McCabe Says Public Deserves ‘Robust’ Release of Mueller Findings

(Bloomberg) -- Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe called on the Justice Department to make public Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report but said some classified materials and investigative methods need to be protected.

"I would like to see that report turned over in its broadest and most robust sense -- first and foremost to the Hill -- so elected representatives can consider it for their oversight purposes, and finally, to be shared with the American public in the broadest way they can," McCabe told Bloomberg TV on Monday.

McCabe joins many Democrats, and some Republicans, saying they want the public to see the report. The former FBI official has been criticized by President Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers as biased against the president, an assertion he has denied.

McCabe, who is promoting his book “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump,” was fired by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in March, just before he was set to retire. Sessions said McCabe made an unauthorized disclosure to the media and lied under oath during an internal investigation.

McCabe said he expects Mueller’s final report -- to be delivered to Attorney General William Barr at the conclusion of Mueller’s probe -- will give a complete rundown of the conclusions he had drawn from the investigation.

"We all understand" there will be parts of that information that are classified, or sensitive in terms of sources and investigative methods, he said.

But he said such public transparency issues have been addressed before, pointing to the intelligence agencies’ publicly released assessment of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. "We took an incredibly classified, sensitive document and we were able to boil it down to an unclassified product," he said.

"There is precedent there," said McCabe, adding that he hopes that is "the path" the Justice Department takes with the Mueller report.

Asked if he trusts Barr’s judgment in handling this issue, McCabe said he assumes the attorney general will act "with honesty and he will work through those issues in the best way he can."

Barr will "make the right decision" when it comes to handling Mueller’s report, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said.

"We can trust him to do that," Rosenstein said at an event in Washington Monday. "We can count on him to do the right thing.”

--With assistance from Chris Strohm.

To contact the reporter on this story: Billy House in Washington at bhouse5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Justin Blum, Laurie Asséo

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