Updated at 12:30 a.m. ET SaturdayAttorney General Jeff Sessions fired outgoing FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on Friday even though he was on the doorstep of retirement and receiving his pension after two decades of service to the bureau.President Trump responded on Twitter just after midnight Saturday morning, calling McCabe's firing "a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI - A great day for Democracy."The attorney general accepted an internal FBI recommendation that "concluded that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor − including under oath − on multiple occasions," Sessions said in a statement.The internal FBI investigation recommended dismissal over McCabe's alleged "lack of candor" about contacts he had with a former Wall Street Journal reporter in 2016."[B]ased on the report of the Inspector General, the findings of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility, and the recommendation of the Department's senior career official, I have terminated the employment of Andrew McCabe effective immediately," Sessions said."The FBI expects every employee to adhere to the highest standards of honesty, integrity, and accountability. As the OPR proposal stated, 'all FBI employees know that lacking candor under oath results in dismissal and that our integrity is our brand,' " Sessions also said in explaining his decision.In a statement issued immediately after his termination was announced, McCabe said the decision was politically motivated. "The big picture is a tale of what can happen when law enforcement is politicized, public servants are attacked, and people who are supposed to cherish and protect our institutions become instruments for damaging those institutions and people," McCabe said."Here is the reality," he added, "I am being singled out and treated this way because of the role I played, the actions I took, and the events I witnessed in the aftermath of the firing of James Comey. The release of this report was accelerated only after my testimony to the House Intelligence Committee revealed that I would corroborate former Director Comey's accounts of his discussions with the President. The OIG's focus on me and this report became a part of an unprecedented effort by the Administration, driven by the President himself, to remove me from my position, destroy my reputation, and possibly strip me of a pension that I worked 21 years to earn. The accelerated release of the report, and the punitive actions taken in response, make sense only when viewed through this lens."McCabe announced his retirement from the bureau abruptly in January and it was to take effect Sunday.His dismissal, just days before he was set to retire, puts his full pension and benefits package in jeopardy and is an inglorious end to career of almost 22 years with the bureau.A longtime targetRepublicans have been attacking McCabe since the 2016 presidential campaign.His wife, Jill, ran for a state legislative seat in Virginia as a Democrat and accepted campaign contributions via then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Clinton loyalist. The FBI and Justice Department's compliance offices found no problems with the situation but Republicans called it a conflict of interest.Even while he was on the campaign trail during the 2016 race and at times since taking office, Trump has complained about what he called McCabe's bias and called for Sessions to fire him.By mid-December 2017, before McCabe was set to testify behind closed doors with the House intelligence committee, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., alluded to McCabe's rocky standing."I'll be a little bit surprised if he's still an employee of the FBI this time next week," said Gowdy, who is also a member of the House judiciary committee which has oversight responsibility for the bureau, in a Dec. 15 interview with Fox News.McCabe served as the acting director of the FBI for three months in 2017, after Trump abruptly fired James Comey, and before the current director, Christopher Wray, was sworn in. McCabe made news in a congressional hearing in May by contradicting Trump.The White House had said Trump fired Comey because he had lost the confidence of the FBI's rank-and-file agents and workers — but McCabe, when asked, said that was not so."Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day," McCabe told lawmakers soon after the president had ousted Comey.Behind the scenes, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz was continuing to investigate Comey and McCabe and the bureau's handling of an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. The IG's office drafted a report that is believed to include the allegation that McCabe lacked candor with investigators about his contacts with a Wall Street Journal reporter. In addition, the statement from Sessions late Friday said the Office of the Inspector General and the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility also faulted McCabe for "an unauthorized disclosure to the news media."Accordingly, the OPR recommended that McCabe lose his job.People in McCabe's camp said earlier this week that he has an explanation for any inconsistencies in his account of the conversations with the journalist, and in each instance, he went back and corrected the record, often citing the chaos around him and the FBI at the time. He had followed up with investigators as part of the Justice Department process.In his statement Friday McCabe explained events this way:
Justice Department Fires Embattled FBI Deputy Director Just Short Of Retirement
