Updated at 12:30 a.m. ET Saturday
Attorney 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."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!
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.
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."
