Alex Wong/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — A crowdfunding campaign to cover legal costs for Andrew McCabe, the former FBI deputy director fired two days before he planned to retire and obtain a full pension, was approaching half a million dollars Friday, almost double its $250,000 goal.
In fact, the original goal for the legal defense fund was $150,000, which was later raised to $250,000, and by Friday more than 10,000 people had donated more than $460,000.
An updated description called the support “overwhelming, humbling, and deeply appreciated.” The funds will go toward “a number of congressional inquiries that he will be required to respond to, as well as the broader Office of the Inspector General (OIG) investigation that is ongoing, and any potential lawsuits he might consider,” the page said.
“[McCabe] and his family continue to deal with the very public and extended humiliation that the Administration, and the President personally, have inflicted on them over the past year,” the page read.
A description on the page clarified that it was the only official one raising funding for McCabe, despite imitation pages.
Extra money raised will go toward charities of the family’s choosing, the page said, and although it’s unclear what will happen to McCabe’s pension and healthcare benefits from more than 20 years in the FBI, “no funds raised for the Andrew McCabe Legal Defense Fund will be used for anything beyond his defense of the allegations against him. He will continue to fight for the pension and benefits he deserves, rather than accept any crowdfunding for that purpose,” it read.
“Not in my worst nightmares did I ever dream my FBI career would end this way,” McCabe later wrote in the Washington Post.
In an official statement from Attorney General Jeff Sessions on McCabe’s termination March 16, he said investigations concluded that McCabe had made “an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions.”
“The FBI expects every employee to adhere to the highest standards of honesty, integrity, and accountability. As the OPR proposal stated, ‘all FBI employees know that lacking candor under oath results in dismissal and that our integrity is our brand,’” Sessions said.
McCabe issued his own statement saying he would no longer keep silent — and kept that promise by writing the op-ed.
“For the last year and a half, my family and I have been the targets of an unrelenting assault on our reputation and my service to this country. Articles too numerous to count have leveled every sort of false, defamatory and degrading allegation against us. The President’s tweets have amplified and exacerbated it all. He called for my firing. He called for me to be stripped of my pension after more than 20 years of service. And all along we have said nothing, never wanting to distract from the mission of the FBI by addressing the lies told and repeated about us.”
“No more,” McCabe said.
McCabe joined the FBI in 1996. Beginning in 2016, he served as deputy director of the FBI under former FBI Director James Comey. McCabe became acting director after Comey was fired and then resumed his role as deputy director when President Donald Trump’s appointee for director, Chris Wray, was sworn in the late summer of 2017.
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