Andrew McCabe, the former acting FBI director who became a frequent subject of Donald Trump’s rage, will get his pension after Trump pushed to strip him of it, with then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions firing McCabe hours before he could retire. The Justice Department has settled a lawsuit with McCabe, rescinding his firing and returning his pension and benefits, along with about $200,000 in back payments.

As acting FBI director following Trump’s abrupt firing of James Comey, McCabe drew Trump’s rage by approving the decision to investigate Trump’s possible ties to Russia and possible acts of obstruction of justice. McCabe also said publicly that on their first meeting, Trump had described his wife as a “loser” because of a failed Virginia state Senate run. Jill McCabe’s campaign as a Democrat became a frequent subject in Trump’s attacks claiming that Andrew McCabe owed political favors to former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and, through him, to Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Trump made McCabe a frequent target and explicitly threatened his pension, saying in one tweet, “FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!” Go figure: When Sessions fired McCabe just in time to deny him his full pension, it looked suspicious. McCabe sued, claiming he was illegally fired for political reasons. 

The Justice Department did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

“Politics should never play a role in the fair administration of justice and civil service personnel decisions,” McCabe said in a statement released by Arnold & Porter, the law firm representing him. McCabe added, “I hope that this result encourages the men and women of the FBI to continue to protect the American people by standing up for the truth and doing their jobs without fear of political retaliation.”

McCabe was also previously investigated for lying to investigators about authorizing a subordinate to talk to a reporter about Hillary Clinton’s emails, with the decision not to charge him coming in February 2020 and causing a new set of Trump temper tantrums. A judge in that case, Reggie Walton, warned about Trump’s public attacks: “I just think it’s a banana republic when we go down that road and we have those type of statements being made that are conceivably, even if not, influencing the ultimate decision.”

In a 2018 Washington Post op-ed, Jill McCabe described her husband as a “reliable Republican” and detailed their efforts to ensure that her candidacy did not pose ethical conflicts for him; nonetheless, Trump turned it into evidence of Andrew McCabe’s partisan intent.

“I have spent countless hours trying to understand how the president and so many others can share such destructive lies about me,” she wrote. “Ultimately I believe it somehow never occurred to them that I could be a serious, independent-minded physician who wanted to run for office for legitimate reasons. They rapidly jumped to the conclusion that I must be corrupt, as part of what I believe to be an effort to vilify us to suit their needs.”

Corrupt people tend to believe that others are behaving in a corrupt manner. Angry at McCabe for daring to challenge him, Donald Trump jumped to the assumption that McCabe must be corrupt, and did his best to ruin the man’s life. Getting back the retirement benefits he earned won’t undo the damage to McCabe’s family, but it’s at least a measure of justice. And Trump is probably in a bad mood today.