McCabe Should Sweat Prison, Not Pension
You can stop looking for Attorney General Jeff Sessions on the back of a milk carton. Confronted by overwhelming evidence in a report by the DOJ's Office of Inspector General (OIG) and a rare recommendation from the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), he has fired liar and leaker Andrew McCabe in a move that can only be a harbinger for indictments to come that go beyond these offenses against honor and the law.
In his response to his firing, McCabe lied again, ignoring his multitude of offenses only to whine about persecution by a vindictive President Trump:
For the last year and a half, my family and I have been the targets of an unrelenting assault on our reputation and my service to this country. Articles too numerous to count have leveled every sort of false, defamatory and degrading allegation against us. The President's tweets have amplified and exacerbated it all. He called for my firing. He called for me to be stripped of my pension after more than 20 years of service. And all along we have said nothing, never wanting to distract from the mission of the FBI by addressing the lies told and repeated about us.
Never mind the "lack of candor" (aka lies) the OPR and OIG have charged you with, or the self-serving leaking of confidential information to a reporter. Come to think of it, your former boss, James Comey, did the same thing. He taught you well.
You can whine that the "OIG investigation has focused on information I chose to share with a reporter," but the fact is that you had no right to make that choice any more than James Comey did when he leaked his version of a private Oval Office meeting to the press via an intermediary.
You can object to "being portrayed in the media over and over as a political partisan," yet that is what you were, from the meeting in "Andy's office," where the official FBI resistance to President Trump was organized and discussed, to having Friend of Hillary Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe arrange massive donations to your wife's political campaign even as you were supposed to be overseeing the Hillary email investigation.
Chutzpah has a new poster child in Andrew McCabe, who, after aiding and abetting Hillary Clinton's exoneration and collusion with the Russians, committing a fraud upon the FISA court to aid one political party over another, and being an active participant in the attempted deep state coup against Donald Trump, dared to ask he not be fired so he can retain a cushy pension:
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on Thursday made a final pitch to the Justice Department about why he should not be fired just 72 hours before his retirement, leaving Attorney General Jeff Sessions to decide the matter with a deadline rapidly approaching[.] ...
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of McCabe, "We do think that it is well documented that he has had some very troubling behavior and by most accounts a bad actor," though she said the decision on his future was up to Sessions[.] ...
The accusations against McCabe stem from a yet-to-be released report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who has for months been probing broad allegations of misconduct surrounding the FBI's handling of the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state[.] ...
Horowitz also has been examining McCabe's involvement in authorizing the disclosure of information for a Wall Street Journal report and allegations he mislead [sic] investigators who asked about the matter[.] ...
Trump has suggested in the past that McCabe was biased in favor of Clinton, pointing out that McCabe's wife, who ran as a Democrat for a seat in the Virginia legislature, received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from the political action committee of Terry McAuliffe, then the state's governor and a noted Clinton ally.
McCabe is an accomplished Deep State liar and co-conspirator who took his leave in January to avoid demotion and preserve his pension. That came after current FBI director Christopher Wray reviewed the House Intelligence Committee memo in which his activities in the vendetta against Trump involving the now infamous Christopher Steele dossier were prominently featured. He deserved to be fired and denied his pension, and he should be forced to pay for legal help to avoid incarceration on his own dime.
Former FBI national spokesman John Iannarelli argues that the firing of McCabe is eminently justified:
Although "there [are] many things that can be forgiven" within the nation's pre-eminent law enforcement agency, a "lack of candor" and "not telling the truth" are "unforgivable," former FBI national spokesperson John Iannarelli said Thursday night on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle."
Iannarelli was reacting to reports that the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) recommended to Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week that he fire former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe before the latter's pension begins Sunday.
The Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) concluded that McCabe, who oversaw the investigation into 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's private email server, reportedly misled investigators during their investigation into his conduct.
Wait a minute – isn't "lying to investigators" what former national security advisor Michael Flynn was charged with, a crime he pleaded guilty to? But lying to investigators may be only the tip of McCabe's criminal iceberg. As the meeting in his office suggests, McCabe could not have been ignorant of the efforts by lead investigator Peter Strzok, his paramour Lisa Page, and the likes of Bruce and Nellie Ohr and others to keep Hillary Clinton out of jail after colluding with the Russians and Donald Trump out of the White House.
At one point, McCabe had to reschedule his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, with the Justice Department telling the network that it was due to a "routine scheduling error." More likely, it was due to the need for everyone to get his story straight as the details of the fix that was in for Hillary Clinton are being...er, "unmasked" and the details of the attempted coup against President Trump bubble to the surface from the depths of the swamp:
Fox News was told by those familiar with the matter that the intelligence committee is suspicious of the purported scheduling error. One source said they believe the schedule issue arose after Fox News' report Monday night on Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr.
Ohr was recently demoted from one of his two senior posts. Fox News reported that Ohr's wife, Nellie Ohr, worked through last fall for Fusion GPS, which was behind the anti-Trump dossier[.] ...
"McCabe has an Ohr problem," one congressional source said.
McCabe has many problems, and is at the heart of the criminal conspiracy to protect Hillary and unseat President Trump. The "Ohr problem" relates to Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie and their connections to Fusion GPS, the firm paid indirectly by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to work with former British spy Christopher Steele and Russian sources to put together a fake dossier likely used by the FBI to fraudulently obtain FISA surveillance warrants on Team Trump:
Fox reported on Monday that Nellie Ohr worked last year for Fusion GPS, which commissioned the dossier. The company investigated Donald Trump on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC
Bruce Ohr, a high-ranking Justice Department official, also has connections to both Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, the former British spy hired by Fusion to conduct the investigation of Trump.
Ohr met prior to the election with Steele. He met several weeks after Trump's victory with Simpson. It remains unclear what Ohr discussed during those meetings.
Another McCabe problem relates to an FBI lead investigator in the Clinton probe, agent Peter Strzok, whose text messages to his FBI mistress, Lisa Page, lend both intent and motive to the Clinton cover-up and the animus toward President Trump. A letter from Homeland Security Committee chairman Sen. Rob Johnson, R-Wis., shows McCabe's role in the altering and drafting of the James Comey memo exonerating Hillary Clinton:
The letter reveals specific edits made by senior FBI agents when Deputy Director Andrew McCabe exchanged drafts of Comey's statement with senior FBI officials, including Peter Strzok, Strzok's direct supervisor, E.W. "Bill" Priestap, Jonathan Moffa, and an unnamed employee from the Office of General Counsel (identified by Newsweek as DOJ Deputy General Counsel Trisha Anderson) – in what was a coordinated conspiracy among top FBI brass to decriminalize Clinton's conduct by changing legal terms and phrases, omitting key information, and minimizing the role of the Intelligence Community in the email investigation. Doing so virtually assured that then-candidate Hillary Clinton would not be prosecuted.
McCabe was the ringleader of the damage control team trying to fudge the evidence of Hillary's crimes and soften the tone of Comey's exoneration memo so there would be fewer questions when the fix was revealed. McCabe was also aware of Strzok's fears of a Trump victory and determination to undermine it:
Out of all the damning, politically charged anti-Trump text messages released, one text from Strzok to Page on August 15, 2016, raised the most suspicion. It referred to a conversation and a meeting that had just taken place in "Andy's" (widely believed to be Deputy FBI Dir. Andrew McCabe's) office. According to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Strzok had texted this: "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office [break] ... that there's no way he gets elected. I want to believe that[.] ... But I'm afraid we can't take that risk[.] ... We have to do something about it."
If McCabe had any honor, he would have dismissed Strzok instantly and revealed the corruption his words exhibited. But McCabe was part of the corrupt criminal enterprise.
McCabe was in a key position overseeing the investigation of Hillary Clinton's scandalous and treasonous handling of classified emails on her private server, a position from which he could assist FBI director James Comey in putting the fix in. As Judicial Watch notes:
Judicial Watch today released Justice Department records showing that FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe did not recuse himself from the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's unsecure, non-government email server until Tuesday, November 1, 2016, one week prior to the presidential election. The Clinton email probe was codenamed "Midyear Exam."
While working as Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office, McCabe controlled resources supporting the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email scandal. An October 2016 internal FBI memorandum labeled "Overview of Deputy Director McCabe's Recusal Related To Dr. McCabe's Campaign for Political Office," details talking points about McCabe's various potential conflicts of interest, including the FBI's investigation of Clinton's illicit server, which officially began in July 2015:
While at [Washington Field Office] did Mr. McCabe provide assistance to the Clinton investigation?
After the referral was made, FBI Headquarters asked the Washington Field Office for personnel to conduct a special investigation. McCabe was serving as [Assistant Director] and provided personnel resources. However, he was not told what the investigation was about. In February 2016 McCabe became Deputy Director and began overseeing the Clinton investigation.
The Overview also shows if asked whether McCabe played any role in his wife's campaign, the scripted response was: "No. Then-[Assistant Director] McCabe played no role, attended no events and did not participate in fundraising or support of any kind."
Of course, that statement was a lie. McCabe is a Democratic loyalist whose wife campaigned for state office in Virginia as a Democrat with heavy Democratic financial support. In fact, McCabe's efforts on behalf of his wife were the subject of multiple federal probes:
Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, a central player in the Russia election case, is the focus of three separate federal administrative inquiries into allegations about his behavior as a senior bureau executive, according to documents and interviews.
The allegations being reviewed range from sexual discrimination to improper political activity, the documents show[.] ...
Circa reported Monday that former supervisory special agent Robyn Gritz, a decorated counterterrorism agent, has filed a sexual discrimination and retaliation complaint that names McCabe and other top FBI officials[.] ...
Gritz also filed a complaint against McCabe with the main federal whistleblower agency in April, alleging social media photos she found show he campaigned for his wife's Virginia state senate race in violation of the Hatch Act[.] ...
In addition, the Justice Department Inspector General is investigating allegations from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, that McCabe may not have properly disclosed campaign payments to his wife on his ethics report and should have recused himself from Hillary Clinton's email case.
McCabe is probably not a happy camper right now and certainly has no love lost for Michael Flynn, who was a potential witness on behalf of one of McCabe's accusers. As PJ Media reports:
In 2014, Flynn, then director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, personally intervened on behalf of Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz by writing a letter vouching for her on his official Pentagon stationary [sic] and offering to testify on her behalf. He also supported her case in a radio interview in 2015[.] ...
The FBI, for its part, claimed that Gritz had become "underperforming, tardy to work, insurbordinate, possibly mentally ill or emotional and deserving of a poor performance review." ...
Flynn argued just the opposite in his May 9, 2014 letter: "SSA Gritz was well-known, liked and respected in the military counter-terrorism community for her energy, commitment and professional capacity, and over the years worked in several interagency groups on counter-terrorism targeting initiatives."
McCabe did not disclose Democratic contributions to his wife's campaign in Virginia in financial disclosure forms, donations that raise questions about both his integrity and objectivity. As Fox News Politics reports:
The records, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe left the box blank for wife Dr. Jill McCabe's salary, as a doctor with Commonwealth Emergency Physicians. And there is no documentation of the hundreds of thousands of campaign funds she received in her unsuccessful 2015 Virginia state Senate race.
As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, Clinton confidant and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe urged McCabe's wife to run for statewide office shortly after news reports were published that Hillary Clinton used a private email server and address for all her government business while serving as secretary of State.
For the reporting period of October through November 2015, McCabe's campaign filings show she received $467,500 from Common Good VA, a political action committee controlled by McAuliffe, as well as an additional $292,500 from a second Democratic PAC.
Connect those dots: Democrats and others looking for Russians hiding under Republican beds. A deputy FBI director, Andrew McCabe, campaigning for his wife, who receives huge sums of money from the Democratic Party of Clinton political ally Terry McAuliffe. Flynn, character witness on behalf of one of McCabe's accusers, becoming a target of an FBI probe in which his identity is illegally unmasked. Was Mrs. McCabe's subsidy a quid for a future quo? Was Flynn's unmasking McCabe's revenge?
McCabe's firing is a well deserved outcome. But he shouldn't sweat the loss of his pension. Federal prison inmates get free room and board.
Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor's Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.