DOJ agrees to release FBI texts from Andrew McCabe
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/doj-agrees-to-release-fbi-texts-from-andrew-mccabe
he Justice Department has agreed to release at least some of fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s text messages following a yearslong Freedom of Information Act lawsuit pursued by Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group.
The Justice Department told a D.C. federal court last week that it had found dozens of potentially relevant texts from the FBI official who played a key role in the Trump-Russia investigation and the Clinton emails investigation. McCabe was fired after the DOJ inspector general concluded that he misled investigators about his role in leaks to the media, although he denies any wrongdoing. DOJ lawyers told the court and Judicial Watch that they would need until the end of August to review the records before agreeing to a production schedule.
“With respect to Mr. McCabe’s emails and texts … the FBI has completed supplemental searches for emails and texts potentially responsive to Plaintiff’s request but now the records must be scoped to identify specific records responsive to the request as the results from the search used broad terms that may have identified records outside the scope of Plaintiff’s request,” the Justice Department said in a court filing. “The text message search yielded approximately 150 ‘hits,’ but the FBI has not determined how many of those results, if any, are responsive to Plaintiff’s request. The FBI anticipates that the scoping of the records will be completed by August 28, 2020, and shortly after that time the FBI will be able to identify a page count and production schedule.”
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report in 2018 detailing multiple instances in which McCabe “lacked candor” with FBI Director James Comey, FBI investigators, and inspector general investigators about his authorization to leak sensitive information to the Wall Street Journal that revealed the existence of an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation. McCabe was fired and is suing the Justice Department for wrongful termination, seeking to regain his job and back pay and claiming that President Trump was behind the firing.