BREAKING: Fired FBI Official McCabe Authorized Criminal Probe Of AG Sessions

On Wednesday, a new report claimed that recently-fired senior FBI official Andrew McCabe authorized a criminal investigation into Attorney General Jeff Sessions more than a year ago to determine if he “lacked candor ” when testifying before Congress.

ABC News reports:

One source told ABC News that Sessions was not aware of the investigation when he decided to fire McCabe last Friday less than 48 hours before McCabe, a former FBI deputy director, was due to retire from government and obtain a full pension, but an attorney representing Sessions declined to confirm that.

Sessions was interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller two months ago about his testimony in which he was asked about his contacts with Russian operatives.

Attorney Chuck Cooper told ABC News, “The Special Counsel’s office has informed me that after interviewing the attorney general and conducting additional investigation, the attorney general is not under investigation for false statements or perjury in his confirmation hearing testimony and related written submissions to Congress.”

Sources told ABC News that the federal criminal investigation was launched after top Democrats urged the FBI to investigate Sessions:

According to the sources, McCabe authorized the criminal inquiry after a top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, and then-Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., wrote a letter in March 2017 to the FBI urging agents to investigate “all contacts” Sessions may have had with Russians, and “whether any laws were broken in the course of those contacts or in any subsequent discussion of whether they occurred.”

“We are concerned by Attorney General Sessions’ lack of candor to the Committee and his failure thus far to accept responsibility for testimony that could be construed as perjury,” Leahy and Franken wrote in their letter to then-FBI director James Comey in March 2017.