Trump and Republicans have spent months going after Andrew McCabe. Now he’s gone.

The FBI’s deputy director was at the center of a political firestorm over alleged anti-Trump bias at the FBI.

By Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com  Updated Jan 29, 2018, 1:08pm EST

Andrew McCabe, the deputy director of the FBI and longtime target of President Donald Trump’s ire, is leaving the bureau.

McCabe was expected to retire around mid-March, according to reports from this December. But on Monday afternoon, NBC’s Pete Williams broke the news that McCabe is stepping down from his responsibilities now — roughly two months ahead of schedule (he’ll still formally retire in March).

His departure comes amid weeks of Republican attacks on the FBI as hostile to the Trump administration, with the president specifically targeting McCabe in an interview last Tuesday. And CBS News’ Pat Milton reports that McCabe didn’t quit voluntarily, but rather was forced out.

Trump’s fury goes back to a long-running controversy over McCabe’s wife’s allegedly compromising political ties to Hillary Clinton. In 2015, McCabe’s wife ran for a state Senate seat in Virginia, backed in part with money provided by the state Democratic party and a Clinton ally. Trump and other Republicans have used this probe to argue that McCabe is secretly harboring an anti-Republican agenda.

This came to a head in recent months, despite having been known for over a year, because McCabe’s name surfaced in a controversial text message sent by FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was recently removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe over evidence of anti-Trump political bias. Strzok had mentioned someone named “Andy” in a text message with federal attorney Lisa Page, seeming to suggest there was a discussion about Trump — and not a positive one — in McCabe’s office.

These revelations have led a number of prominent Republicans in Congress to outright call for McCabe’s firing.“He oughta be replaced. And I’ve said that before and I’ve said it to people who can do it,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told reporters in December.

But there is little evidence so far that McCabe harbors some kind of personal vendetta against the president, let alone any evidence that it’s affecting his job performance.

“He’s certainly not politically compromised — at least not based on what we now know,” Jens David Ohlin, a law professor at Cornell University, told me. “It’s one thing for them to go after Mueller and his team — which I would expect — but the administration seems intent on delegitimizing the entire FBI and the Justice Department.”

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