Breitbart, March 16:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, acting on the recommendation of the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), fired former FBI Deputy Director Andrew “Andy” McCabe Friday.
By dismissing McCabe – who was set to retire at the end of the month – before Sunday, Sessions may have jeopardized McCabe’s ability to draw a pension. Speculation Sessions might make this move has stirred since the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report, which is yet to be publically disclosed, was reported to have recommend McCabe be fired over his handling of press disclosures during his investigation of the Clinton Foundation. The OPR, upon reviewing the IG’s report, issued a recommendation to fire McCabe. ...

Statements from Sessions and McCabe at the link.

Jonathan Turley at The Hill (March 17):

Following his termination late Friday night, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe declared that he was “singled out” after “unrelenting” attacks by President Trump and critics. McCabe’s objections are less than credible, given the virtually unprecedented recommendation of career officials to fire the one-time acting FBI director.

However, McCabe may have rectified his “singled out” status with his long statement criticizing his termination: In the middle of it is a line that could be viewed as incriminating fired FBI director James Comey, not just in leaking sensitive information but also in lying to Congress.

McCabe is accused of misleading investigators about allegedly giving information to a former Wall Street Journal reporter about the investigation of Hillary Clinton and the Clinton family’s charitable foundation. McCabe asserts in his post-firing statement that he not only had authority to “share” that information to the media but did so with the knowledge of “the director.” The FBI director at the time was Comey. ...

The Last Refuge (Conservative Treehouse) has a summary of the big picture (March 18, by Sundance):

The FBI group was participating in a plan to exonerate Hillary Clinton. That same FBI group was simultaneously conducting opposition research on candidate Donald Trump and the larger construct of his campaign team. Those FBI officials were allied by entities outside official government structures. The ‘outside group’ were “contractors”. It is likely one of the contractors was Fusion-GPS or entities in contact with Fusion-GPS. {Go Deep}

The contractors were using FBI intelligence databases to conduct opposition research “searches” on Trump campaign officials. This is where the use of FISA-702(16)(17) “To/From” and “About” queries comes in. ...