Deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe’s sudden departure remains a mystery, but the clues seem to lead back to one man: Anthony Weiner.
According to a report in The Washington Post, McCabe was the subject of an internal investigation attempting to find out why he stalled nearly three weeks before investigating a set of potentially classified emails found on a laptop shared by disgraced congressman Anthony Weiner, and his wife, Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin.
The inspector general Michael E. Horowitz, WaPo reports, has been asking witnesses “why FBI leadership seemed unwilling to move forward on the examination of emails found on the laptop,” choosing to wait until nearly the end of October to comb through for potentially damning evidence that then-candidate Clinton had mishandled classified information, sending it to Abedin to print, even if Abedin wasn’t cleared to see the messages.
Horowitz seems concerned that McCabe and others were attempting to stall the investigation until after the presidential election had concluded, ostensibly to help Clinton avoid any negative press.
The emails came to light in September 2016, when Weiner relinquished his laptop to federal investigators looking for evidence that Weiner had transmitted lewd photos of himself to a minor. Weiner eventually plead guilty to the charge, but not before investigators found thousands of Huma Abedin’s work emails copied onto the laptop, some of which appeared to be classified.
Just days before the presidential election, FBI director James Comey announced that the discovery of those emails necessitated reopening an investigation against Clinton — a move plenty of Democrats (and maybe Clinton herself) believe ultimately cost Clinton the presidency. Comey was eventually forgiven, after Donald Trump fired him and he became a spokesperson for the “Resistance,” but the emails remain at the center of an internal DOJ probe.
McCabe and the DOJ have remained mum on why McCabe resigned from the FBI just a few short months before he was due to retire, but sources told The Washington Post that they discussed this internal investigation in the meeting where McCabe tendered his resignation.