Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe defended himself after Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired him from the agency on Friday, calling his dismissal an attempt to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
“The idea that I was dishonest is just wrong. This is part of an effort to discredit me as a witness,” McCabe told The New York Times.
McCabe is viewed as a likely witness in Mueller’s probe into Russia’s election interference. He served as acting head of the FBI after Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey.
The Washington Post also reported that Trump asked McCabe whom he had voted for in the 2016 election during an Oval Office meeting while McCabe was leading the agency.
Sessions fired McCabe on Friday night after an internal FBI office found that McCabe wasn’t forthcoming during a review by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
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That probe also reportedly included a review of McCabe’s decision to allow department officials to talk to the media about an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
Sessions said in a statement that the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility and Office of the Inspector General had found McCabe made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and “lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions.”
McCabe was set to retire on Sunday after working for the agency for more than 20 years, and his dismissal could put his pension at risk.
“It’s incredibly unfair to my reputation after a 21-year career,” McCabe told the Times.
He also criticized President Trump for attacking him, the FBI and other agency officials.
“The real damage is being done to the FBI, law enforcement and the special counsel,” McCabe said.
Trump and GOP lawmakers had repeatedly attacked McCabe amid claims of an anti-Trump bias at the Justice Department.