Fired FBI deputy director and discredited Democrat hack Andrew McCabe may soon be prosecuted for authorizing the leaking of sensitive information to the media and then lying over and over again to investigators about it, according to reports.
The news comes after House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told Fox News on Sunday that “there was no official intelligence that was used to start this investigation” of Trump’s aides. If Nunes is right, this means an official investigation was launched against a presidential campaign even though there was no official information supporting it. This is a naked abuse of power, the stuff of banana republics, something Trump defenders have been saying for some time.
McCabe’s is a tale of a slippery political operator manipulating the media for partisan purposes and then using the media to try to cover up his wrongdoing after the wrong candidate – Donald Trump – ended up winning the election. It is also about the shameless efforts of Democrats and their Deep State allies to rig the election, and when that failed, to sabotage and bring down the presidency of the candidate who despite their best efforts defeated Hillary Clinton.
McCabe was acting director of the FBI from May 9, 2017, when President Trump fired then-director James B. Comey, through Aug. 2, 2017, when new director Christopher Wray took over. McCabe was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions on March 16 of this year. He has reportedly raised more than $500,000 for his legal defense by way of a GoFundMe campaign.
The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia is now considering whether to move forward with a prosecution after Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz transmitted a long-awaited report to Congress last week savaging McCabe.
President Trump ran a victory lap on Twitter after reading the IG’s report, correctly nailing McCabe for dishonesty while at the same time overstating former FBI Director James Comey’s influence over McCabe:
DOJ just issued the McCabe report – which is a total disaster. He LIED! LIED! LIED! McCabe was totally controlled by Comey – McCabe is Comey!! No collusion, all made up by this den of thieves and lowlifes!
A redacted version of the report was made public. It states repeatedly that McCabe committed prosecutable offenses when he “lacked candor” while discussing the leaks and the handling of investigations with then-FBI Director James Comey and investigators.
Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy said although the 35-page report “powerfully illustrates” that “McCabe has it coming,” what McCabe lied about is the more important story.
For example, McCabe “lied about leaking a conversation in which the Obama Justice Department pressured the FBI to stand down on an investigation of the Clinton Foundation.”
A fortnight before Election Day in 2016, McCarthy writes, McCabe was shocked that a Wall Street Journal article questioned his fitness to head up a probe of Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
That’s because McCabe’s wife was a Democrat candidate in 2015 for the Virginia State Senate. Her campaign received around $675,000 – “an eye-popping amount for a state senate campaign,” in McCarthy’s words – from the state’s Democratic Party and a political action committee of then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D). McAuliffe is a longtime crony of the Clintons. Was the payment a kind of veiled bribe to McCabe? We may never know.
McCabe should never have been allowed anywhere near any politically sensitive investigations related to Hillary Clinton’s email adventures because he is a partisan Democrat. Even if McCabe’s actions had been completely above board, he should have passed on the case because his involvement in it created the appearance of impropriety. Justice must not only be done – it must be seen to be done, the adage goes. Americans won’t trust the system if they believe it is corrupt.
Of the article coming out in the dying days of the 2016 campaign, McCarthy writes:
The reporter on the story, Devlin Barrett (then with the Journal, now at the Washington Post), soon had questions for the Bureau for a follow-up he was working on: Back in July, according to Barrett’s sources, McCabe had instructed agents to refrain from making overt moves that could alert the public that Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ nominee, was yet again on the FBI’s radar — this time, owing to a probe of the Clinton Foundation.
Barrett’s call came in just as the Bureau was dealing with the controversy over Director James Comey’s reopening of the Clinton emails investigation. Comey convened a meeting of the FBI’s leadership team to discuss reviewing emails, some of which were classified, that had been found on the private computers of Clinton aide Huma Abedin and her estranged husband Anthony Weiner (who had been “sexting” with a minor). Because he was out of town, McCabe telephoned in to the meeting. He was humiliated, however, when Comey instructed him to get off the call. The director and his chief counsel were concerned about the perception of pro-Clinton bias.
An angry McCabe contacted his special counsel, Lisa Page, and her paramour FBI agent Peter Strzok, who are now best known for exchanging thousands of brazenly partisan, anti-Trump text messages. McCabe directed Page to throw cold water on Barrett’s article by leaking, McCarthy writes.
Horowitz’s report details how McCabe lied about the leak he ordered, hid his role by deflecting blame, and then after eventually acknowledging his role in the affair, lied about Comey, claiming the then-FBI chief knew of and approved his illicit activities.
“McCabe lies to his boss, he lies to his fellow agents, and he lies — under oath — in interviews conducted by the FBI’s internal investigators and the IG,” McCarthy writes.
“Even when he changes his story, McCabe lies about the lies.”
Charles Lipson argues that McCabe may soon pursue “a scorched-earth policy against his FBI superior, James Comey, who started the investigation of his deputy.” McCabe is “dangerous” because he faces “serious jail time and thinks he has been betrayed.”
Flipping McCabe should be so easy “[e]ven a prosecutor fresh out of law school ought to be able” to get him to testify against his former boss.
And it may be McCabe’s only way of staying out of prison.
This article by Matthew Vadum first appeared April 25, 2018, at FrontPageMag.