McCabe has been lightning rod for criticism from Trump, Republicans.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe late Friday, alleging he made an unauthorized disclosure to the media and “lacked candor” in speaking to an internal watchdog. The move comes two days before Mr. McCabe’s expected retirement on Sunday. He was removed from his deputy post in January. Mr. Sessions said he terminated Mr. McCabe’s employment “effective immediately,” and said he came to that determination after an “extensive and fair investigation.” Both the inspector general and the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that Mr. McCabe made an unauthorized disclosure and lacked candor when he spoke under oath on “multiple occasions,” Mr. Sessions said.

The findings into Mr. McCabe’s alleged misconduct deal with an October 30, 2016, Wall Street Journal report about an investigation into the Clinton Foundation, the Journal previously reported.

Mr. McCabe’s firing comes as the FBI faces an array of criticisms, most recently from Republicans, for its handling of investigations into the 2016 presidential candidates. The inspector general is expected to issue within weeks a hard-hitting report on the FBI’s pre-election handling of those investigations, a document that is likely to criticize other officials and cause further turmoil in the bureau.

Trump tweeted early Saturday, ...

FBI Director Chris Wray cited the coming inspector general’s report in an email he sent to the bureau’s 35,000 employees after the announcement in January that Mr. McCabe would be stepping down, though he would technically not retire until March 18. In the email, Mr. Wray wrote he wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the report.

Since January 2017, the Justice Department’s inspector general has been examining how Mr. Comey came to make his public statements about the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s emails, whether Mr. McCabe should have been recused from the probe and other related issues. His investigation later unearthed thousands of text messages between a lawyer in Mr. McCabe’s office and a top FBI agent on both the Clinton and Trump investigations, including messages disparaging Mr. Trump when he was a candidate. Those messages fueled accusations that the FBI had been biased in conducting the investigations. The coming report from the inspector general, Michael Horowitz, is expected to address a range of related issues.

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