We just got a preview of how the media are going to spin the crimes committed by the Russia Hoax coup plotters. Andrew McCabe, the man who ran the FBI after James Comey was fired by President Trump, clearly committed a crime during the 2016 election by lying to the FBI, claiming that he had not leaked information about the Bureau’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails to the Wall Street Journal. Lying to the FBI is the crime that was used to destroy the life of General Michael Flynn, even though his "lie" was not intentional, as the agents who conducted the interview believed he had committed no crime.

The first clue that the progressive spin machine is operating is that the Daily Beast posted this article late in the afternoon on New Year’s Eve, a time when it would get little attention, but also getting it on the record, for future reference – for example, at sentencing time.

The second clue is the title, which presents McCabe in as positive a light as can be mustered for a liar: he’s remorseful and already apologized: “FBI Agents: McCabe Apologized for Changing His Story on Leak.”

Betsey Swan and Sam Brodey write:

Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe faced scorching criticism and potential criminal prosecution for changing his story about a conversation he had with a Wall Street Journal reporter. Now newly released interview transcripts show McCabe expressed remorse to internal FBI investigators when they pressed him on the about-face. 

Here is how the lie happened:

The apparent leak drew scrutiny from the bureau’s internal investigation team, which interviewed McCabe on May 9, 2017, the day President Donald Trump fired James Comey from his post as FBI director. The agents interviewed him as part of an investigation regarding a different media leak to the online publication Circa, and also asked him about the Journal story. 

In that interview, McCabe said he did not know how the Journal story came to be.

On second thought, McCabe decided to fess up. Cynics might assume he realized that evidence showed his guilt, that he was toast

But a few months later, his story changed after he reviewed his answer. 

On Aug. 18, FBI officials met with McCabe in an attempt to work through what they said was “conflicting information” they had gathered about the possible leak to the Journal.

“I need to know from you,” an agent said he told McCabe in a sit-down meeting, “did you authorize this article? Were you aware of it? Did you authorize it?” 

McCabe then looked at the story he had reviewed months earlier. 

The FBI investigator described his response this way: “And as nice as could be, he said, yep. Yep I did.”

The investigator then said that “things had suddenly changed 180 degrees with this.” The interviewers stopped taking notes on what McCabe was saying, and the agent indicated their view of McCabe had changed: He was no longer a witness or victim. “In our business, we stop and say, look, now we’re getting into an area for due process,” the agent said.

But the agent said that the team did not raise that line of thought with McCabe. “I was very careful to say… with all due respect, this is what you told us. This has caused us some kind of, you know, sidetracking here now with some information other people have told us.”

McCabe’s lie caused the Bureau to waste its resources investigating false leads. The agent told this to McCabe, who ought to have understood it:

“I remember saying to him, at, I said, sir, you understand that we’ve put a lot of work into this based on what you told us,” the agent said. “I mean, and I even said, long nights and weekends working on this, trying to find out who amongst your ranks of trusted people would, would do something like that. And he kind of just looked down, kind of nodded, and said yeah I’m sorry.”

 It's mercy of the court time.

But only in the final paragraph of the piece does it acknowledge that McCabe’s lie was a crime. Even then, the writers turn it into a rebuke of President Trump:

Lying to federal investigators is a crime, and the Inspector General referred its investigation of McCabe to the U.S. Attorney’s office for Washington D.C. McCabe has not been charged with any crime––despite numerous Trump tweets calling him a criminal. 

Yes, John Durham’s criminal investigation is not yet issuing public indictments.  That doesn’t mean that President Trump is wrong. It does mean that the Daily Beast is spinning on McCabe’s behalf.

The media have been helping McCabe all along. Below, he is seen being welcomed onto The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last February:

YouTube screen grab

Hat tip: Roger Luchs