An Interview with Andrew McCabe, former Acting and Deputy Director of the FBI

Andrew McCabe served as the Acting and Deputy Director of the FBI. He is the New York Times bestselling author of “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump.”

(1) The 2016 presidential election is a major talking point in recent FBI history. One of the most controversial decisions James Comey made was the decision to criticize Hillary Clinton for her “extremely careless” handling of emails, but, at the same time, to recommend no charges be brought against her. Given the sway that this ultimately had in the election, do you still think that this was the right move?

Andrew McCabe: Let me unpack that question. I have a lot of confidence in the decision that we made about not requesting the Department Of Justice to pursue an indictment, and I have a lot of faith in the way our team conducted that investigation. I still believe that the conclusions we came to were valid and the correct conclusions based on the evidence we had. 

I think very differently now about the way that we—or I should say Jim—announced the decision. To be perfectly clear and honest, when he came up with the plan to announce our decision completely independent of the Department of Justice and to do it unilaterally at the FBI, I was really concerned about it. I did not support it initially, but eventually, I did. Jim convinced me that, for a variety of reasons, this would be the best way to go. 

In retrospect, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, particularly immediately after I left the bureau, and I think that it was a mistake on Jim’s part and on all of our parts. We, the team around him, ultimately supported the decision and I think that was a mistake. 

The reason I say this is, again, not because of the substance of the conclusion, but because of the way that we announced it without incorporating the Attorney General and without involving the Department of Justice. It brought an enormous amount of stress, pressure, and criticism upon the bureau, and I think ultimately it was very detrimental to the public’s perception of the FBI. It was our job to protect the institution and I think that in this one instance, we didn’t do that effectively. 

And then, of course, there was the bigger decision that Jim made in November to tell Congress that we had essentially re-opened the case for the purpose of examining Anthony Weiner's laptop. I didn’t support that at the time: I thought it was unnecessary and the wrong choice. I was confident that we would be able to examine the contents of the laptop without making any sort of public indication that we were doing that, and I knew we could do it pretty quickly. But, for other reasons, I wasn’t actually involved in that decision; Jim didn’t want me to weigh in on it. He did what he did, and that’s the way it happened. 

2. At the very beginning of your book “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump”, you state: “Now, the rule of law is under attack, including from the president himself.” Trump, of course, is no longer president. What advice would you provide to FBI officials who have to deal with a similar situation in the future?

Andrew McCabe: I think the best advice that I could give future FBI leaders would be something that, in the abstract, they would take as fairly obvious. But, in the moment, when it is most important, that’s when advice like this becomes harder to follow and more complicated. 

The advice is: always follow your oath and pursue investigations that very clearly, you are obligated—under that oath—to open and pursue to their reasonable and logical conclusions. Whether that makes the administration happy or sad, or makes one side of the political spectrum happy and the other furious, shouldn’t ever have any bearing on the FBI’s decisions about what investigations to open and how to pursue those investigations. 

As I said, I think any FBI leader talking about the principles of what we do and how the institution works, would agree with this. But, having been in the crucible and stuck in the middle of really unprecedented investigations, under enormous pressure, this is harder said than done. The investigations both of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were unavoidably political. Not because the FBI was pursuing or trying to help one political result or the other, but because when you’re investigating people in and around politics, those investigations become politically charged. 

During those times, following the facts and the law and excluding all else, can sometimes become very hard. You start thinking about things like how it’s going to affect the FBI’s relationship with the Department of Justice, or the FBI’s relationship with the White House or the National Security Council. It’s important to remember that those things are all superfluous; they’re good things to be aware of, but those should never be the reasons that you make critical decisions on investigations. 

It’s hard because sometimes, making decisions in this way—pursuing just the law and the facts, with a complete disregard for their impact on politics—is the course that will most likely bring FBI leaders under personal stress. It can lead to relentless criticism, and it could even cost them their job. But if you’re not willing to lose your job to make the hard decisions, you shouldn’t be in that job to begin with. 

I very much believe that deciding not to pursue an investigation because it’s political is the definition of allowing politics to influence your investigative decision. You cannot do that as an FBI leader.  

So, take the risk that half of Congress is going to yell at you for investigating one politician or another politician; that’s an acceptable risk. But, refusing to do an investigation because you’re afraid of half of Congress yelling at you, that is unacceptable. 

3. “A great day for the hard-working men and women of the FBI - A great day for Democracy.” These were the words Donald Trump tweeted after you were fired just 26 hours before your retirement from the FBI. After 21 years of service, no less. Following a civil lawsuit, you won back-pay, other retirement benefits, and had your firing rescinded as well. Talk us through the emotions you were feeling, from when you were first fired to when you received the decision in that civil suit. 

Andrew McCabe: That’s a great question! It might take me several hours to answer it completely, so I’ll try to be brief. 

I actually left the bureau at the end of January 2018, after a bit of a confrontation with Christopher Wray, who is still the FBI director. He essentially was demanding that I leave my position in advance of the inspector general report even coming out. I had no idea what the inspector general report would say at that point and no reason to believe that it included anything negative. Christopher Wray asked me to misrepresent why I would be stepping out of my job to the people who I supervised and oversaw. I refused to do that, so I left and essentially went on vacation until I reached my intended retirement date, which was in March. 

I remember leaving on my last day and it was so, so hard. Coming home from DC to where I live in Virginia is a roughly 45-minute drive, and about halfway there, I was listening to the news and they were announcing that I had been thrown out of the building or something. I’d left my job—it was just so shocking, so disorienting and so different than how I thought, for 21 years, I would leave. 

As someone who’s dedicated my life and my career to government service, you go to retirement parties all the time. It’s always your friends and colleagues who are retiring and going on to other things in their life. I’ve been to hundreds and hundreds of them over the course of my career. You always kind of imagine—I hope my parents are still around, I’d love to have them come; I’d love my kids there. You always imagine what that day would be like. And, in fact, the day, when it came for me, was nothing like I could have ever imagined; I was just sickened with humiliation and anger and sadness. It was really terrible. 

That started a very tough period for me and my family. There was a month or two where we were waiting to see whether I would be able to retire or whether the president would insist that I be fired before I could retire, which he had hinted at previously. It all culminated on a Friday night in March, two days before my birthday. I was at home with my wife and kids. We were watching the news when CNN broke in to announce that I had been fired before my scheduled retirement. That was really upsetting for everybody, and it was a really hard time. 

Writing a book was really helpful during that time. It gave me something to do that was productive and forced me to focus on the entirety of my career, which I absolutely love and treasure, instead of just obsessing over the last part, which was unfortunate. But, at that moment, I definitely also dug in; I would not accept this fraud, this falsehood, that had been perpetuated on me, my family, and anyone else who had been following the story.

I had the great assistance of some terrific lawyers who were willing to help me out, and we brought the lawsuit. It was hard: it takes a lot of effort to put a suit like that together, lots of ups and downs, lots of delays. Ultimately, when the Justice Department agreed to settle, to basically agree to all of the terms I had requested in the complaint, there was really no reason to continue the case…to keep putting my family through that. 

It was a great feeling to have gotten that level of affirmation that they were wrong. They did the wrong thing in firing me and to hold them accountable for that, to recover the benefits that my family had been deprived of, that I’d earned over the course of my career, was an unbelievable relief. It’s also a little bit sad—the fact that we had to go through it at all and the fact that it never rings quite as loudly and clearly as the initial wrongs. There’s plenty of people, certainly in this country and maybe in others as well, who still think that I did some terrible thing and lied to the director and to other people. I’ll never convince them that that’s not true, but at some point, you have to move on, appreciate what you have and build a new life. And so I’ve done that. 

4. The FBI, as you point out in your book, is at the very core of American life; it’s even commonly depicted in movies and TV series. From the perspective of someone who actually served in the FBI—and rose to the very top—I wanted to ask: what was your favorite part about working for the FBI?

Andrew McCabe: There’s so many aspects to working for the FBI that I absolutely love. I was drawn to it because of the work that they do: to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution. That’s the mission of the FBI. I couldn’t possibly think of a better way to spend my life. 

I’m fascinated by all things investigative-related, whether that’s national security issues, or criminal issues. I went to law school; really the only thing I liked in law school was criminal law. So, the FBI was a perfect fit for me. 

To be able to do it in what I still believe is the absolute best investigative organization on the planet was such a privilege. It’s really an adventure every day working in the FBI. You can do the sorts of things that people will only see and experience in movies—it’s really that fascinating. There’s so much flexibility and the mission is so broad. You can do some amazing things for your community and for your country. I loved all that about it. 

But, by far, the thing that I loved the most was the people. I got to work with the most outstanding people, who were smart, talented, and unbelievably dedicated. All of them could have been doing other things in life, but they chose to do this. You don’t just end up in the FBI; it’s a very deliberative choice. It takes a lot of hard work even just getting through the application process, which is onerous, inefficient, and takes forever. You have to have a certain amount of perseverance just to get through that. And they all did it because the institution means that much to them. 

So when you’re there, there’s this incredible spirit of camaraderie and you all work like teammates. That was such a great experience—I don’t know that I’ll ever have that again any place else, but that’s okay because I experienced it in the FBI and I’ll treasure it forever.