347 Could Andy McCabe Have Prevented the Comey Letter?

🧠 Section: The “Promise to Congress” That Wasn’t

After reviewing what Comey told the Republican Congress on September 28, 2016—exactly one month before Chaffetz tweeted out the Comey Letter—it’s not clear he actually “promised Congress” anything.

And even if he had, it wouldn’t matter. “Promising Congress” is not a legal defense. It’s not DOJ policy. It’s not a thing.

In fact, what Comey told Devin Nunes, Louie Gohmert, and Friends was closer to a promise not to reopen the investigation. His words: “No findings at that point would come near to prompting such a measure.”

That’s not hedging. That’s a near-vow to stay quiet.

So what changed?

The elephant in the room—pun intended—is that Nunes and his fellow GOP chairmen already knew about Huma’s emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop-get it? Republican Chairman aka elephant in the room?!  Add Lisa Page’s texts, which suggest contact with Chaffetz before October 28, and you start to wonder about the communications between Comey’s Emailgate team and the Republican Congress.

McCabe only heard about the “burning issue” on October 26. That leaves just two days before the letter dropped.

Did Comey write the letter because he “promised” Congress on September 28?

Or did the Republican Congress later persuade him that he’d made a promise he hadn’t intended?

Was Comey’s “promise” retroactive?

Lamar Smith’s aside about “new information” is especially notable in retrospect. It’s plausible—if not probable—that he had something specific in mind when he asked that question.

It’s hard not to see that moment as Smith and his co-conspirators planting the seeds of a historic October Surprise.

The Comey Letter belongs in the same pantheon as Nixon’s sabotage of LBJ’s peace talks in 1968 and Reagan-Bush’s hostage delay in 1980.

Roger Stone’s reference to Iran Collusion in his own October 28 chapter wasn’t accidental. It was a nod to the lineage.

🧠 Section: McCabe Wasn’t Allowed to Attend His Own Meeting

When we get to the subject of Comey barring McCabe from the Comey Letter meeting, it doesn’t pass the laugh test.

But then again, neither does “I promised Congress.” Nor “reveal or conceal.” Nor “very bad vs cataclysmic.” Nor “500-year flood.” To name just a few.

Back to McCabe.

In The Threat, he recounts what happened after the meeting. Comey called him and 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.”

McCabe later learned that Comey was uncomfortable with the insinuations stirred up by the Wall Street Journal article.

He was about to steer the FBI into the boiling rapids of one of the most acrimonious presidential campaigns in history.

In his October 28 letter to FBI employees, 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.”

We’ve discussed this particular Comey canard elsewhere—see Why the Comey Letter—but it bears repeating.

This would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad. And insulting.

Comey’s logic is riddled with contradictions. He imagines McCabe’s wife running for office a year earlier as a Democrat is disqualifying—even though McCabe himself is a lifelong Republican.

Comey donated to both of Obama’s opponents, yet somehow believes he wouldn’t make anyone uncomfortable.

My presumption, as discussed in Chapter: Why, is that Comey didn’t want McCabe in the room because he knew McCabe would oppose the letter.

I’m skeptical that James Baker decided McCabe needed to be recused on his own initiative. More likely, Comey nudged Baker to suggest it—so it wouldn’t look like Comey had an agenda.

But he did. As we saw throughout Emailgate, once Comey got a bad idea in his head, nothing was going to stop him from making it happen.

He prefers the soft sell. He wants bad decisions to look like consensus—reached through open debate—even when he’s stacked the deck.

🧠 Section: Too Collegial for the Moment

McCabe, collegial to a fault, reveals he disagreed with Comey’s decision.

“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.”

He believed they should have gotten the warrant, reviewed the material, and determined whether anything was new. Even just de-duplicating the emails would have been a start.

He argues that this wouldn’t have violated the FBI’s assurance to Congress that the investigation was closed.

Personally, I think McCabe is a little too collegiate, given the stakes.

Even as he criticizes the decision, he takes pains to assure us he doesn’t believe anything nefarious was involved.

My words, not his: Comey’s decision was bad, very bad, no good, terrible, not to say plain awful.

If McCabe spoke like this, we’d all be calling him a hero.

He continues:

“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 not even convinced it was the riskier choice. Far from it.

Despite his disagreement, McCabe takes a charitable view of Comey:

“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?

This is where McCabe starts to lose me. It’s why we have to be skeptical that he was the unequivocal hero of the story. That it makes sense to him is honestly disappointing.

This is the problem with institutionalists. You might think that because they’re insiders, they offer the best insight into their institutions. And in some ways, they do. They understand the machinery. But in another sense, they’re just too close. They’re simply too close.

🧠 Section: Too Close to the Machinery

Another thing to keep in mind about institutionalists: thanks to specialization, they’re often trained to stay in their lane. Many top intelligence officials have their news and information filtered. We assume they must know the real story. But in some ways, they know less. They’re told to ignore certain sources. They’re conditioned to defer to hierarchy.

McCabe was treated badly by the institution he served for decades. Starting with Comey’s recusal—if you can call it that—in the letter he rammed through. Yet McCabe remains charitable. You’d think someone in his position might be disgruntled. After all, he was 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.” —The Threat, pg. 257

But often, that’s not how it goes. Why?

Because to repudiate the institution—even after it burns you—can feel like repudiating yourself.

McCabe’s legacy, like Lisa Page’s, is a mixed bag. His treatment by Trump, Wray, and Sessions was disgraceful. As we saw in Chapter: Sessions, McCabe was investigating Sessions when the unreconstructed segregationist from Alabama helped throw him out—48 hours before his pension kicked in.

But McCabe isn’t innocent either.

He leaked the existence of the Clinton Foundation investigation. And Page was the one he sent to do it—directly to the Wall Street Journal.

FN: See Emptywheel’s post on McCabe’s pension and the broader implications.

In a sense, you could argue he did the crime. The trouble is, the punishment was wildly disproportionate. The process was politicized. And as Horowitz noted, there were over 100 other leakers—see Chapter: Durham-Barr Fiasco.

🧠 Section: The Fishing Expedition

Throughout the Emailgate investigation, McCabe showed the same wrongheaded mindset as others on the team.

On page 207, he expresses indignation that Obama publicly said he didn’t believe Clinton’s email practices were criminal. But the real outrage is that this unpredicated boondoggle was opened in the first place. Even Comey admitted it was unlikely to lead to a conviction.

CF: Chapter: Without a Subject

McCabe describes the classification review process:

“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… 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.” —The Threat, pg. 176

It reads like a fishing expedition. No basis to think something was there—but it “could be,” or “might be.”

🧠 Section: DOJ vs FBI—And the Cowboy Mentality

McCabe also describes a low-intensity conflict between DOJ and the FBI. It bubbled up whenever Comey flagrantly violated DOJ policy—or Clinton’s civil liberties.

In one case, DOJ lawyers raised concerns about the ground rules for interviewing Cheryl Mills. McCabe dismisses their concerns as nitpicky.

“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.’… FBI agents do not need to confer with lawyers to clear the language they intend to use when they introduce themselves to a witness.” —The Threat, pg. 180

Where to start?

First of all, Trumpland at the FBI was worried about being slowed down? They were the ones dragging it out for seven months—after admitting in early 2016 they couldn’t prove intent. That was always obvious. Which is why it should never have been opened in the first place.

And it’s not about whether FBI agents “know how to do an interview.” It’s about whether they know how to do it within the boundaries of the law.

In retrospect, the answer is clearly no. Not when the target was Hillary Clinton—that woman they’d been pursuing for 23 years.

McCabe trivializes DOJ’s concerns as nitpicking over words. But it was about the law. About rights. Even if the target is Hillary Clinton.

“Just do it,” I told the agents. “Just read the statement. Get it done.” —The Threat, pg. 181

Just do it, says Andy “Nike” McCabe.

Turns out it wasn’t only James Comey who liked to play cowboy.

You could argue this is the same McCabe who leaked about the Clinton Foundation just days after the Comey Letter. Once again, it’s reasonable to doubt McCabe was ever going to be the hero who saved the day.

Because McCabe had some reckless nonsense of his own.

In that WSJ leak, he portrayed himself as bucking DOJ on behalf of the Hillary-haters over at GOPland the FBI.

🧠 Section: McCabe’s Cowboy Moment—and the Clinton Foundation Leak

“Just do it,” says Andy “Nike” McCabe.

Turns out it wasn’t only James Comey who liked to play cowboy.

You could argue this moment foreshadows McCabe’s leak about the Clinton Foundation to the Wall Street Journal—just days after the Comey Letter. Once again, it’s reasonable to doubt McCabe was ever going to be the hero who saved the day.

Because McCabe had some reckless nonsense of his own.

In that WSJ leak, he portrayed himself as bucking DOJ on behalf of the Hillary-haters over at GOPland the FBI. And here, in his account of the Cheryl Mills interview, he shows the same posture.

“So they did, and brought the interview to a screeching halt before it even started… 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.” —The Threat

McCabe seems not to notice that this actually vindicated DOJ’s approach.

His attitude here mirrors the logic of his Clinton Foundation leak. He acts as if DOJ is guilty of meddling—when in fact, they were enforcing rules, laws, and precedent.

McCabe wasn’t just wrong in leaking the CF investigation. He was wrong on the substance of his dispute with DOJ. They had every right to call him out. If anything, they weren’t strong enough.

That may have been due to Loretta Lynch’s own aversion to conflict.

FN: McCabe himself says this—and on this, it rings true: “Loretta Lynch is gracious and considerate… She seemed to loathe conflict… 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.” —The Threat, pg. 126

As we saw in Chapter: Why the Comey Letter, the IG rightly calls out both Lynch and Sally Yates for failing to rein in Comey and Friends. Clearly, they would have had their hands full. But that’s not a reason not to act. It’s a reason to act more forcefully.

🧠 Section: The GOPFBI vs DOJ—and the Mills Interview

McCabe writes:

“The Midyear conflict between Justice and the Bureau went deeper than tactics. It was grounded in a difference between their natures.” —The Threat

To the contrary, it was grounded in politics.

The GOPFBI was investigating the Democrats. That was the rub.

McCabe’s role in Emailgate is a mixed bag. Which makes him better than James Comey—who wasn’t a mixed bag, but all bad.

Comey was the GOAT of Emailgate—and not in the good way.

McCabe was part goat, part maybe-hero. But even in the Mills episode, you have every right to be skeptical.

🧠 Section: Russian Collusion—A Mixed Bag Again

Then there’s McCabe’s role in Russian Collusion. Again, a mixed bag.

When he was promoted to Comey’s job after Comey’s illegitimate, criminal firing, you could argue McCabe was an upgrade. Far from ideal—but this was Trumpland. He was probably as good as you could hope for.

Almost certainly better than Wray. Couldn’t have been worse.

Still, his record on Russian Interference and Collusion prior to the 2016 election was unimpressive.

As the Center for American Progress documents:

“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… 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.”

Page and Strzok understood the stakes. They debated whether to act more aggressively. They knew Trump might win. They knew the threat was real.

“The ‘insurance policy’ was an analogy… You don’t expect to die when you’re 40. But you still have an insurance policy.” —Lisa Page

The point wasn’t to weaponize the investigation. It was to lay a foundation in case Trump won—and was beholden to Russia.

But the FBI chose not to intensify the investigation.

McCabe wanted to keep it quiet. He gave contradictory instructions. And the agency erred on the side of caution.

🧠 Section: Strzok Lost the Argument

Emptywheel also documents how Trumpland the FBI failed to ramp up the Russia investigation.

Strzok lost the argument to investigate aggressively in real time—while the interference and collusion were happening.

“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…’”

Strzok later explained that the “insurance policy” was about investigating thoroughly, as if Trump were going to win.

He wanted to act with urgency. But he lost that debate.

McCabe’s caution won out. And the FBI’s failure to act decisively in real time remains one of the most consequential errors of the 2016 election.

🧠 Section: The FBI’s Light Footprint—and McCabe’s Role in It

Like CAP, Emptywheel notes that the FBI’s slowness to take even routine investigative steps materially hurt the Russia investigation.

“It wasn’t until some time after February 16, 2017—literally six months after that text—that FBI subpoenaed George Papadopoulos’ call records… 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).”

They didn’t know about Timofeev until after the interviews. They couldn’t pursue a warrant until then. And they didn’t obtain a preservation order for Papadopoulos’ device until March 9—three weeks after his second interview.

Even as late as June 2017, the Special Counsel’s office was still debating whether searching Section 702 data posed a litigation risk.

FN: Again, they don’t call it Trumpland for nothing.

Eric Swalwell made this point during the debate over releasing the Schiff memo. He noted that only after the FBI challenged Trump aide claims did they find evidence of conspiracy.

Papadopoulos was interviewed twice. He lied both times. Only when the FBI subpoenaed his Skype and Facebook logs—six months later—did he come around.

This shows that, at least during that phase, the FBI was moving very conservatively.

🧠 Section: Stefan Halper and the Least Intrusive Means

As for all the Coffee Boy’s storm and drang over Stefan Halper—Emptywheel points out that using Halper was actually less intrusive than normal procedure.

“Even several weeks after Mueller took over, the team was still debating whether they could do what FBI otherwise does at an assessment level, which is to search 702 data… The use of lifetime Republican Stefan Halper to ask Papadopoulos questions… seems to have been an effort to use least intrusive means possible… but it also badly delayed the discovery of key details.”

Strzok wanted to investigate aggressively. He lost that debate.

And he kept losing it.

According to the IG Report, the Russia investigation officially began on July 28—the day after Horowitz informed Rosenstein and Mueller about Strzok’s texts with Lisa Page.

🧠 Section: Sidelining the Aggressive Voices

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.

Strzok was sidelined and sullied. Not because of any misconduct. But through the usual baseless innuendo—amplified by GOP co-conspirators and the Savvy MSMers.

And if Strzok lost the fight over how aggressively to investigate, the leader of the lighter footprint was Andy McCabe.

As CAP documented, McCabe gave contradictory instructions: “Get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible, but with a light footprint.”

This is why, while McCabe was an improvement over Comey, he was far from optimal.

When he took over as interim FBI Director in May 2017, Trump had someone new in charge of his investigation—someone who’d been rather gentle with him up to that point.

McCabe hadn’t applied much pressure. Despite Trump’s scapegoating, McCabe had kept things quiet.

FN: In speaking of pressure, I’m thinking of what Trump said to the Russians in the Oval Office the morning after firing Comey: “This takes the pressure off.” McCabe hadn’t applied much pressure either.

🧠 Section: Wray, Strzok, and the Absence of Heroes

Still, McCabe was preferable to Christopher “Bridgegate” Wray.

As we saw in Chapter: Adam Schiff, under Wray the FBI stopped briefing HPSCI on the counterintelligence side of the Russia investigation—and still hasn’t explained why.

Strzok would have been preferable to McCabe. But he was never a viable candidate. Every FBI Director has been a Republican. Wray is a Republican in all but name.

He was Chris Christie’s Bridgegate lawyer. He stopped briefing Congress. He’s hyperresponsive to GOP demands and hyper nonresponsive to Democrats.

Emptywheel was only kidding, but I’d choose Jeannie Rhee to run the FBI any day of the week—and twice on Sundays.

Even if you buy the argument that she’s a “partisan Democrat,” then good. It’s about time. After 115 years of partisan Republican Directors, the imbalance is indefensible.

🧠 Section: No Heroes in the Machinery

Let’s be clear: there are no heroes here.

I don’t mean in the metaphysical sense—that no human is capable of heroism. I mean specifically: there were no heroes at the FBI during Comey’s Emailgate fiasco or in its aftermath.

Not Lisa Page. Not Peter Strzok.

Jeannie Rhee could be a hero—if given the right position. Which is why I’d take her as FBI Director any day. If that made all the GOP hacks quit? Feature, not bug.

CAP makes this point clearly:

“Mueller’s report is arguably the most damning document ever written about a sitting president… Yet deliberate efforts by Trump and Barr to mislead the public, House Democrats’ reticence to impeach, and Mueller’s refusal to render a traditional prosecutorial judgment left the public unsure of what Mueller actually uncovered.”

“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: As someone who followed it closely, I was expecting more. It’s striking how incurious Mueller was. Andrew Weissmann describes Mueller warning him: “Don’t play with your food.” Weissmann thought this reflected well on Mueller. My gloss is different.

Start with the fact that Clinton had lawyers present at her interview—and the GOP threw a fit. Trump had no in-person interview at all.

Jason Wilson’s name is nowhere in the report. Congress never mentioned him. No reporter followed up after that orphan Daily Beast interview.

You mean our largest domestic intelligence agency—which has never had a Democratic Director in 115 years, which demanded Bill Clinton submit a urine sample during a dinner party, which considers Hillary Clinton the anti-Christ, and was nicknamed Trumpland in 2016—botched the investigation into Donald Trump?

FN: See Chapter: Very Republican Place

I didn’t see that coming.

Just like I was shocked to learn the FBI failed to adequately prepare for January 6—despite ample foreknowledge. Or that many offices weren’t investigating it seriously. Or that some agents expressed sympathy for the insurrectionists.

FN: See Chapter: Barr-Durham Fiasco

🧠 Chapter Close: The Myth of the Hunt

In the year since the Mueller report’s release, it has become clear that the investigation was hamstrung from the start.

Far from exposing a “witch hunt,” postmortems reveal 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. Yet in doing so, the president’s critics helped give credence to the myth that the FBI was vigorously pursuing him in 2016.” —Center for American Progress

And that myth has done real damage.

It’s even immunized the major GOATs—as in the opposite of greatest ever—like James Comey and Chris Wray.

The FBI wasn’t the deep state. It was the shallow state—timid, compromised, and structurally incapable of confronting the threat.

McCabe was better than Comey. Strzok was better than McCabe. Rhee would’ve been better than all of them.

But let’s be clear: there were no heroes in the machinery. Only missed chances. Only sabotaged truth.

CODA: And years later we’re still dealing with the aftereffects.