432

But he’s clearly fighting back over his cruel termination just 26 hours before his retirement-a move that may well have been another case of Trump’s obstruction of justice. This morning McCabe has written a piece for the Washington Post:

“On March 16, I spent the day with my family waiting to hear whether I would be fired, after 21 years in the FBI and one day before I qualified for my long-planned, earned retirement.”

As day turned to night, I had a lot of time to reflect on how it would feel to be separated from the organization I loved — and led — and the mission that has been the central focus of my professional life. Despite all the preparation for the worst-case scenario, I still felt disoriented and sick to my stomach. Around 10 p.m., a friend called to tell me that CNN was reporting that I had been fired. She read me the attorney general’s statement.”

“So, after two decades of public service, I found out that I had been fired in the most disembodied, impersonal way — third-hand, based on a news account. Shortly after getting word, I noticed an email from a Justice Department official in my work account, telling me that I had been “removed from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the civil service.””

The way McCabe was fired was right out of the Comey playbook-indeed, reports revealed that it was as much as Trump’s staff could do to dissuade Herr Trump from firing him on Twitter. But this is how Trump has fired most staff-he doesn’t tell them himself; usually they learn via media reports. Why does Trump do this? Not simply because he doesn’t know any better; to the contrary he deliberately wanted to be as cruel as possible in firing Comey and McCabe.”

McCabe explains the alleged basis for his firing:

“I have been accused of “lack of candor.” That is not true. I did not knowingly mislead or lie to investigators. When asked about contacts with a reporter that were fully within my power to authorize as deputy director, and amid the chaos that surrounded me, I answered questions as completely and accurately as I could. And when I realized that some of my answers were not fully accurate or may have been misunderstood, I took the initiative to correct them. At worst, I was not clear in my responses, and because of what was going on around me may well have been confused and distracted — and for that I take full responsibility. But that is not a lack of candor. And under no circumstances could it ever serve as the basis for the very public and extended humiliation of my family and me that the administration, and the president personally, have engaged in over the past year.”

 Basically the WSJ had a story that falsely accused McCabe of being a Democratic hack based on his wife receiving donations in her run as a Democratic Congressional candidate. McCabe just wanted to set the record straight. Those truly ‘lacking in candor’ are who put out the false meme in the first place-that McCabe could be declared guilty by association.

UPDATE: Still while both his termination and the way it was done was illegitimate nevertheless the way he went about ‘setting the record straight’ was not wrongheaded. More below.

End of UPDATE

“Not in my worst nightmares did I ever dream my FBI career would end this way.”

“The next day I woke to find the president of the United States celebrating my punishment: “Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI — A great day for Democracy.” I was sad, but not surprised, to see that such unhinged public attacks on me would continue into my life after my service to the FBI. President Trump’s cruelty reminded me of the days immediately following the firing of James B. Comey, as the White House desperately tried to push the falsehood that people in the FBI were celebrating the loss of our director. The president’s comments about me were equally hurtful and false, which shows that he has no idea how FBI people feel about their leaders.”

UPDATE 2.0

Regarding the lie that FBI agents celebrated the firing of Comey:

End of UPDATE 2.0

Everything about the McCabe termination quite honestly reeks to high heaven. It’s clear that the process was rushed so as to make sure McCabe could be denied his pension. There are a lot of people who have argued that, after all, McCabe certainly could be guilty as charged. Logically that’s certainly possible but the entire process is so clearly politicized there’s no way to see it as legitimate.

UPDATE 3.0: I wrote this chapter initially on March 24, 2018-I’ve come to see that it was clearly a political hitjob by Trump and his co-conspirators. When you factor in the bombshell report that Foreign Policy did that Trump and the GOP co-conspirators had resolved to target all the potential FBI witnesses to Comey’s firing in June of 2017-the faux outrage over McCabe’s alleged ‘lack of candor’ begun the very next month-with the fact that it was only after McCabe backed up Comey’s version of events that the drumbeat from Trump and co-conspirators for his termination really picked up steam-it couldn’t be clearer that this wasn’t any grave offense by McCabe but about destroying the credibility of potential witnesses against Fuhrer Trump.

Right after McCabe’s Congressional testimony the Fuhrer’s tweet made it clear McCabe’s days were numbered:

And it does seem to have been all too successful with most of the institutionalist types a la Ben Wittes assuming that McCabe really did commit some grave crime-because they can’t bring themselves to consider the possibility that in the Age of Trump pure GOP power politics is now being practiced at the DOJ.

And even Mueller apparently failed to include McCabe’s memos-had he done so he’d have documented that Steve Bannon had spoken with McCabe the very next day after Trump’s inappropriate one on one dinner with Comey I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go where Bannon essentially tried to convince McCabe that the FBI should join #TeamTreasonTrump.

Add to the picture that when Jeff Sessions fired McCabe in March 2018 the unreconsructed Segregationist from Alabama had known for two months that McCabe and the FBI was investigating him for perjury. So he got to fire the guy investigating himself for perjury under the pretext of lack of candor. 

Looking at this fact pattern, I don’t feel stinks to high heaven is too strong to describe the facts around McCabe’s professional assassination.

One argument for why the charges against McCabe are legitimate is that the people at the IG who recommended firing are so trustworthy and respected. 

The FBI takes telling the truth extremely seriously: “lack of candor” from employees is a fireable offense—and people are fired for it. Moreover, it doesn’t take an outright lie to be dismissed. , the bureau fired an agent after he initially gave an ambiguous statement to investigators as to how many times he had picked up his daughter from daycare in an FBI vehicle. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit  when he appealed, finding that “lack of candor is established by showing that the FBI agent did not ‘respond fully and truthfully’ to the questions he was asked.”

Consider also that although Sessions made the ultimate call to fire McCabe, the public record shows that the process resulting in the FBI deputy director’s dismissal involved career Justice Department and FBI officials—rather than political appointees selected by President Trump—at crucial points along the way. To begin with, the charges against McCabe arose out of the broader Justice Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigation into the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation. While the inspector general is appointed by the president, the current head of that office, Michael Horowitz, was appointed by President Barack Obama and is himself a former career Justice Department lawyer. , the inspector general has a great deal of statutory independence, which Horowitz has not hesitated to use: Most notably, he produced a highly critical 2012 report into the Justice Department’s “Fast and Furious” program. So a process that begins with Horowitz and his office carries a presumption of fairness and independence.”

The fact that Horowitz criticized Fast and Furious is seen as proof he’s not a Republican?

But Horowitz’ high reputation notwithstanding, the fact is that it’s very strange that the OIG agreed to accelerate just the part of the probe regarding McCabe. It’s also a fact that the OIG’s track record is far from perfect. As Lanny Davis documents in his very important book on the FBI’s unfair treatment of Hillary Clinton in the email probe, there are real questions as to how the OIG handled the Clinton email probe: the OIG had wrongly told the NY Times in August of 2015 that Hillary Clinton was being investigated; after the mistake was noticed it was walked back but by then the genie was out of the bottle.

Indeed, as Davis’ analysis shows, the entire FBI ‘criminal’ email probe may have been based on a misunderstanding that started in Horowitz’s department. Beyond that, it’s a sad fact of life that sometimes even seemingly honest career professionals can be corrupted if they fear for their jobs. Trump was clearly applying tremendous pressure and maybe these career professionals rationalized that McCabe needed to be fired based on a fact pattern that normally would not have led to that conclusion.

As for the idea that lack of candor is a fireable offense, the more correct way to put it is lack of candor can be a fireable offense. 

While it’s true you can be fired for lack of candor what % of agents actually are fired for it? Is it more or less than the % ticketed by police for jaywalking?

Call my cynical-I’ll cop to it; I just think when you look at the history of the FBI it’s pretty hard not to be cynical; we’re told this is a nonpartisan, nonpolitical agency yet there’s never been a Democratic FBI Director in 110 years and every time they err it’s to the detriment of Democrats and to the benefit of Republicans-but really they’re completely nonpartisan and politics is never a factor.

As for IG we Horowitz sounds like a partisan Republican to me-he was consumed by the GOP Fast and Furious conspiracy theory-his IG  put out false information in July, 2015 that fomented the lie that Clinton was being criminally investigated; after the FBI-aka Trumpland-rigged the election against Clinton to the benefit of Trump-what the FBI in 2016 had in common with Russia is they both wanted to hurt Clinton to the benefit of Trump-Horowitz’s IG was tasked with the job of finding out what happened in the Emailgate investigation-how was it conducted?

It took Horowitz 18 months to finally release a report on Emailgate; in the interim he released reports on both McCabe’s alleged ‘lack of candor’ and another on the texts of Lisa Page and Peter Strozk. He saw those matters as more important than the fact that the FBI put its thumb on the scales to decide an American Presidential election. Congress ought to bring him in for a hearing and ask him why this was.

The McCabe report came out after McCabe’s Congressional testimony where he corroborated Comey’s story so outraging and worrying Trump and the GOP co-conspirators. When Horowitz finally released the Emailgate report it did rightly reprimand Comey’s insubordination-though it claimed that Comey’s insubordination was not based on bias-did Horowitz and Friends look for it any more deeply than Devin Nunes tried to find collusion?

How did Horowitz attempt to corroborate-or dismiss-the idea that political bias decided Comey’s decision? Did he consider that Comey was a lifelong Republican who donated to both President Obama’s opponents, who advocated for the Ferguson Effect-the idea protesting police misconduct leads to an increase in crime-and who had been investigating the Clintons for over 20 years-starting in 1995 when Comey came up with Ken Starr?

If not then his attempt to corroborate was shoddy to nonexistent.

So while this IG report did contain some legitimate criticism of Comey it didn’t go as deep into his possible real motivations as it should have done. Meanwhile there was nothing in the report about the heart of the accusation that the FBI was biased against not Donald Trump but Hillary Clinton-the rogue anti Clinton pro Trump agents whose leaks forced Comey’s hand into writing the Comey Letter .

However IG promised in the report that the rogue FBI agents would be in a sequel report. A sequel report we’re still waiting on almost a full year later.

As for McCabe while he clearly was targeted for partisan political reasons when you look at his own conduct you can’t help but say live by the sword die by the sword. 

Both he and Comey were always too responsive to GOP lies. Comey was so anxious to reassure the GOP partisans that he wasn’t in the tank to Hillary Clinton he stole the election from her-yet the GOP continues to pretend that Comey’s bias was against Trump.

Which is actually what happened to McCabe as well.

Again, as noted above, while both his termination and the way it was done was illegitimate nevertheless the way he went about ‘setting the record straight’ was also wrongheaded.

He leaked the story of the FBI’s dubiously predicated Clinton Foundation investigation. The IG report does pretty much get McCabe’s motivation right-McCabe did this to defend against a Wall Street Journal hit piece that accused him of being a Hillary Clinton loyalist. The notion that McCabe as a life long Republican was actually a Clinton supporter was pretty absurd. Because his wife ran as a Democrat in the Virginia Senate race this in the mind of Trump and the GOP co-conspirators make him a partisan Democrat who can’t be trusted. The irony is there are so few Democrats at the FBI all Trump and the GOP could come up with was a guy whose wife was running as a Democrat.

McCabe was understandably upset about the WSJ hit piece but his way of responding was to leak about the CF investigation to the Wall Street Journal. If nothing else this ought to prove McCabe’s no Clinton partisan-obviously leaking word on the CF investigation three days after the Comey letter had already harmed her campaign hardly was helpful to Hillary Clinton.

Yet Trump and the GOP continued to act as if he’s a Democratic partisan. This was the trouble with McCabe’s response-trying to reassure GOP hacks not acting in good faith never works they only double and triple down-just like Comey has been pilloried for allegedly being anti Trump even though his ahem extreme carelessness cost Clinton the election.

This doesn’t make McCabe’s termination legitimate-certainly the way it was done was clearly all wrong-and you have to wish him luck in his lawsuit as his dismissal was certainly wrongheaded. But it does show the folly of always trying to mollify rogue anti Clinton agents.

Speaking of which, Comey himself shut McCabe out of the decision to put out the Comey Letter-the pretext the extremely careless Comey used was: McCabe couldn’t be trusted because his wife was running as a Democrat and received donations as a Democrat. Comey should have shut himself out as a lifelong Republican who’d been hunting the Clintons for over 20 years.

Now here’s the latest-McCabe revealed before Congress that it was he who pushed out Peter Strozk. 

This is why McCabe is clearly a victim but he’s not entirely heroic-he did the same thing to Strozk that was later done to him. The GOPers targeted him just like they did Strozk and again McCabe tried to mollify them by drumming out Strozk based on texts that showed he didn’t like Trump.

Ok but how many agents didn’t like Clinton? Can we see all their texts?

And Strozk was who had wanted a more expansive investigation into Trump-Russia before the election-of course he was turned down this was Trumpland-no reason to believe it isn’t more so today. Think about it-Trump is now ‘President’-he is in control of DOJ and has purged agencies of anyone insufficiently loyal to himself.

While Christopher Wray is better than say William Barr he for some reason withheld the developing counterintelligence on Trump-Russia once he took over for Comey.

It’s certainly plausible that Trump supporters at the FBI-of which there are many-are now on top everywhere in the agency.

Speaking of Strozk and Lisa Page rather amazingly was the spokesperson who leaked the story of the Clinton Foundation investigation for McCabe. 

“In an effort to portray himself as anything but a stooge for the Clintons, McCabe threw someone else to the wolves. He authorized an FBI public affairs officer and his special counsel to leak a dramatic account of McCabe fighting off a Justice Department effort to stall or kill the FBI’s Clinton Foundation investigation. The counsel on whom McCabe relied for this shivving of the Justice Department was Lisa Page, the FBI attorney whose text messages to Peter Strzok would soon become notorious—and eventually cost McCabe his pension.”

The Justice Department Inspector General had opened an investigation into the actions of Justice and the FBI around the 2016 election. They discovered the Strzok-Page text messages.  On Friday, July 28, they went to McCabe for help in understanding the texts before confronting Strzok and Page with the evidence. They asked McCabe to explain a message in which Page told Strzok that Yates’s deputy was leaking attacks on the FBI.  Her reaction:  “Makes me feel WAY less bad about throwing him under the bus in the forthcoming CF article.”

Next time the GOP belabors the point about her texts regarding an insurance policy keep these words in mind.

The fact that Page and Strozk wanted Trump to lose has led to the false assumption they actually did something to make that happen-this is pure projection on the part of the GOP; they know if it were them they’d weaponize the FBI in any way to achieve their political ends as they in fact did as all the GOPers in a very GOP institution-the FBI-banded together and destroyed the campaign of Hillary Clinton.

But Page actually hurt whatever insurance policy she was supposedly banking on in leaking about the CF investigation and while Strozk did rightly call for a ramped up Russia investigation his actions actually slowed it down-in an effort to protect it he reduced the number of agents working on it.

Finally regarding Page-Strozk her texts seem to show Lisa Page wanted McCabe at that Comey Letter meeting on October 27, 2016.

Would McCabe have pushed back against the Comey Letter? Is that the real reason Comey didn’t want him there-and used the libelous stories that he was a Clinton stooge as a pretext? Well it certainly fits Comey’s pattern when we see the pretexts he used for the July 5 presser that he tried to blame on both a fake Russian doc and Loretta Lynch’s chance meeting with Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac in Arizona.

FN: Indeed, Comey’s book covers little new ground however one bombshell is he admits he never bought for one moment that Clinton and Lynch had really met in the middle of an airport to quash the Emailgate investigation-he admitted this was not very plausible though he then reveals that after seeing what a big deal Fox News was making over it he decided to use it as a new pretext for the July 5 presser-in addition to the fake Russian doc.

 

 

 

 

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