Grand Jury May Not Be On Board With Justice Department's Plan To Indict Andrew McCabe

Mary Papenfuss
Updated

Department of Justice officials alerted attorneys for former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on Thursday that they intended to bring criminal charges against him for allegedly lying to federal investigators about media leaks. But now one of McCabe’s attorneys is wondering where the indictment is — and says he thinks the grand jury hearing the case decided not to indict.

A federal grand jury met this week concerning the case, according to sources, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. But days of deliberations haven’t yet resulted in charges, indicating that federal prosecutors might not have gotten what they wanted. The grand jury was released Thursday with no indications of an indictment, The Washington Post reported.

McCabe attorney Michael Bromwich pressed the U.S. attorney in Washington in an email to confirm McCabe’s status.

Bromwich said that, based on earlier conversations with other prosecutors, “it is clear that no indictment has been returned,” Bromwich wrote in the email, which was posted on Twitter.

“If the grand jury voted not to approve charges, it did not find probable cause. Therefore, it is simply not reasonable to believe that a trial jury would find Mr. McCabe guilty of any charges employing a far more rigorous and exacting standard — beyond a reasonable doubt,” Bromwich wrote.

He also noted: “Indeed, we believe that if the grand jury has in fact voted a no true bill, the Justice Manual compels you not to resubmit the case to the same or a different grand jury.”

It’s rare for a grand jury not to deliver what a prosecutor wants because it only hears a prosecutor’s version of events.

McCabe has been a frequent target of President Donald Trump because of his role in investigating the possible collusion between the Kremlin and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

McCabe had been under federal criminal investigation since the Justice Department’s inspector general concluded that he misled investigators about providing information in 2016 to a Wall Street Journal reporter, which McCabe has denied.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.