While there is no doubt that Andrew McCabe needed to be fired–and if there was truly a uniform set of standards he would have been charged with lying to investigators–his major offense was leaking information to the press…oddly enough, the reason was linked to the efforts of the Department of Justice to kill the investigation into the Clinton Foundation and McCabe not wanting to be blamed.

Unless otherwise stated, all pull-quotes will be from the IG report.

On July 7, 2016, James Comey testified before the House Government Oversight committee. He was asked about rumors that the FBI was investigating the Clinton Foundation for fraud. Comey, always with a higher loyalty in mind, refused to confirm or deny the existence of the investigation.

But an investigation was underway. It was being conducted out of four FBI offices. And it was getting hot. On August 12, McCabe received a call from a person who is only identified as the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, this is a guy named Bill Baer.

McCabe said that PADAG expressed concerns about FBI agents taking overt steps in the CF Investigation during the presidential campaign. According to McCabe, he pushed back, asking “are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” McCabe told us that the conversation was “very dramatic” and he never had a similar confrontation like the PADAG call with a high level Department official in his entire FBI career.

The fact that this happened via phone call and therefore left no record seems to be significant.

On October 23, the Wall Street Journal’s Devlin Barrett ran a story on the donations McCabe’s wife had innocently received from the Clinton money machine. On October 24, Barrett asked the FBI some follow-up questions about cases that McCabe was overseeing. The Clinton Foundation story was one of those. The leak that McCabe authorized was about him fighting to keep the Clinton Foundation probe alive and pointing the finger at the top Department of Justice leadership as the culprits in trying to shut it down.

And being the manly man that he is, McCabe owned up to his leak…no, sorry, that’s not what happened:

Two FBI Executives, NY-ADIC and the then-Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Division (“W-ADIC”), told us that they each received calls from McCabe admonishing them for leaks contained in the October 30 WSJ article about the CF Investigation. At no time did McCabe disclose to either of them that McCabe had authorized Special Counsel to disclose information about the CF Investigation to the WSJ reporter.

The IG paints a picture of a man who is obsessed with his own image and is willing to burn anyone else down to further it. He will lie, if that is what it takes. He has zero loyalty to anyone he works for. In short, he could easily pass for James Comey.