The Department of Justice announced on Friday that it had dropped an investigation into former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and won’t charge him with any crimes as part of his role in the Russia investigation.
“We write to inform you that, after careful consideration, the Government has decided not to pursue criminal charges against your client,” DOJ officials wrote in a letter to McCabe’s attorney, according to Politico‘s Kyle Cheney.
“Based on the totality of the circumstances and all of the information known to the Government at this time, we consider the matter closed,” the letter added.
The email comes a day after the Washington Post reported that Donald Trump wanted McCabe to be criminally charged for allegedly lying about leaking information for an October 2016 Wall Street Journal story regarding the Clinton Foundation.
It also comes as the Justice Department faces questions about whether Trump is influencing criminal cases in order to help his allies and boost his own reelection chances.
Trump has repeatedly attacked McCabe, accusing the career FBI official of being part of a larger partisan witch hunt against him within the Justice Department.
Among other things, Trump baselessly accused McCabe of being biased against him because McCabe’s wife took a campaign contribution during a state Senate bid from former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who is an ally of Hillary Clinton.
McCabe was ultimately fired by now-former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2018, just a few hours before McCabe’s full pension would have vested.
McCabe sued the Justice Department for his firing, claiming it was politically motivated and intentionally done to ensure McCabe wouldn’t receive his pension.
In February 2019, McCabe told CBS News that he had ordered obstruction of justice and counterintelligence investigations into Trump in the days after the president fired former FBI Director James Comey, prior to the broader Mueller probe. According to the outlet, McCabe “was concerned Trump would try to make the overall investigation into Russian election meddling go away.”
“I was speaking to the man who had just run for the presidency and won the election for the presidency, and who might have done so with the aid of the government of Russia, our most formidable adversary on the world stage,” McCabe said at the time. “And that was something that troubled me greatly.”
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
