n an interview with POLITICO last month, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe sought to parry inspector general's reported conclusion. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Congress gets DOJ inspector general’s critical report on FBI’s McCabe

The Department of Justice’s inspector general on Friday sent to Congress a report sharply criticizing former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for unauthorized disclosures to the media ahead of the 2016 election and lacking candor with investigators, including then-FBI Director James Comey.

The report from the department’s internal watchdog formed the basis of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ firing of McCabe last month, less than 48 hours before his scheduled retirement, a decision that pleased President Donald Trump and White House allies who have long portrayed McCabe as compromised by anti-Trump bias.


The report revealed sharply different recollections of the episode by McCabe and Comey — and suggested McCabe misled Comey about it. And it also suggests Inspector General Michael Horowitz found Comey’s account to be more credible. Yet Trump, who’s mounting a public effort to undermine Comey ahead of the former FBI director’s book publicity tour, used the findings of the report to suggest Comey and McCabe were indistinguishable.

“DOJ just issued the McCabe report — which is a total disaster,” Trump tweeted shortly after the report came out. “He LIED! LIED! LIED! McCabe was totally controlled by Comey — McCabe is Comey!! No collusion, all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!”

Despite his embrace of the report, Trump swiped at Horowitz just six weeks earlier, wondering on Twitter whether he was an “Obama guy.”

The IG's report, has long been expected to emerge this month, but its release on Friday — as Trump lambastes Comey as an “untruthful slime ball” — further complicates the tempest that’s been building since the election between the president and the Justice Department officials overseeing a Russia investigation that’s edged deep inside Trump's inner circle.

Among the IG report’s findings is that McCabe was less than forthcoming with Comey about his October 2016 authorization of two FBI officials to disclose information to a Wall Street Journal reporter working on an article about FBI investigations involving Hillary Clinton.

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“During a conversation “shortly after the WSJ article was published,” the IG report states, “McCabe lacked candor when he told Comey, or made statements that led Comey to believe, that McCabe had not authorized the disclosure and did not know who did.”

The report also delves into corroborating evidence that led their investigators to believe Comey over McCabe, who has acknowledged that he approved the media disclosure and asserted that he was authorized to do so. And it noted that McCabe had a sharp reply to the suggestion that Comey’s account was more believable.

“In a letter submitted by McCabe’s counsel after reviewing a draft of this report, McCabe argues that ‘the OIG should credit Mr. McCabe’s account over Director Comey’s’ and complains that the report ‘paints Director Comey as a white knight carefully guarding FBI information, while overlooking that Mr. McCabe’s account is more credible,’” the report indicated.

Comey lauded McCabe when his former No. 2 went on leave in January amid a growing torrent of criticism from Trump, tweeting that McCabe “stood tall over the last 8 months, when small people were trying to tear down an institution we all depend on.”

The former FBI director, fired by Trump last year, can be expected to field questions about the IG report during a national media tour to promote his new book, which takes sharp aim at the president and has rattled Trump anew. But at a time when Republicans have gone so far as to open the website http://lyincomey.com to undercut Comey, the IG report essentially sides with his version of events.

The media disclosure at issue included details of a conversation between McCabe and Matt Axelrod, then a top Justice Department official in the Obama administration. McCabe recalled Axelrod telling him to avoid taking overt investigative steps in advance of the election in connection with a Clinton Foundation inquiry, something McCabe interpreted as pressure to 'stand down' from the investigation.

McCabe told POLITICO in an interview last month that he approved disclosure of that information to counter the reporter’s narrative that the FBI was bowing to political concerns.

“It was important to me that we not be perceived as an organization that had lost our independence, or was subjected, was vulnerable to political influence from the department or anybody else,” McCabe said.

But the inspector general concluded that McCabe’s decision to authorize sharing the details of that conversation about an ongoing investigation was itself improper. McCabe’s disclosure failed to meet Justice’s “public interest” standard, the inspector general found, and instead took “in a manner designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of Department leadership.”

Republicans hailed the report as evidence that Sessions made the right call when he fired McCabe hours before his retirement.

“The second in command at our nation’s premiere law enforcement agency should be the epitome of fidelity, bravery and integrity,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement. “The Inspector General found not only did McCabe divulge sensitive information, he did it without the permission, authority, or knowledge of his supervisor."

The House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R-Va.), said McCabe “may have committed a federal crime.”

But Democrats said they worried that Republicans would use the findings to undercut the Justice Department’s deepening inquiries into Russian interference in the 2016 election, an investigation that has now engulfed top Trump allies and has grown to include potential obstruction of justice and other matters.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said he feared that the report would be used by Trump and his allies to further a “disinformation campaign” against the FBI and Justice Department — a bankshot effort, he said, to discredit the investigation, led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

“Together, they will do everything in their power to lay the groundwork for attacking our judicial system and to prevent the special counsel from completing his investigation,” Nadler said.

He added that the report had “absolutely nothing to do with special counsel Mueller, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, the conduct of federal investigators so far, or the multiple indictments they have secured against Russian nationals and Trump campaign officials.”

The office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz declined to comment Friday on the time frame for transmittal of the report to Capitol Hill. Under normal circumstances, the IG would publicly release its report after sending it to relevant senior lawmakers.

McCabe has denied any wrongdoing in connection with his disclosures to the media in 2016 about FBI investigations involving Hillary Clinton, connecting the IG’s inquiry to a broader campaign by Trump allies to discredit him because of his key role as a cooperative participant in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

In an interview with POLITICO last month, McCabe sought to parry the reported IG conclusion that he lacked candor in dealing with investigators.

“At every occasion, I did the best I could to remember as clearly as I could” in response to questions from the IG, McCabe said, adding that “my recollections are not perfect” and that he attempted to “provide further clarity.”

McCabe’s lawyer, Michael Bromwich, said Friday: “We have for some time been actively considering filing civil lawsuits against the President and senior members of the Administration that would allege wrongful termination, defamation, Constitutional violations and more. The distinguished Boies Schiller law firm has recently joined us in this project. This is just the beginning."

The report’s delivery to Congress comes amid an increasingly pitched confrontation between House Republicans and the Justice Department. Leaders of the House Judiciary Committee and a band of vocal Trump allies in Congress have accused the FBI and Justice Department of stonewalling their efforts to investigate the FBI’s decision-making in 2016 — including its handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation and the examination of Trump campaign contacts with Russia.

McCabe was interviewed by leaders of three committees in December, part of what was supposed to be a string of senior Justice Department officials hauled before Congress. But despite howls of frustration from Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill, the interviews stopped after McCabe’s.

Yet the House Judiciary Committee has continued to escalate its demands for documents, most recently issuing subpoenas for files connected to the inspector general's investigation, which top GOP leaders have said were being slow-walked to Congress, despite months of demands.

The report expected to be sent to Congress on Friday is only a portion of a larger review Horowitz announced in January 2017, covering a broad range of issues about potential misconduct at the FBI and Justice Department in advance of the 2016 presidential election. Horowitz said late last year that he anticipated completing that report in March or April of this year. But lawmakers now say they expect the full report in May.

