WASHINGTON -- Andrew McCabe abruptly stepped down Monday as the FBI's deputy director after months of withering criticism from President Donald Trump, telling friends he felt pressure from the head of the bureau to leave, according to two people close to McCabe.
McCabe's announcement came ahead of a vote by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee in which they brushed aside opposition from the Department of Justice and supported releasing a classified memo that purports to show improper use of surveillance by the FBI and the Justice Department in the Russia investigation.
The memo has become a political flash point, with Trump and many Republicans pushing for its release and suggesting that some in the Justice Department and FBI have conspired against the president.
Though McCabe's retirement had been widely expected soon, his departure was nevertheless sudden. As recently as last week, McCabe had told people he hoped to stay until he was eligible to retire in mid-March. Instead, McCabe made his intentions known to colleagues Monday, a U.S. official said, and will immediately go on leave.
In a recent conversation, Christopher Wray, the FBI director, raised concerns about a coming inspector general report examining the actions of McCabe and other senior FBI officials during the 2016 presidential campaign, when the bureau was investigating both Hillary Clinton's email use and the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. In that discussion, according to one former law enforcement official close to McCabe, Wray suggested moving McCabe into another job, which would have been a demotion.
Instead, the former official said, McCabe chose to leave. In an email to FBI employees, he said he was leaving with "sadness." He praised his colleagues as "the greatest workforce on earth because you speak up, you tell the truth and you do the right thing."
In a message to FBI employees Monday afternoon, Wray said he would not comment on "specific aspects" of the inspector general review. He said he and his deputy spoke and that afterward, McCabe said he planned to take leave immediately and retire March 18. Wray thanked McCabe for his service.
Wray, who was sworn in as director in August, named the bureau's No. 3 official, David Bowdich, as his acting deputy, according to the director's note to the FBI.
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McCabe's departure followed criticism from Trump on Twitter in recent months, but Wray wrote to bureau employees, "I will not be swayed by political or other pressure in my decision-making."
The White House said Trump had nothing to do with McCabe's exit. "The president wasn't part of this decision-making process," said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary.
The Intelligence Committee vote threw fuel on a partisan conflict over the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Republicans invoked a power never before used by the secretive committee to effectively declassify the memo they had compiled. Democrats called the 3½-page document a dangerous effort to build a narrative to undercut the department's ongoing Russia investigation, using cherry-picked facts assembled with little or no context.
What comes next was less clear. Under the obscure rule invoked by the committee, Trump has five days to review the document and decide whether to try to block it from going public. He could agree to the release anytime before that deadline, and if he does nothing, the committee can release the memo publicly.
The White House said late Monday that the president will meet with his national security team and White House counsel to discuss the memo in the coming days.
Republicans said they are confident that the release won't harm national security. They also said they would not release the underlying intelligence that informed the memo.
The White House has repeatedly indicated that it wants the memo out, but Trump's Justice Department had been working to slow or block its release.
Privately, Trump has been fuming over the Justice Department's opposition, according to an administration official not authorized to discuss private conversations and speaking on condition of anonymity.
In the hours before Monday's vote, Sanders underscored the administration's position, saying Trump favors "full transparency."
MEMO DETAILS
The memo, which was made available to all members of the House, is said to contend that officials from the Justice Department and FBI were not forthcoming to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge. Republicans accuse the agencies of failing to disclose that the Democratic National Committee and Clinton's presidential campaign helped finance research that was used to obtain a warrant for surveillance of Carter Page, a Trump campaign adviser.
The research presented to the judge was assembled by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele.
The memo is not limited to actions taken by the Barack Obama administration, though. The New York Times reported Sunday that the memo reveals that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a top Trump appointee, signed off on an application to extend the surveillance of Page shortly after taking office last spring. The renewal shows that the Justice Department under Trump saw reason to believe Page was acting as a Russian agent.
Rosenstein is overseeing the Russia investigation because Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself. It was Rosenstein who appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel.
People familiar with the underlying application have portrayed the Republican memo as misleading in part because Steele's information was insufficient to meet the standard for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant. They said the application drew on other intelligence material that the Republican memo selectively omits. That other information remains highly sensitive, the people said, and releasing it would risk burning other sources and methods of intelligence-gathering about Russia.
In a letter last week to Rep. Devin Nunes of California, the committee's Republican chairman, Stephen Boyd, an assistant attorney general, said it would be "extraordinarily reckless" to release a memo drawing on classified information without official review. He said the department is "unaware of any wrongdoing related to the FISA process."
Democrats responded to the committee's actions with disapproval.
"Clearly, House Republicans' desire to protect President Trump has clouded their judgment and caused them to lose sight of what's at stake: the security and integrity of our elections," the office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, said in a statement.
Democrats have pushed back on Republican criticism of the FBI, saying it is an attempt to discredit Mueller's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and whether Trump's campaign was involved.
On Monday, the House Intelligence Committee voted to make the Democrats' own memo available to all House members -- but not the public. Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas, who's leading the House's Russia investigation, said he was open to making it public after House members have a chance to review it.
A person familiar with the Democrats' document described it as a point-by-point rebuttal of the GOP memo and said it's about 10 pages long.
WHITE HOUSE MEETING
Amid the tensions, Wray and Rosenstein traveled to the White House on Monday to meet with Kelly, according to a senior White House official who was not authorized to discuss the meeting publicly and requested anonymity.
McCabe's departure comes as Wray makes other changes to his senior leadership team, replacing two top aides last week. Such changes are not unusual when a new director takes charge, but they are notable amid Trump's public pressure on Wray to get rid of officials who were confidants of James Comey, whom the president fired as FBI director in May.
McCabe took over as acting director after Trump's firing of Comey, and he was among the officials interviewed for the position, which ultimately went to Wray, a former Justice Department official. The Washington Post reported last week that Trump asked McCabe whom he had voted for in the presidential election. Trump has said he does not recall asking that question.
McCabe had become a political lightning rod over the past year, with Trump and his Republican allies accusing him of leading a politically motivated investigation into Trump campaign aides and their ties to Russia.
McCabe was at the center of the inquiries into both Clinton's use of a private email server and the Trump campaign's connections to Russian intelligence officers.
McCabe first drew Trump's ire because his wife, Jill McCabe, ran for a state Senate seat in Virginia as a Democrat and accepted nearly $500,000 in contributions from the political organization of Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime friend of the Clintons.
Andrew McCabe did not become deputy director until after his wife was defeated, and records show that he disclosed his wife's candidacy and sought advice from senior FBI officials. But critics, including some inside the bureau itself, said he should have recused himself from the Clinton investigation.
Trump and his allies have sought to use McCabe's wife's campaign as evidence that the Russia investigation was part of a Democratic-led effort to undermine his candidacy and presidency.
Information for this article was contributed by Adam Goldman, Matt Apuzzo and Nicholas Fandos of The New York Times; by Eric Tucker, Sadie Gurman, Zeke Miller, Jill Colvin, Mary Clare Jalonick, Chad Day and Jonathan Lemire of The Associated Press; and by Karoun Demirjian and Devlin Barrett of The Washington Post.
A Section on 01/30/2018