BREAKING: Andrew McCabe has stepped down effective today as FBI deputy director, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell @ NBC News pic.twitter.com/kLrhDjzq7B
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) January 29, 2018
Andrew McCabe, currently a deputy director for the FBI and previously the agency’s acting director following James Comey’s firing by President Trump, is reportedly stepping down a few months before his planned retirement. Back in December, the New York Times reported that McCabe was expected to retire in March of 2018, when he would have accrued enough years with the bureau to do so, but NBC News now claims that the 49-year-old deputy director has gone on “terminal leave.” In effect, this means he will “remain on the FBI payroll until he is eligible to retire with full benefits in mid-March.”
One of NBC News’ sources explained that McCabe was simply “stepping aside,” and that his decision had nothing directly to do with Trump’s apparent unhappiness with him. Even so, considering the significant public (and private) pressures exerted against him and his FBI colleagues by the White House, the timing is interesting.
When McCabe first took the reigns after Comey’s firing, Trump reportedly grilled him about who he voted for. Not long after, various sources indicated that the president and Attorney General Jeff Sessions had been pressuring the new director, Christopher Wray, to fire McCabe. Trump also wanted to discredit him following Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee over the summer, but several aides managed to talk him out of it.
(Via NBC News)