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WASHINGTON — James Comey’s former No. 2 at the FBI carefully claimed that he was “not aware” of his old boss authorizing leaks that are central to the indictment handed down against Comey last week.
Andrew McCabe, who served as the FBI deputy director from 2016 to 2018 and has a history of not being forthcoming with the truth, also insisted the evidence in the indictment is “far from clear enough” to support prosecution of Comey for making false statements to Congress.
“All I can say to Jake is I’m not aware of Jim Comey ever authorizing some other person to leak information,” McCabe told CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.
“That’s not something I experienced personally. It’s not something I saw in all the time I spent working around Jim Comey,” he said.
“So I can’t sit here and characterize his testimony, which I think is far from clear enough to be the basis of a false statement or perjury prosecution.”
Last week, Comey was indicted on one count of making a false statement to Congress and one count of obstructing a congressional proceeding.
The indictment references comments Comey made to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020, in which he denied authorizing “someone else at the F.B.I. to be an anonymous source in news reports” about an unnamed person.
It is not entirely clear whether that unnamed person was President Trump or Hillary Clinton, as the FBI’s separate investigations revolving around the two came up in questioning.
Back in 2019, federal prosecutors recommended indicting McCabe for his actions surrounding a leak during his time as deputy FBI director, but a grand jury did not return that indictment.
A 2018 Justice Department inspector general’s report found that McCabe improperly authorized a leak about a federal probe revolving around the Clinton Foundation in the homestretch of the 2016 presidential campaign.
The watchdog found that “McCabe lacked candor on four separate occasions” when questioned under oath about that leak.
“I never asked Jim Comey to authorize any disclosure to the media because I didn’t have to. At that time in the FBI, there’s [sic] only two people who had the authority to make that decision independently. One was Jim Comey, and the other was me,” McCabe told CNN Sunday..
“And it was something I did as a part of my job pretty routinely, so around that exchange in October … that request never happened,” he added.
While the indictment doesn’t fully make clear who the intermediary may have been if Comey authorized a leak, observers have speculated that prosecutors are zeroing in on his pal Daniel Richman, a professor who is known to have leaked for the former FBI director in the past.
It is not publicly known if Richman was the source of the leak at the heart of the indictment against Comey.
McCabe also criticized the Justice Department for not contacting him amid the rush to prosecute Comey days before the statute of limitations ran out.
“I’ve not been contacted. I haven’t been interviewed,” he said. “Did not ask to interview me, and of course, given my interactions with Jim Comey nine years ago, in October 2016, was going to be the basis of this entire prosecution, it’s unbelievable to think that prosecutors wouldn’t at least want to sit down and hear what I had to say about it.”
Still, McCabe is nervous that he could face legal scrutiny from the Trump administration.
“Of course, who wouldn’t be,” McCabe replied when asked if he had concerns about facing a renewed probe.
“Anyone who worked in the FBI around those cases at that time has got to seriously consider that you might once again [be targeted].”
“I’m not worried; I’m just kind of exhausted.”
Comey has maintained his innocence and is slated to appear for an Oct. 9 arraignment. His indictment came days after Trump publicly bashed Attorney General Pam Bondi for not quickly bringing charges against Comey and other political foes.
