McCabe claims that Trump administration officials terminated him without due cause–and are now refusing to cooperate with his legal team.
Andrew McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI, claims the Trump administration is hiding critical evidence from his legal team.
McCabe, says CBS News, sued the FBI and Justice Department after losing his job in March 2018. The termination order came directly from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who fired McCabe two days before his expected retirement.
While McCabe launched his lawsuit in August, he says the government has been anything but cooperative with his legal counsel.
Murad Hussain, McCabe’s main attorney, filed a declaration on Tuesday claiming that several federal agencies, along with more than 30 individuals—including the FBI’s current director, Chris Wray, Attorney General William Barr and President Trump himself—have refused to share any documents necessary for the suit’s continuation.
“At this time, Plaintiff has assembled a small set of supporting evidence from his own records and from publicly available sources,” Hussain said in his filing. “However, much of the relevant evidence in this case is in Defendants’ exclusive possession or the possession of current or former government officials.”
The lawsuit, among other things, claims that President Trump directed Wray and Sessions to find a pretext to fire McCabe.
McCabe’s suit states that Trump demanded the deputy director’s loyalty. When McCabe refused to pledge personal allegiance to the president, Trump wanted him out of office.
.@FoxNews-FBI’s Andrew McCabe, “in addition to his wife getting all of this money from M (Clinton Puppet), he was using, allegedly, his FBI Official Email Account to promote her campaign. You obviously cannot do this. These were the people who were investigating Hillary Clinton.”
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 24, 2017
“Trump demanded Plaintiff’s personal allegiance, he sought retaliation when Plaintiff refused to give it, and Sessions, Wray, and others served as Trump’s personal enforcers rather than the nation’s highest law enforcement officials, catering to Trump’s unlawful whims instead of honoring their oaths to uphold the Constitution,” the suit says.
The complaint further contends that the FBI and Justice Department didn’t follow their own policies in firing McCabe. For instance, McCabe claims that Wray refused to explain the reason for his dismissal—and that a Justice Department attorney even told McCabe’s counsel they weren’t following ordinary policy during the deputy director’s disciplinary hearing.
The administration, meanwhile, says McCabe was fired after a Justice Department inspector general found that he’d “repeatedly misstated” personal involvement with an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
President Trump has frequently listed McCabe as a personal enemy. In a July tweet, Trump suggested that McCabe—along with other Obama-era officials and liberal organizations—were actively conspiring against him.
“The real Collusion, the Conspiracy, the Crime, was between the Clinton Campaign, the DNC, Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele….{and many others including Comey, McCabe, Lisa Page and her lover, Ohr and his wonderful wife, and on and on and on!)” Trump said.
Sources
Fired FBI official says government is withholding evidence related to his lawsuit
Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe sues FBI over his firing
McCabe accuses Trump officials of withholding evidence in lawsuit over firing
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