A day after a report that Andrew McCabe will be prosecuted for leaking secret government information to reporters and then lying about it, a lawyer for the fired acting FBI director is pressuring prosecutors to drop the case.
Fox News reported Friday that attorney Michael Bromwich cited “rumors” that the grand jury considering charges against McCabe had declined to vote an indictment.
On Thursday, Fox News cited a source familiar with the case saying U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu recommended moving forward with charges and the DOJ rejected a last-ditch appeal from McCabe.
Bromwich said, however, that if the rumors are true, “the only fair and just result is for you to accept the grand jury’s decision and end these proceedings.”
The Washington Post and the New York Times speculated a grand jury recently looked at the case and finished with no public charges.
Grand jury proceedings are highly secretive, Fox News noted, and the status of McCabe’s case remains unclear.
McCabe, who served as acting director after the firing of James Comey, recently was confirmed as a speaker for a Democratic Party fundraiser.
WND reported last month federal prosecutors were in the final stages of deciding whether to indict McCabe on charges of lying to bureau investigators, including under oath.
The Justice Department’s inspector general found McCabe was “lacking candor” in his interviews.
Fox News reported McCabe had appealed the decision of the U.S. attorney for Washington to Jeffrey Rosen, the deputy attorney general, but Rosen rejected that request.
The charges center on McCabe’s misleading statements about the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information.
Fox News said a source close to McCabe’s legal team said they received an email from the Department of Justice which said, “The Department rejected your appeal of the United States Attorney’s Office’s decision in this matter. Any further inquiries should be directed to the United States Attorney’s Office.”
McCabe recently was hired as a commentator for CNN.
Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe in March 2018, just before he was to retire after 21 years, when the IG found he repeatedly misstated his involvement in a leak to the Wall Street Journal.
McCabe denied he did anything wrong, blaming the accusations of mischaracterizations and omissions.
Last month, McCabe sued the FBI and the Justice Department over his firing.
There have been questions about McCabe’s political neutrality since 2015 when friends of Hillary Clinton gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to his wife, Jill McCabe, in her unsuccessful run for office as a Democrat.
