McCabe Suit Moves Ahead After Judge Denies Dismissal Request

(Bloomberg) -- Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe can move forward with a lawsuit challenging his firing, a federal judge ruled.

McCabe claims he was unlawfully demoted and fired because of his decision not to vote for Donald Trump in 2016 and his refusal to pledge loyalty to the president. U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss on Thursday denied the Justice Department’s request to have the suit dismissed and said he would set a schedule for discovery.

Moss declared that it was “too early in the case to determine which, if either, of the parties’ competing versions of the relevant facts is correct.”

The Justice Department, which oversees the Federal Bureau of Investigation, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe in March 2018, just before his planned retirement, after Trump railed against the former FBI deputy on Twitter. At the time, Sessions said McCabe was dismissed because he was insufficiently forthcoming about conversations he authorized between FBI officials and a Wall Street Journal reporter.

But McCabe argued that the firing was politically motivated. As a high-level FBI official, he was involved in the politically explosive investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia, and he witnessed first-hand the events surrounding the firing of former FBI Director James Comey. Trump repeatedly attacked McCabe on Twitter, arguing that he had protected Hillary Clinton from prosecution in 2016 and pointing to a donation that McCabe’s wife received from a political action committee run by a Clinton ally when she campaigned for State Senate in Virginia.

McCabe sued the Justice Department and Attorney General William Barr in August 2019, asking a judge to declare that he ended his career as an agent in good standing and to ensure that he remains eligible for pension and health benefits.

His case is one of several lawsuits filed by former FBI employees who have lost their jobs during the Trump administration. Former FBI agent Peter Strzok sued the Justice Department in 2019, arguing that he was unlawfully fired over his text messages critical of Trump after the bureau caved in to pressure from the president. Another former bureau employee, Lisa Page, sued the Justice Department and the FBI for allegedly violating her privacy by illegally leaking texts she exchanged with Strzok, with whom she was having an affair.

The case is McCabe v. Barr, 19-cv-2399, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).

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