Washington (CNN) The Justice Department has rejected an appeal from former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe of a recommendation to indict him made by the US attorney in Washington, DC, sources familiar with the situation say.

The US attorney has been scrutinizing alleged false statements McCabe made to investigators regarding his involvement in a newspaper report about an investigation into the Clinton Foundation published days before the 2016 presidential election.

The US attorney, Jessie Liu, recommended that McCabe should be indicted, and in a meeting with Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen at the Justice Department last month, McCabe's attorneys argued against that recommendation, one of the sources said.

On Thursday, a senior DOJ official sent McCabe's legal team an email saying that that appeal had been rejected, according to a second person who is close to the legal team.

McCabe has said he never intentionally misled anyone. His attorneys say that any charges against him would be driven by politics and retaliation from President Donald Trump for the FBI's scrutiny of his administration.

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