"Trump’s use of threats and accusations to cause his subordinates to act is memorialized in his tweets and other public documents, including the Special Counsel Report," Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe noted in his suit. | Pete Marovich/Getty Images legal Andrew McCabe sues DOJ, claims his firing was 'retaliation' directed by Trump

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe filed suit Thursday against the FBI and Justice Department, claiming that his March 2018 ouster — on the day he planned to retire after a 21-year career — was politically motivated retaliation driven by President Donald Trump, who was angry at McCabe’s role in the investigation of his campaign’s links to Russia.

“It was Trump’s unconstitutional plan and scheme to discredit and remove DOJ and FBI employees who were deemed to be his partisan opponents because they were not politically loyal to him,” according to McCabe’s lawsuit. “Plaintiff’s termination was a critical element of Trump’s plan and scheme.”


The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, comes just two days after former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok filed a similar lawsuit, alleging that Trump’s vendetta against him led to his unceremonious firing, despite a formal disciplinary process that recommended a less severe punishment. Strzok is seeking his old job back or compensation for his lost pay and benefits, while McCabe is seeking the reinstatement of his full retirement benefits.

Both suits are the latest in a string of examples of Trump’s tweets creating legal headaches for his team. Strzok and McCabe’s filings feature a litany of Trump tweets attacking the men for allegedly joining his political enemies and seeking to bring him down — contentions both men have decried as false conspiracy theories.

Though both men made plain their dislike of Trump, they say it never affected their official actions at the FBI. McCabe argues that Trump’s Twitter threats also coerced his subordinates at the Justice Department to do his bidding.

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“Trump demanded [McCabe’s] personal allegiance, he sought retaliation when Plaintiff refused to give it, and [former Attorney General Jeff] Sessions, [FBI Director Christopher] Wray, and others served as Trump’s personal enforcers rather than the nation’s highest law enforcement officials, catering to Trump’s unlawful whims instead of honoring their oaths to uphold the Constitution,” McCabe’s suit charges. “Trump’s use of threats and accusations to cause his subordinates to act is memorialized in his tweets and other public documents, including the Special Counsel Report.”

In his suit, McCabe includes a handwritten memo to Wray and another top FBI official from a senior official in the Justice Department’s internal review office. The memo indicates that top officials were aware of McCabe’s planned retirement date and factored it into their effort to terminate him, a suggestion that McCabe says was improper. Though McCabe had been chastised for “lack of candor” in an investigation by the department’s internal watchdog — the reason Sessions cited for his firing — McCabe argues that the charge was really a pretext to accommodate Trump and that it was accelerated in order to punish him.

The Justice Department’s inspector general found that McCabe misled investigators about a media leak in connection with the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

McCabe also claims that the official decision on his termination wasn’t issued until 10 p.m. on March 16, several hours after he completed his last day on the job.

The lawsuit recounts a long list of attacks on McCabe by Trump, which began before the 2016 election and continued months after his firing.

“Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI - A great day for Democracy,” Trump tweeted at midnight on March 17, just two hours after Sessions officially fired him. “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!”

McCabe, in his suit, rejects many of Trump’s longtime attacks, including that he had a close association with Hillary Clinton and Democrats. McCabe’s suit describes his relationship with Trump’s political opponents as “nonexistent” and disputed Trump’s suggestion that he was conflicted because his wife made a failed Democratic bid for a Virginia state Senate seat.

“After the election, Trump continued and amplified these false attacks after learning that Plaintiff did not vote for Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” according to the lawsuit. “Trump’s repeated public and private statements are direct evidence of Trump’s perception of Plaintiff’s partisan affiliation, Trump’s attribution of Plaintiff’s wife’s political activity to Plaintiff based solely upon their marriage, and Trump’s constitutionally improper motives for removing Plaintiff from the career civil service.”