Washington, Jan 29 (EFE).- The “No. 2” official at the FBI, Andrew McCabe, on Monday resigned and will officially leave the agency in mid-March, sources close to the matter told EFE.
McCabe’s exit from the FBI, which has not yet been officially confirmed, comes after being targeted for substantial criticism by President Donald Trump.
The 47-year-old McCabe was the right-hand man of former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017 and who had been heading the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server to handle certain official business while she was Secretary of State from 2009-2013.
McCabe had intended to retire in March but decided to first use up his accumulated vacation time over the coming two months, thus continuing to receive his FBI salary although he will no longer act as the federal law enforcement agency’s No. 2 official, according to what the source told EFE.
Thus, he will be able to leave the FBI in mid-March receiving all the retirement benefits to which he is entitled.
Trump has attacked the FBI’s credibility on numerous occasions in recent months.
In early January, The Washington Post reported that Trump met with McCabe in the Oval Office and asked him who he had voted for in the 2016 presidential election.
That meeting, the Post said, came after Trump abruptly announced in May 2017 that he had fired Comey, who at the time had been leading the agency’s investigation into potential Russian links to members of the magnate’s campaign to help him win the 2016 election.
In recent months, Trump has taken to Twitter several times to lambaste McCabe for $675,288 in donations his wife, Jill, received when she was running as a Democratic candidate in 2015 for a Virginia state Senate seat.
Jill McCabe received donations from two entities linked to Virginia’s Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, who has been described as former President Bill Clinton’s “best friend” and, thus, a person close to Hillary Clinton, Trump’s rival in the 2016 election.
While Jill McCabe was running her political campaign, her husband was participating in the FBI investigation of Clinton’s emails.
Trump, meanwhile, made no comment on Monday upon being asked about McCabe’s departure by a group of reporters at the White House.