Horowitz’s review on how the FBI and Justice Department handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was serving as secretary of state. The Justice Department is investigating why McCabe took three weeks to act on a request to examine Clinton's emails, which were discovered during the 2016 US presidential election. The Wall Street Journal revealed a dispute between the FBI and the Justice Department over how to address the probe into the financial dealings of the Clinton Foundation.
McCabe became acting director of the FBI in May 2017, following President Donald Trump’s removal of then-FBI Director James Comey. McCabe is closely connected to Democrats through his wife Jill, who ran for state office in Virginia in 2015 and received $500,000 from the super PAC of Terry McAuliffe, a Clinton ally and former governor of Virginia. She lost by 2,000 votes.
McCabe became involved in the Clinton email probe in February 2016.
Trump has been highly critical of McCabe, believing he has pushed anti-Trump bias in the upper echelons of federal law enforcement.
It was later revealed that McCabe’s former senior adviser, Lisa Page, exchanged anti-Trump and pro-Clinton text messages with Peter Strzok, a senior FBI agent, while they were involved in ongoing investigations of Clinton and Trump.
Comey also has a reputation for leaking classified materials. After Trump fired him in May 2017, Comey leaked the contents of his memos to the press through a friend.
The disclosures come at a particularly unfortunate time for the FBI. The agency has been embroiled in even more controversy after the House Intelligence Committee released a Republican memo purportedly showing that the FBI committed surveillance abuses in 2016. The memo alleges that a dossier, paid for by the Clinton campaign, formed the basis of the FISA warrant obtained by the FBI to spy on Trump’s former campaign adviser Carter Page.
In December 2017, McCabe was questioned by the House Intelligence Committee regarding possible collusion between Trump and Russia. Fox News sources said that McCabe told the panel that the FBI worked assiduously to verify the contents of the Trump dossier and the agency stood by it.
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