The investigation followed an October 2016 story in The Wall Street Journal that described internal debates roiling the FBI and the Justice Department weeks before the presidential election about how aggressively the Clinton Foundation should be investigated.
The article recounted a particularly tense phone call between McCabe and a senior Justice Department official about the investigation.
The inspector general’s report said McCabe told internal investigators that he had not authorized anyone at the FBI to speak with the reporter, and he did not know who did.
The report said McCabe ultimately corrected that account, and confirmed that he had encouraged the conversation with the reporter to counter a narrative that he thought was false — namely, that he had been trying to stymie investigations into Clinton and the foundation.
McCabe has been a target of Trump’s attacks since news emerged in the fall of 2016 that McCabe’s wife had accepted campaign contributions from a political action committee associated with former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Clinton ally, during an unsuccessful run for the state Senate.