102 Could Andy McCabe Have Prevented the Comey Letter?
While Comey is the undisputed Bill E. Buckner of American politics, Andy McCabe’s role and legacy in Emailgate is a little bit more mixed-his role was sort of hermaphroditic-part hero and part goat.
In describing his interview with Trump for the FBI Director job post firing Comey, McCabe remarks on how before you even walked into the room with Trump you saw a map regaling his fake “historic landslide.”
McCabe is correct that this shows Trump’s fear.
Clearly it shows how insecure he was in the job and how that insecurity never waned-rather the opposite. But why was he so insecure? I think it was more than the self-evident and much remarked on fact that he was unfit and unqualified for the job. That was part of it but just a piece of it. The larger issue was as always as usual: “Russia, Russia, Russia” as Trump has ranted time and again or as Pelosi put it during the first impeachment-I’d like to ask you a favor though-with Trump all roads lead to Russia.
FN: If only she’d taken her own point more seriously.
His insecurity was always rooted in the fact that he was never a legitimate “President”-for that he had Comey to thank; Comey’s gift was always a mixed bag, in one fell swoop he both elected Trump but also delegitimized him.
FN: This also explains the paradoxical response of his GOP co-conspirators to the news of the investigation into Trump’s espionage-the search for the documents at Mar-a-Lago, etc. There had been some commentary prior to that Republicans were finally starting to leave Trump-though this narrative was likely overstated to begin with; there had been an odd poll here or there that could suggest some drop off but it had hardly been conclusive, as Nate Silver would say it’s about the averages and we hadn’t really seen a major move in the polling average yet.
But no doubt many of the elected Establishment GOP officials a la Mitch McConnell-had been looking for a chance to be rid of Trump for some time-of course, McConnell had his chance after J6 and chose to acquit him despite asserting that Trump was “morally and practically responsible” for the Insurrection. So you don’t want to overstate things-the Establishment GOP always hated Trump, they hated him long before he was the nominee but were always too chickenshit and self-interested to ever raise a fingernail in public opposition.
They-McConnell, Paul Ryan, etc- had always been looking for an off ramp from Trump but only one where there was absolutely no political risk. But it’s still a paradox-they had been looking for an off ramp and were prior to we learned about Trump’s espionage no matter how gingerly but then the story of the warrant for all those classified and sensitive government documents that Trump stole broke and suddenly the GOPers are falling all over themselves to defend him to the heavens.
What explains it? Part of it is no doubt because that’s what the base wanted-as the saying goes the Republican party fears its base while the Democratic party has disdain for its own… It’s why they could never quit Trump even though they never wanted him in the first place-abject political cowardice.
But I do think there had been more at work here-the reason they defended Trump’s indefensible crimes of espionage is the same reason he committed them: Russia, Russia, Russia! No one has really asked why Trump stole the documents he stole-beyond some Savvy explanations not even worth repeating-‘he’s just messy and disorganized’ a la Maggie Haberman. As I explain in the Espionage Chapter Trump even now is trying to disavow the original sin of his Presidency-that his election itself was illegitimate-again thank you James Comey.
He had to show everyone the electoral map to deny and belie the fact that the Presidency wasn’t rightfully his, he and his GOP co-conspirators-both inside and outside the FBI (colluding with Putin-Assange)-stole it for him. This is why he stole all these documents relating to the Russian Interference and Collusion investigation.
But it’s also why the GOPers responded so viscerally in defending him against his espionage. One thing that was notable about the J6 SC was how almost everyone from Trump’s Russia House testified, even his kids. Many testified against him. They could admit he didn’t win 2020 but they still can never admit he didn’t legitimately win 2016 either-because they themselves helped him steal it-CF Chapter Leeden.
UPDATE: Indeed, Tucker Carlsen himself made much the same point-that has now been much quoted post the release of the Fox News transcript in the trial, where he admitted behind closed doors-only of course, he’d never admit this publicly as long as Trump still has the GOP base-that he “hates Trump passionately.
The latest filings in the case suggest Mr Carlson expressed his dislike of the outgoing US president two days before Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol to derail lawmakers from certifying Joe Biden’s election win.
“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” he wrote in a text sent on 4 January 2021. “I truly can’t wait.”
“I hate him passionately,” he added.
“Mr Carlson, the top-rated host on the conservative network, also appeared to denigrate the Trump presidency in these private messages, despite lauding his achievements on air.”
“That’s the last four years. We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”
There-behind closed doors-is the real truth: it’s just too tough to digest. BTW this is a common occurrence in human existence-where folks stubbornly stand by their initial bad judgement as it’s too tough to digest they were flat wrong all along. Over the last 76 years-to go back to the victory of the Nixon House GOP in 1946 which arguably was the beginning of the party’s McCarthyism-GOP has taken this bad human tendency to an art form.
End FN
In one of his many excellent posts on Comey’s Emailgate fiasco Randol E. Schoenberg in Is FBI Attorney Lisa Page a Hero? | Schoenblog.com suggests: Lisa Page was a would-be hero-the same might be said of McCabe himself, as she worked for him. She had wanted her and McCabe to attend Comey’ fateful October 26 meeting when he “decided” to do the letter-I use scare quotes as you suspect he had already made up his mind-to argue for waiting at least until they even knew what was supposedly in Huma’s emails. Indeed, the meeting itself was her and McCabe’s idea-but then Comey excluded them based on the rather bizarre premise that McCabe couldn’t be trusted based on his wife running as a Democrat.
FN:
Per page 72 of the IG report Lisa Page was McCabe’s his eyes and ears inside Midyear.
https://www.justice.gov/file/1071991/download
End FN
FN: Schoenberg’s first paragraph is fascinating for among other things he quotes from the statute against espionage-the GOPers had wanted to nail HRC for espionage despite the trivial fact she wasn’t guilty of it:
“This week, Senator Ron Johnson released an interim report on the FBI’s investigation of the Clinton Email Scandal. (See February 6, 2018 at https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/library.) The Report itself isn’t so interesting, mainly a list of facts and allegations that seem salacious to right-wingers, but don’t really amount to anything in particular. The accompanying documents are what interested me. But one thing that irks me about the memo is the careless misinterpretation of the law. The memo includes a whole section on “the law governing the protection of classified information,” which includes both a verbatim text of the law, as well as a misleading summary. For example, the committee says “Section 793(f) prohibits the mishandling of classified material through one’s gross negligence.” Well, no. The word “mishandling” appears nowhere in the law. “Mishandling” is much too vague a term to be used in a criminal statute. Instead, the law at issue (enacted 100 years ago during World War I) makes it illegal to permit the “removal” of documents, or to fail to report their removal. Here’s the big problem for all those trying to suggest that Hillary Clinton committed a violation of this statute. There is no “removal” of documents when you send an e-mail. I’ve explained this before in a previous blog but it deserves repeating. There is simply no law that could make simply sending and receiving e-mails from a private server to authorized recipients into a crime.”
Of course, we discussed the fact that there was no predication of Emailgate in the first place in first chapter of part Comeygate. But reading him here, it’s important to remember Schoenberg wrote this in late 2018 over 2 and half years before the warrant for Trump’s stolen government documents.
Again, the modern Republican party is all about projection-Trump ended up really being guilty of the fake allegations against Hillary Clinton.
End FN
In any case, Schoenberg persuasively argues that things could have gone very differently had both Page and her boss, Deputy Director McCabe been present at the fateful Comey Letter meeting on October 27, which may well be why they were banned from it. I touched on my premise of what likely happened in Chapter Why the Comey Letter, but my hypothesis is Comey went into that “meeting” knowing exactly what he wanted to do. He knew many would find it highly questionable, so he needed the cover that it was a collaborative decision.
Back to Schoenberg:
“I am certainly not the first lawyer to realize this. No doubt there were lawyers at the FBI and the DOJ who also understood that nothing that Hillary Clinton did with regard to her e-mails could ever result in a criminal conviction. Sadly, no one ever tried to explain this to the American public. Months before FBI Director James Comey’s public statements in July 2016, he and his staff began preparing for the day when they might have to explain that there was no case. They did this while they were still conducting interviews of witnesses, which Republicans believe is evidence that the investigation was not conducted properly. In fact, all it shows is that the FBI and DOJ were afraid to tell the Republicans that the entire investigation was not worth anyone’s time.
Indeed, speaking of the public, when Comey finally did his press conference 60% of Americans wrongly believe she should have been indicted. There’s a lot of culpability to go around for this-certainly the MSM absurdly amplified this and created the false expectation an indictment was very possible if not likely when it was always remote but first and foremost the blame is on Comey’s head as we discussed in Chapter No Probable Cause. If it was very unlikely, she’d be convicted there’s no probable cause and what Comey did is almost a legal atrocity, a simply monstrous abuse of his power. Indeed, in that chapter I argue that this is why she never was formally the subject of Emailgate-Comey and Friends had to fudge things.
“For FBI lawyers like Lisa Page, the pointless, obviously political investigation of Hillary Clinton must have been frustrating. She was assigned tasks that she and her colleagues knew were never going to lead to the prosecution of any crimes. It was all politics — and not her politics. Unlike much of the FBI rank and file, Lisa wanted Hillary Clinton to win. And Peter Sztrok, an agent that Lisa worked closely with on counterintelligence cases, felt the same way. The two of them became close — too close. They started an affair and began texting each other throughout the day.”
Although not that it should matter-but it clearly has been treated as if it did-she was far from a fan of Hillary Clinton, her political support for HRC was more based on seeing her as the Lesser of Two Evils than much personal support for Clinton and as we will see below, she also actually took actions that harmed Clinton which is why she, and her boss McCabe, were far from unequivocally heroic.
Schoenberg then looks at some of the most interesting texts between Page and Sztrok:
“Here are a few of the (to me) more interesting portions of the released text messages:
“What was Lisa Page referring to when she texted to Peter Sztrok about Rep. Jason Chaffetz on the evening of October 26?”
Certainly, a fascinating question seeing as Chaffetz was the first to tweet out the Comey Letter on October 28, 2016-and then all hell broke loose on the front page of the NYT, et al. We also know from Chapter Not a Surprise that Chaffetz and his fellow GOP Congressional Chairmen knew already about the emails a month earlier-soon after John Robertson “found” them at the latest, so Chaffetz’s actions were choregraphed. But Page’s mention of Chaffetz suggests he may have been in communication with Comey and the Emailgate team before he wrote the letter-opening the possibility Comey was acting in part at Chaffetz’s direction.
“Bill is Bill Priestap, head of counterintelligence and Peter Sztrok’s boss.”
“On October 27, 2016, FBI Director James Comey held a meeting where he says that his team unanimously concluded that he had no choice but to reopen the email investigation and notify Congress.”
But again-did Chaffetz have a role in this “conclusion” of the “entire team”?
Though while it’s plausible that Page-McCabe could have prevented the Comey Letter-certainly they would have tried to prevent it-which is why Comey-supposedly it was Baker’s call-barred them from the meeting, it still goes too far to speak of either McCabe or Page as the-unambiguous-heroes of the story-as we will see below.
Here is McCabe’s version of the etymology of the Comey Letter in The Threat:
“September threw a wrench. The New York field office and the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York opened a criminal investigation of a disgraced former congressman, Anthony Weiner, for transmitting obscene material to a minor, sexual exploitation of children, and activities related to child pornography. When the case agent obtained Weiner’s iPhone, iPad, and laptop computer and began searching for evidence on the devices, he realized that Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, a longtime senior aide to Hillary Clinton, had also used the laptop, and that the laptop contained emails that might be relevant to the Clinton email investigation. New York’s assistant director in charge told me about the emails in late September. I spoke with counterintelligence about it the same day, and I understood that someone would go up to New York right away to put eyes on the situation—to figure out what we had, and what, if anything, we should do about it.”
Pg. 191
Presumably the case agent is Devlin Barrett’s friend John Robertson who rather miraculously found the single Huma-Hillary email in a stack of 200,000.
FN: Why the Comey Letter
So, McCabe said he “understood” someone was going to go to NYFBI aka the central headquarters of Hillary Clinton is the Anti-Christ… He understood this was going to happen but did it in fact happen and if not why not? This once again touches on-one of a number-of crucial questions around Comeygate-the missing month between John Robertson’s immaculate discovery of the single HRC-Huma email in a tranche of 200,000 and the Comey letter. As I stated elsewhere my presumption is that the gap was deliberate-simple logic: the revelation would have done much less damage on September 28 and there’s no other logical explanation.
Anyway, nearly a month later McCabe says he discovers this likely didn’t happen as the emails are still sitting over at the Clinton hating NYFBI and there is still no warrant.
For his part, McCabe clearly didn’t think the Huma emails were a big deal which is certainly telling-as in retrospect they clearly weren’t. The mystery is not that McCabe didn’t think they were a big deal but that a month later, Jim Comey and the NYT would think it was a big deal, a huge deal-it was always obvious they were likely to be duplicates, just as it had always been obvious Hillary was not going to be convicted-which is why it should never have been opened in the first place-Chapter No Probable Cause. Notably, Comey himself didn’t act like the Huma emails were a big deal initially.
FN: As is also clear in what he told the Horowitz investigators.
It’s notable how casually both Comey and McCabe initially treated the Huma emails-which would flip a Presidential election. In speaking to the IG both were vague in terms of when they learned of it and what exactly they heard-underscoring neither thought it was a big deal initially. Then suddenly in late October it was a five car alarm fire:
But a lot was happening that day. George Toscas, in the National Security Division, told me that the Weiner laptop had still not been searched, because the legal authority to read the emails had not been arranged. The search warrant in the Weiner case allowed searches for images of child pornography, but opinion was divided as to whether that warrant also gave us the right to look at the Clinton emails. The New York field office and prosecutors briefed most of the Midyear team on what limited information concerning those messages they could legally view—the number of messages and the range of dates that might potentially be covered. The day after that, October 26, when the team briefed me on this, it seemed clear that we had to get a warrant. Obtaining a warrant would change the status of the Midyear case. It would mean that Midyear wasn’t closed—it was still open. It would mean the FBI was still investigating Hillary Clinton. Before sunrise the next day, as I got ready to leave town to visit family, I emailed Comey to say the Midyear team had to brief him on an important issue.”
“When they did, Comey decided to seek the warrant and ultimately to notify Congress. I was not present for that meeting.”
So this brings us back to yet another Comey canard the, But I promised Congress canard. As we saw-in Chapter Why the Comey Letter or No Probable Cause-in fact Comey hadn’t actually promised anything specific in his September 28, 2016, testimony and made the possibility of the investigation reopening seem pretty remote. What was interesting is that during the GOP chairmen’s broadside, they already knew about Huma’s emails on Weiner’s laptop as we saw in chapter Comey Letter not a Surprise.
The True Story of the Comey Letter Debacle | Vanity Fair
Congress asked Comey to testify again on September 12, but he reportedly declined. They asked again, on September 28. This time, he obliged, and confirmed that the F.B.I. would not reopen its investigation. No findings at that point “would come near” to prompting such a measure, he told the congressmen. Louie Gohmert (Republican, Texas) continued the Republican harangue: “[The F.B.I. has] never seen anything like this.”
Agreeing to appear in front of the House Judiciary Committee about the investigation was yet another mistake, many believe, forcing Comey to answer questions he normally wouldn’t have. Lamar Smith (Republican, Texas) asked him if he’d reopen the case if he found new information. “It’s hard for me to answer in the abstract,” said Comey, who was under oath. “We would certainly look at any new and substantial information.”
End FN
One glaring problem with this particular Emailgate rationalization of Comey-he has a number of Emailgate rationalizations none of them very persuasive, true as we see in other chapters (Why the Comey Letter; The Bill E. Buckner of American Politics)-has always been that violating DOJ policy, violating Hillary Clinton’s civil liberties-something Comey and his GOP Friends over at the FBI did repeatedly during Emailgate; see Chapter No Probable Cause-as well as flipping a Presidential election in favor of the candidate Comey knew Russia was interfering to help elect-and for which there was evidence to suggest Trump and his campaign were colluding with-thereby among other things poising a significant national counterintelligence risk-because you “promised Congress” is not a thing. You don’t get to violate important DOJ policies and procedures because you promised Congress.
However, after looking at what Comey told the Republican Congress back on September 28, 2016-exactly one month before the day Chaffetz tweeted out his Comey Letter on October 28, it’s not so clear he actually did “promise Congress”-leaving aside the fact that it’s not a thing, not a substantive defense. I mean what Comey actually told Devin Nunes-Louis Gohmert and Friends was if anything close to a promise he would not reopen the investigation. Let’s look once more at his own words:
“No findings at that point “would come near” to prompting such a measure, he told the congressmen. Louie Gohmert (Republican, Texas) continued the Republican harangue: “[The F.B.I. has] never seen anything like this.”
No findings would come near is pretty far from an ironclad promise to let Congress know if he reopened the investigation and comes close to vowing that he would not reopen it. So, did something change? Again, the elephant in the room-pun kind of fits with all these GOPers determined to weaponize Comey’s unpredicated boondoggle by any means necessary…-is that we now know Nunes and Friends already knew about Huma’s emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Add to that Lisa Page’s texts we linked to above, that suggests they were in contact with leading GOPer Chairman Chaffetz prior to October 28 and you wonder about the communications between Comey and his Emailgate team and Chaffetz and his GOP co-conspirator Friends during those few feverish days-McCabe only heard about the suddenly supposedly burning issue on October 26, so it was literally two days-prior to October 28.
Did Comey write the Comey Letter and elect Putin’s Manchurian candidate-who Comey knew to be Putin’s Manchurian candidate-because he promised (the Republican) Congress on September 28? Or did the (Republican) Congress later persuade him that he made a promise on that day he hadn’t initially intended? Was Comey’s September 28 “promise” retroactive?
Certainly GOPer Lamar Smith’s aside about new information is very notable in retrospect-it’s quite plausible if not probable that he had something very specific in mind when he asked that. It’s hard not to look back on that moment as Smith and his co-conspirators planting the seeds of a historic October Surprise-CF The Unreported Background. The Comey Letter is truly one of the greatest OSes in history right up there with the chicanery of Reagan-Bush (to say nothing of William Casey) delaying the release of the hostages in 1980, and Nixon scuttling LBJ’s peace talks with North Vietnam in 1968, so, it’s quite appropriate that Roger Stone referenced Iran Collusion in the chapter he revealed the details of the background of October 28.
Of course, when we get to the subject of Comey’s barring McCabe from the Comey Letter meeting it doesn’t pass the laugh test-but then neither does But I promised Congress as we saw above, neither does “reveal or conceal” or “very bad vs cataclysmic” or “500 year flood to name just a few.
Back to McCabe:
When Comey and I spoke by phone after the meeting was finished, he said, I don’t need you to weigh in on this decision. I already know what I’m going to do. It’s going to be easier to keep you out of it, because it avoids putting you in the position of having to answer any questions about it. I later learned that Comey was uncomfortable with the insinuations of impropriety that had been stirred up by the Journal article. He was about to steer the FBI into the boiling rapids of one of the most acrimonious presidential campaigns in American history. The next day, in his October 28 letter to FBI employees explaining his decision, Comey wrote, “Of course, we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed. I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.”
Pgs. 193-194
Again, we’ve discussed this particular Comey canard elsewhere in the book-CF Why the Comey Letter, etc-but this would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad-and insulting to the intelligence. Again, Comey has this weird disconnect where only political connections to the Democrats-no matter how tangential, after all while McCabe’s wife had run a year ago by then for the Dem nomination in Virginia, she’d lost and McCabe himself, in any case, was a lifelong Republican-again as we’ve pointed out elsewhere but can’t be emphasized enough, was Mueller and Comey himself. Comey had donated to both Obama’s Presidential opponents yet somehow Comey imagined this fact would make no one “uncomfortable” or “queasy.”
My admitted presumption is that the real reason Comey didn’t want McCabe there-as discussed in Chapter Why, I’m also skeptical James Baker decided McCabe needed to be recused on his own initiative, rather I suspect Comey “encouraged” Baker to suggest so it didn’t look like Comey had an agenda-was because Comey did have an agenda as he always had throughout the entire Emailgate fiasco. As we saw throughout the unpredicated mess called Emailgate is that once Comey got a bad idea in his head nothing was going to stop him from making it happen.
OTOH he prefers the soft sell-he wants these bad decisions to appear as someone else’s, as basically the product of a consensus reached via an open and democratic debate-even though in reality he’d stacked the deck.
McCabe, reasonably and collegiately-perhaps a little too collegiately?-reveals he disagreed with Comey’s decision-pg 194:
I think it was a mistake to send that letter. I did not believe we knew enough about what we had to make any kind of statement to anyone about it. I believed that we should get the warrant and review the material to see whether there was anything new in there. Or at least figure out how long it would take to review, or even just de-duplicate, these hundreds of thousands of emails. Taking that level of action, in my view, would not have violated the assurance the FBI had given the Hill that the investigation was finished and that we would let them know if anything changed.”
Again, personally, I think he’s perhaps a little too collegiate considering the circumstances both we-as well as McCabe personally-have gone through since Comey’s indefensible letter. But even as he criticizes the choice McCabe takes pains to assure us he doesn’t believe anything nefarious went into Comey’s bad, very bad, no good, terrible, not to say plain awful decision-my words not his, you might have already guessed. LOL If he spoke like this we’d all be calling him a hero…
Pg 195:
I know Jim saw it differently. Later, he publicly stated that it would have been more dangerous to keep silent, but I disagree. My way would have taken on a fair degree of risk to the organization. Taking the aerial view: sometimes the riskier choice is the more responsible one.”
I’m actually not even convinced it was the riskier choice, indeed, far from convinced.
But despite his disagreement with Comey, McCabe takes a charitable view of the man:
Had I been in his shoes, I think I would have taken that chance. People have criticized him by saying that he was more concerned with his own reputation than the reputation of the organization. I do not know that to be the case. But I do believe it weighed heavily on him that he thought he might be perceived as taking action that was inconsistent with what he told the Hill and the American people—that the investigation was concluded. He has said he felt he had a choice between going through a door marked “Terrible” and a door marked “Even Worse” to explain why he chose Terrible. That makes sense to me.”
It does? See this is where Mccabe starts to lose me and why you have to be a little skeptical he is the one who could have been should have been hero of the story. This is the problem with such “institutionalists”-you might think that because they are insiders, we should listen to them for the best insight into their institutions but while they may know more about the intricate workings of certain processes-at least those in their own lane in another sense they are just too close. They are simply too close.
Another thing to keep in mind is often thanks to specialization they are trained to only know their own lane. It’s been pointed out that many of our top intelligence officials themselves have their news and information filtered. Sometimes we think they must know the real story but, in some ways, they know less-as they are told to ignore many news sources, etc.
McCabe was treated quite badly by the institution he served all those years. Starting with Comey’s bad joke of a recusal in the letter he rammed through the Comey Letter. Yet McCabe is still willing to be charitable. You might think someone in his position might be disgruntled. After all, McCabe was basically chewed up and spit out:
“In January 2018, after conferring with the IG, Chris Wray called me in to a one-on-one meeting on a Sunday night and demanded that I leave the position of deputy director—but also asked that I announce I was stepping aside voluntarily. I refused to make what I considered to be a false statement…”
Pg 257
But often you find this is not the case. Why? Because in some ways to repudiate your institution even after it burns you would still feel like repudiating yourself.
McCabe’s-and for that matter Lisa Page’s-is a mixed bag. Indeed while McCabe’s treatment by Trump-Wray-to say nothing of Sessions, who as we saw in Chapter Sessions, McCabe was actually investigating when the little unreconstructed segregationist from Alabama when Sessions helped through him out 48 hours before his pension-he’s not exactly innocent. What he did in leaking the existence of the CF investigation was wrong-again, Page was who McCabe sent directly to leak on CF to the WSJ.
FN:
In a sense you could argue he did the crime-the trouble is that his punishment was way out of proportion and the process was completely politicized-while Horowitz tabled another 100 leakers or so-see Chapter Durham-Barr Fiasco.
Throughout the Emailgate investigation, McCabe showed the same wrongheaded mindset you saw from others on the team.
On page 207 he claims great indignation because in an interview Obama answered a question about Emailgate that he didn’t believe it was criminal. The real outrage is that this unpredicated boondoggle was opened in the first place-as even by Comey’s own admission it was unlikely to ever lead to a conviction.
CF: Chapter Without a Subject.
Every email we recovered from all these different processes was reviewed to make an initial determination as to whether we thought it contained material that could be classified. Once that was done, the material we thought might be classified was sorted out by owner. Some of it belonged to the FBI, some to the CIA, some to the NSA, some to State, some to others. We then farmed all that material out to its origins—called its classification authority—and said, Please review and let us know if any of this stuff is classified.”
Pg 176
It just sounds like a fishing expedition-you have no basis to think something is there but it ‘could be’, or ‘might be.’
McCabe talked a little about a sort of low intensity conflict between the FBI and DOJ that bubbled up at different points-usually those points where Comey yet again flagrantly and blasely violated basic DOJ rules and policy-as well as yet again violated HRC’s civil liberties-though of course the FBI and MSM would likely find the very idea she had rights as extravagant.
In this case it was when DOJ lawyers had some concerns about the ground rules for the FBI’s interview of Cheryl Mills. There seems to be a suggestion somewhere that the lawyers’ concerns were unreasonable or nitpicky.
“A day or two before the interview, the team showed me the statement. They said they were afraid to tell Justice they wanted to read it. They thought Justice would go off the deep end and force them to spend the next two weeks changing periods to commas and “happys” to “glads.” I saw their point, and I took their side. FBI agents know how to do interviews—know how to build rapport and have a conversation. FBI agents do not need to confer with lawyers to clear the language they intend to use when they introduce themselves to a witness. But that’s how pedantic Justice had gotten. Overwrought review, constant comment, six more meetings convened to converse about conversing. At the same time, the Midyear team was starting to overread Justice’s overreading, spinning it up into suspicion: Why are they doing this to us? Are they trying to slow us down?”
Pg 180
I mean where to start? First of all, Trumpland the FBI was worried about being slowed down?! They were the ones who had been dragging it out for seven months after the meetings in late December 2015 early January 2016 that admitted they were unlikely to be able to prove intent-of course, that was always obvious which is why it should never have been opened in the first place but-details I guess…
And it’s not a question of whether the FBI knows how to do an interview but whether they know how to do it within the boundaries of the law-in retrospect seeing how the fishing expedition called Emailgate was run the answer is clearly they did not. Not when the target was Hillary Clinton THAT WOMAN they’d been pursuing for 23 years. McCabe trivializes DOJ;s concerns here as about nitpicking over words but it’s about the law-as trivial as Team Emailgate saw such niceities. People have rights even if you’re investigating them even if their name is Hillary Clinton.
Just do it, I told the agents—just read the statement. Get it done. If you feel you need to tell the witness you might have to talk to her again, it’s your interview, you’re conducting it, tell the witness what you need her to know.”
Pg 181
Just do it says Andy “Nike” McCabe proving that it wasn’t only James Comey who on occasion likes to play the cowboy. Indeed, you could argue that here he shows a flash of the Andy McCabe who leaked about the Clinton Foundation to WSJ a few days after the Comey Letter-once again underscoring that it’s reasonable to doubt McCabe was ever going to be the hero to save the day, save us from Comey’s reckless nonsense. But McCabe had some of his own. In that WSJ CF leak, McCabe portrayed himself as he does here as bucking the DOJ on behalf of the Hillary haters over at GOPland the FBI.
“So they did, and brought the interview to a screeching halt before it even started. Mills and her attorney had to leave the room and take a break. Consultation. Attorney came back, yelled at Justice: What is this? They all survived. Got through the interview. But the Justice team was so angry that the FBI team had done this, the next week we all had to have a follow-up meeting so everyone could air their grievances and apologize. That’s how fraught this thing was now. That’s how much pressure had built up on this case. At every step, everyone was aware that everything that happened could have potentially huge implications for God knew what.”
Ibid
It’s interesting that McCabe seems not to notice that this actually vindicated DOJ’s approach. Again his attitude here sort of foreshadows his CF leak. He acts as if the DOJ is guilty of meddling when in point of fact there are actually laws, rules and precedents that must be followed no matter how inconvenient the Republicans over at the FBI very well feel. McCabe was not only completely wrong in the CF leak he was wrong on the substance of his dispute with DOJ-they had every right to call him out on violating policy. If anything the complaint is they were not nearly strong enough. This at least in part may have been due to Loretta Lynch’s own preference to avoid conflict at any cost.
FN: So McCabe himself says in this book and on this it rings true:
“Loretta Lynch is gracious and considerate. She comports herself in a way that is controlled at all times. She speaks in the measured tones of an NPR broadcast: positive but not peppy, concerned but not angry. I never went into a meeting with her afraid of what I was going to hear. Edges, though, are useful for a leader. It’s okay for a leader to have limits that others do not want to test. That can be motivating. Lynch seemed to loathe conflict. Oftentimes she and her people would have little to say in the President’s Daily Brief. We had a run of very intense counterterrorism events in 2016 and 2017 when Lynch was attorney general, and I don’t remember her asking many specific questions. Sometimes I wondered if she spent so much time reading and so little talking in those briefings because she wanted to avoid the possibility of any friction or dispute.”
Pg 126
As we see in Chapter Why the Comey Letter, IG report rightly calls out both Lynch and Sally Yates for their failure to reign in Comey and Friends more forcefully-though clearly seeing Comey and McCabe’s attitude they would have had their hands full-but this is hardly a reason not to so reign them in-quite the contrary!
End FN
Regarding FBI and DOJ butting heads, McCabe then says this:
The Midyear conflict between Justice and the Bureau went deeper than tactics. It was grounded in a difference between their natures.
Ibid
To the contrary I’d argue more fundamentally it was about parties-the GOPFBI was investigating the Democrats that was the rub.
Overall then, McCabe’s role in Emailgate is a mixed bag-which makes him better than James Comey who wasn’t a mixed bag rather he was all bad. While Comey was the GOAT of Emailgate-and we don’t mean the greatest but rather the opposite, McCabe was something of a mixed bag-part goat part possible heroic though seeing his attitude even regarding the Mills issue you certainly have every right to be quite skeptical about him as well.
But then there was his role in Russian Collusion which again was a mixed bag at best.
When he was promoted to Comey’s job after Comey’s-illegitimate, and criminal firing-you can certainly argue McCabe was an upgrade though far from ideal-still this is the FBI so he’s probably about as good as you could imagine at Trumpland. He quite arguably would have been better than Wray to boot-almost certain of that, couldn’t have been worse…
This despite his not terribly impressive record regarding Russian Interference and Collusion prior to the 2016 election as The Center for American Progress documents.
The FBI Botched the Russia Investigation in 2016 – Center for American Progress Action
“The Horowitz report documents how the FBI intentionally kept an extremely close hold on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, employing a slow, timid, and ultimately limited counterintelligence approach.16 Such caution and sensitivity is standard practice, especially given that the investigation involved a presidential candidate’s campaign during an election season.”
“FBI officials Page and Strzok discussed this concern over text message in August 2016. When they cited an “insurance policy,”17 they were discussing whether the agency should act with greater urgency to lay the groundwork for continued investigation in the event that Trump won and was, in fact, beholden to Russia. In her first public television interview, Page explained, “The ‘insurance policy’ was an analogy. It’s like an insurance policy when you are 40. You don’t expect to die when you are 40. But you still have an insurance policy.”18 In other words, the point of ramping up the investigation was not to weaponize it against Trump but to lay a foundation for mitigating the threat to national security if he won the presidency.”
“However, the FBI ultimately chose not to intensify the investigation. Then-Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe told the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) that the FBI wanted “to keep our inquiry as quiet as we could.”19 McCabe gave the team contradictory instructions: “Get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible, but with a light footprint.” The FBI ended up erring strongly on the side of caution.”
Indeed, Emptywheel also discusses Trumpland the FBI’s failure to ramp up the Russia investigation and notes that Strozk lost the argument to investigate aggressively in real time-as the interference-and collusion-were happening.
Because this is an IG Report on the Hillary investigation and not an IG Report on the Russia investigation, it does not explain the import of this answer from Strzok, explaining his insurance policy text.
In a text message exchange on August 15, 2016, Strzok told Page, “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40….”
[snip]
Strzok provided a lengthy explanation for this text message. In substance, Strzok told us that he did not remember the specific conversation, but that it likely was part of a discussion about how to handle a variety of allegations of “collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the government of Russia.” As part of this discussion, the team debated how aggressive to be and whether to use overt investigative methods. Given that Clinton was the “prohibitive favorite” to win, Strzok said the reference in his text message to an “insurance policy” reflected his conclusion that the FBI should investigate the allegations thoroughly right away, as if Trump were going to win. Strzok stated that Clinton’s position in the polls did not ultimately impact the investigative decisions that were made in the Russia matter.
“In the inevitable IG report on the Russia investigation, this passage will be followed with analysis of what the outcome of this debate was, whether to use overt investigative methods or not. It will show that Strzok lost that debate.”
Like CAP, EW notes that the slowness of the FBI to take-in many cases normal-investigative steps materially hurt the investigation:
“Moreover, there’s additional evidence the FBI didn’t take overt steps, particularly with those still tied to Trump’s campaign. It wasn’t until some time after February 16, 2017 — literally six months after that text — that FBI subpoenaed George Papadopoulos’ call records, a move FBI could have taken at any time with a “relevance” standard. That delay meant that Papadopoulos hid the existence of his entire communication history with Ivan Timofeev until after his two interviews (and tried to hide it entirely by deleting his Facebook account).”
In this post, I showed that, given that they didn’t know about Ivan Timofeev until after his interviews, they could not even have started pursuing a warrant until after the first interview, at best (and didn’t know about the existence communications over a Section 702 provider with Timofeev until after both). In this post, I suggested that it looked like the FBI first obtained a preservation order for the device GSA had on him on March 9, 21 days after his second interview.
Since then two details have come out. First, this Peter Strzok/Lisa Page SMS text highlighted by Matt Tait suggests that as late as June 6, 2017, the Special Counsel’s office was still debating whether searching Section 702 presented a litigation risk (meaning Trump’s buddies are getting far more protection than the rest of us might be).
FN: Again they don’t call it Trumpland for nothing
Then there’s a point that Eric Swalwell made in Monday’s hearing debating whether or not to reveal the Schiff memo. In response to Michael Turner’s suggestion that there was no evidence of “collusion” between Trump and Russia, Swalwell pointed out that only after the FBI challenged Trump aide claims did the Bureau find evidence to support a conspiracy.
George Papadopoulos I think is the canary in the coal mine. He was interviewed January 27, 2017, by FBI. He lied about his contacts over in London with the professor. He was interviewed again in February, and he lied. Only when the FBI showed the willingness to subpoena his Skype and Facebook logs did he come around 6 months later.
This makes it clear that the FBI had not even obtained call records from Papadopoulos (via an NSL or a subpoena) before the second interview, the standard for which is really low.
Again, this shows that, at least during that phase of the investigation, the FBI was moving very conservatively.
As for all the Coffee Boy’s Storm and Drang over the idea that Stefan Halper spied on me! EW points out that this was actually less intrusive than normal procedure.
“And, as noted, even several weeks after Robert Mueller took over the investigation, the team was still debating whether they could do what FBI otherwise does at an assessment level, which is to search 702 data in the FBI’s custody. As I’ve noted, the use of lifetime Republican Stefan Halper to ask Papadopoulos questions (the FBI can use informants at the assessment level) rather than collecting actual call records not only seems to have been an effort to use least intrusive means possible to chase down leads, but it also badly delayed the discovery of key details about Russia’s attempts to curry favor with Trump aides.
“If Peter Strzok argued in August that the FBI should be far more aggressive investigating suspected assets infiltrating the Trump campaign to prevent the possibility that a Manchurian candidate might take over the country, he lost that debate, and continued to lose it for the almost the entirety of the time he was involved in the investigation, which according to the IG Report came on July 28, the day after IG Michael Horowitz informed Rod Rosenstein and Mueller about his texts with Lisa Page.”
Speaking of Malcolm Nance-I’m speaking of him now!-it sure was convenient for all those pro Trump agents at the FBI to find those texts at such an opportune time-a leading voice for a more aggressive investigation was sidelined and sullied-not based on any facts that showed he’d done anything wrong but through the usual baseless innuendo of both the GOP co-conspirators and the Savvy MSMers.
But if Strozk lost the fight over the investigation to those who wanted a light footprint a leader for the lighter footprint was Andy McCabe as CAP documented as we saw above.
This is why while he was an improvement over Comey he was far from optimal. When he took over the FBI interim Director in May, 2017 and by extension the Russia investigation ironically Trump had someone new in charge of his investigation who’d been rather gentle with him hitherto ironically enough. Maybe McCabe wouldn’t agree with Trump that everyone at the FBI hated Comey but McCabe had kept much of the pressure off-thanks to McCabe Trump was under less pressure than he otherwise might have been.
FN: In speaking of pressure here I’m thinking of what Trump said to the Russians in the Oval the morning after he fired Comey-that after firing Comey ‘this takes the pressure off.’ McCabe himself hadn’t applied so much pressure on him either despite Trump’s scapegoating of him.
Nevertheless, despite having said all of this, McCabe was not only preferrable to Comey but it would have been preferrable to have kept him over Christopher “Bridgegate” Wray. As we saw in Chapter Adam Schiff, under Wray the FBI simply stopped briefing HSPCI on the counterintelligence part of the Russia investigation and still to this day has not been forthcoming as to why this is.
OTOH it goes without saying Strozk would have been preferrable to McCabe but no way could he ever be considered-again, every FBI Director has been a Republican-Wray is a Republican in all but name. Again he was Chris Christie’s Bridgegate lawyer and simply stopped breifing HSPCI on the counterintel on Russia without ever even deeming to explain himself, beyond which he’s shown a clear pattern of being hyperresponsive to demands and requests of the GOP co-conspirators and hyper nonresponsive to those from the Democrats. Again EW was only kidding but I would choose Jeannie Rhee to run the FBI any day of the week and twice on Sundays-even if you buy the argument she’s a “partisan Democrat” then-it’s about time after what is now 115 years and counting of partisan Republican Directors.
But let’s be clear-there are no heroes here. I’m not saying there are no heroes in the metaphysical sense that some say this-that as flawed human beings no one is congenitally capable of being a hero… Just that there were no heroes at the FBI during Comey’s Emailgate fiasco or in its aftermath-very much including Lisa Page and Peter Strozk. Jeannie Rhee could be a hero if she were put in the right position-which is why I’d-again-take her as FBI Director any day of the week and twice on Sunday-if that made all the FBI’s GOP hacks quit feature not bug.
Indeed, CAP makes this point.
“Just more than one year after special counsel Robert Mueller released his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, the country remains confused about what happened.”
“Mueller’s report is arguably the most damning document ever written about a sitting president, identifying numerous instances of obstruction of justice and clear collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia.1 Yet deliberate efforts by the president and U.S. Attorney General William Barr to mislead the public, House Democrats’ reticence to impeach Trump, and Mueller’s decision not to render a “traditional prosecutorial judgment” left the public unsure of what Mueller actually uncovered.2 Mueller’s report also left people who were closely following the investigation underwhelmed by the lack of new information as well as by the many questions and topics the report failed to answer or address.”
“Many were expecting more. The Mueller report failed to meet these expectations not because there was no more information to find, but because the FBI botched the Russia investigation in 2016.”
FN: Certainly as someone who did follow it very closely I was expecting more. It’s striking how incurious Mueller was on many matters-Andrew Weisman describes Mueller as warning him: ”don’t play with your food’ and while Weisman no doubt thought this reflected well on Mueller my gloss on it is rather different. Indeed, let’s start with the fact that while McCabe complained about the allegedly unreasonable lawyers with Clinton’ top aide Cheryl Mills above, and there was much storm and stress from the GOP co-conspirators and the Savvy MSMers that Clinton herself had lawyers at her interview Trump had no in person interview. Then you get to the fact that Jason Wilson’s name is nowhere in the report-just like Congress seems to never have heard his name, indeed no reporter has ever discussed him after that orphan Daily Beast interview.
You mean our largest domestic intelligence agency which has never had a Democratic Director in its now 115 years, which in the 1990s under Louis Freeh demanded Bill Clinton submit a urine sample in the middle of a dinner party, which considers HRC the anti Christ and was nicknamed Trumpland in 2016 botched the investigation into Donald Trump, the Republican Presidential nominee?
FN: Chapter Very Republican Place
I didn’t see that coming. Just like I was similarly shocked to learn that the FBI failed to adequately prepare against January 6-despite having ample foreknowledge or that post 2016 many FBI offices across the country were not investigating it adequately and that many have expressed sympathy for the insurrectionists.
FN: Chapter Barr-Durham Fiasco.
In the year since the report’s release, it has become clear that the Mueller investigation was hamstrung from the start. Far from revealing a “witch hunt” against Trump, reviews of the investigation reveal that there was barely a hunt at all. Simply put, the FBI failed in its core mission to protect and defend the United States.
“Trump’s attacks on the intelligence community have in some ways immunized the FBI from public scrutiny of its actual failings. Trump’s critics have rallied behind officials such as Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page—hardworking career officials whom the president has viciously attacked merely for trying to do their jobs.3 Yet in doing so, the president’s critics helped give credence to the myth that the FBI was vigorously pursuing him in 2016.”
Indeed, it’s even immunized major GOATs-as in the opposite of the greatest ever-like Comey and Chris Wray.