Andrew McCabe

Andrew George McCabe (born March 18, 1968 ) is an American attorney who served as the Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from February 2016 to March 2018 and as the acting Director of the FBI from May 9, 2017, to August 2, 2017.

He also serves as a professor at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government.

McCabe was born in 1968.

He graduated from The Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1986.

He graduated from Duke University in 1990 and obtained a J.D. degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 1993.

He was also a brother of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.

During law school he interned in the criminal division of the United States Department of Justice.

McCabe joined the FBI as a special agent in 1996 and served with the bureau's SWAT team.

Because of a hiring freeze, McCabe spent three years in a private law practice in Philadelphia before joining the FBI in 1996.

McCabe began his FBI career in the New York Field Office in 1996.

While there, he was on the SWAT team.

He became a supervisory special agent in 2003 and held management positions of increasing responsibility until he was appointed deputy director of the FBI in February 2016.

McCabe became the acting Director of the FBI following James Comey's dismissal by then President Donald Trump, and served in that position until Trump's appointment of Christopher A. Wray.

McCabe later departed from the FBI on poor terms with Trump.

In 2003, he began work as a supervisory special agent at the Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force.

Later, McCabe held management positions in the FBI Counterterrorism Division, the FBI National Security Branch and the FBI's Washington Field Office.

In 2009, he served as the first director of the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, a program to research interrogation techniques that was created after the Department of Defense Directive 2310 ban of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques.

McCabe secured the arrest of Ahmed Abu Khattala for suspected involvement in the 2012 Benghazi attack.

McCabe was part of the investigation of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

FBI Director James Comey appointed McCabe as Deputy Director of the FBI on January 29, 2016, and he assumed those duties on February 1, 2016.

On July 31, 2016, the FBI opened its Crossfire Hurricane investigation into whether the Trump campaign was collaborating with the Russian government.

Both Comey and McCabe were briefed on the Investigation.

After Trump was elected, he was also briefed on the investigation.

Shortly after Trump fired Comey, McCabe visited the White House for an introductory meeting in the Oval Office with the president, during which time Trump reportedly asked him for whom he had voted in the 2016 election.

However, no interim director was named, and McCabe remained as acting director.

On May 9, 2017, McCabe became acting director of the FBI after Trump dismissed Comey as director.

In the absence of a Senate-confirmed director, the deputy director automatically becomes acting director.

Statute allows the president to choose an interim FBI director (acting director) outside of the standard order of succession.

That process began on May 10, 2017, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein interviewed four candidates to serve as interim FBI director.

Sessions said that McCabe was "also under consideration".

Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe on March 16, 2018, 26 hours before his scheduled retirement.

Sessions announced that he based his decision on reports from the DOJ Inspector General and the FBI's disciplinary office saying that McCabe had improperly authorized releases of information to The Wall Street Journal about an investigation into the Clinton Foundation and had misled agents who questioned him about it on four occasions, three of which were under oath.

McCabe disputed these charges and alleged that his firing was politically motivated.

As part of the settlement, the government agreed to "rescind and vacate" McCabe's termination, correct its records "to reflect that Mr. McCabe was employed continuously by the FBI from July 1996 until he retired on March 19, 2018 as the FBI Deputy Director" in "good standing," restore his pension and other benefits, pay his legal fees and expunge any record of having been fired.

In March 2018, it was reported that, upon receiving a referral from Congress in 2017, McCabe had authorized a criminal investigation into whether Sessions had lied to Congress in 2017 about his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak; the investigation was later closed.

After leaving the Trump administration, McCabe has been a contributor at CNN since 2019.

In September 2019, federal prosecutors recommended McCabe be indicted for actions relating to the leak, but the grand jury did not return an indictment.

On February 14, 2020, the Justice Department informed McCabe's attorneys that it had declined to prosecute McCabe.

In August 2020, George Mason University announced McCabe would be joining the faculty of the Schar School of Policy and Government as distinguished visiting professor.

In October 2021, McCabe settled with the Justice Department a wrongful termination suit he had filed in August 2019.