Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Firing of FBI’s Andrew McCabe A Hit at the Swamp

Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, was fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions the day before his announced retirement from the FBI would have taken effect. McCabe was fired for violating FBI policy and then lying about it to FBI investigators, as revealed by a report by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General. McCabe’s many allies in the mainstream media and the Washington “swamp” created an uproar because he was a key member of the “Deep State” conspiracy at the FBI which has been trying to undermine Trump’s presidency.

McCabe served as former FBI Director James Comey’s deputy and protégé. He took over the FBI as acting director after Comey was fired by President Trump last May and was briefly considered by Trump to serve as Comey’s permanent replacement.

Since July 2017, Trump has been calling for McCabe to be fired because he had a serious conflict of interest while he was running the FBI’s investigation of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server. McCabe’s wife accepted more than half a million dollars in 2015 from then-Governor Terry McAuliffe, a close Clinton ally, when she ran for state office in Virginia. Trump said during the presidential campaign that he had a clear duty to recuse himself from supervising the Clinton investigation.

McCabe was involved in many aspects of the FBI’s investigations into Hillary Clinton and allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians.

McCabe helped to formulate Comey’s June 2016 announcement which exonerated Mrs. Clinton, despite clear evidence, cited by Comey, that she was guilty of criminal negligence in mishandling classified documents. Emails have emerged indicating that McCabe was aware of efforts by FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page to come up with an “insurance policy” against the possibility that Trump might be elected president.

According to the often-cited memo by Rep. Devin Nunes, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, McCabe testified that the application he approved to the FISA court for secret surveillance on Trump campaign aide Carter Page was based on the unverified Russian allegations in the notorious Steele dossier, that had been bought and paid for by the Clinton campaign. The FISA court demands the highest level of proof in order to issue such a warrant, because it operates in secret, yet McCabe and the FBI concealed the fact that the dossier was paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democrat National Committee, and that even its author could not personally vouch for its accuracy. Even though his boss, FBI Director Comey, called the dossier “salacious and unverified,” McCabe made no effort to inform the FISA court of its problems.

MCCABE ACCUSED OF PROFESSIONAL MISCONDUCT

Despite all that, McCabe was fired because of professional misconduct in another Clinton-related investigation that had been uncovered by the impartial Justice Department’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz.

“After an extensive and fair investigation and according to Department of Justice procedure, the Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) provided its report on allegations of misconduct by Andrew McCabe to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR),” Sessions said in a statement that was issued at 10 P.M, on March 16. “The FBI’s OPR then reviewed the report and underlying documents and issued a disciplinary proposal recommending the dismissal of Mr. McCabe. Both the OIG and FBI OPR reports concluded that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor, including under oath, on multiple occasions.”

Sessions said that based on the findings and recommendations of the Justice Department’s senior career officials, “I have terminated the employment of Andrew McCabe effective immediately.”

The statement touched off a fresh firestorm of complaints that Trump was waging war against everyone who has been pursuing the many investigations which have shadowed his presidency and that the firing of McCabe was a prelude to the firing of Special Counsel Robert Mueller

The Trump camp denied that the president intends to fire Mueller but argued that Mueller’s failure to uncover any credible evidence that Trump or members of his campaign colluded with the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton means that it is time to shut down Mueller’s investigation.

WHY MCCABE DESERVED TO BE FIRED

Very little media attention was paid to the substance of the Inspector General’s findings. His draft report, whose contents are still secret, said that McCabe deliberately misled FBI investigators about his role in ordering FBI spokesman Michael Kortan and lawyer Lisa Page to speak to Wall Street Journal reporter Devlin Barrett about McCabe’s involvement in the FBI’s public corruption investigation into the Clinton Family Charitable Foundation. The leaks were the basis of an October 20, 2016, Wall Street Journal article which refuted allegations that McCabe had tried to hinder the investigation. He claimed that he was resisting Department of Justice prosecutors who were seeking to close it down.

By ordering the disclosure of information to the media from an ongoing criminal investigation, McCabe violated a longstanding FBI protocol not to reveal any information about an ongoing criminal investigation.

McCabe insists that he did nothing wrong, and that the information that he ordered passed to the Wall Street Journal was intended to clear up a false impression that the FBI was bowing to political pressure from the Obama administration to prematurely shut down an investigation into the Clinton Family Foundation. McCabe also said that his boss Comey approved the leak. Yet in congressional testimony, under oath, Comey said that he never leaked and never permitted any of his underlings to leak such information to the media.

However, it was McCabe’s attempt to cover up his violation of protocol by lying about the leak to investigators that was viewed by the OIG and the OPR as a far more serious infraction of the FBI’s professional ethics.

TRUMP FEELS VINDICATED

Two hours after Sessions announced that McCabe had been fired, President Trump issued a tweet saying, “Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard-working men and women of the FBI [and] a great day for Democracy. Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!”

Even though the independence of Inspector General Horowitz, who was appointed by President Obama, is widely respected in Washington, McCabe and his mainstream media amen corner insist that Trump engineered the firing as part of his campaign to discredit the investigations of the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Trump clearly felt vindicated by the independent findings of the Inspector General that McCabe richly deserved to be fired for his unprofessional actions.

Trump tweeted: “The Fake News is beside themselves that McCabe was caught, called out and fired. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars was given to [McCabe’s] wife’s campaign by Crooked [Hillary’s] friend, Terry McAuliffe, who was also under investigation? How many lies? How many leaks? Comey knew it all, and much more!”

Trump cited the latest findings to back up his claim that he has been unfairly accused. “As the House Intelligence Committee has concluded, there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump Campaign. As many are now finding out, however, there was tremendous leaking, lying and corruption at the highest levels of the FBI, Justice and State,” the president tweeted.

He added, “The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime. It was based on fraudulent activities and a Fake Dossier paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC, and improperly used in [a] FISA court for surveillance of my campaign. Witch Hunt!”

MCCABE CLAIMS HE IS THE VICTIM

Shortly after he was fired, McCabe released a statement declaring: “Here is the reality: I am being singled out and treated this way because of the role I played, the actions I took, and the events I witnessed in the aftermath of the firing of James Comey. The OIG’s focus on me and this report became a part of an unprecedented effort by the Administration, driven by the President himself, to remove me from my position, destroy my reputation, and possibly strip me of a pension that I worked 21 years to earn. The accelerated release of the report, and the punitive actions taken in response, make sense only when viewed through this lens.”

Portraying himself as a martyr who was being punished for trying to defend the independence of the FBI, McCabe said, “The big picture is a tale of what can happen when law enforcement is politicized, public servants are attacked, and people who are supposed to cherish and protect our institutions become instruments for damaging those institutions and people.”

MCCABE THREATENS TO TESTIFY AGAINST TRUMP

McCabe claimed the real reason he was fired was because he “would corroborate” Comey’s accusations that President Trump improperly tried to interfere with the FBI’s Russia meddling investigation. McCabe said that like Comey, he had written memos describing at least three private conversations he had with Trump.

During an Oval Office meeting last May, Trump is said to have asked McCabe whom he voted for in the 2016 presidential election, and then complained about the donations McCabe’s wife received from the Clinton camp. It has been reported that McCabe’s memos are now in the hands of the Mueller investigation.

McCabe added that his firing was “part of this Administration’s ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation, which continue to this day. Their persistence in this campaign only highlights the importance of the Special Counsel’s work.”

MCCABE IS THE NEW POSTER CHILD FOR DEMOCRATS

McCabe’s accusation was music to the ears of frustrated Democrats who hope that Mueller’s investigation will provide them with a basis for the impeachment of President Trump. In an op-ed in USA Today, Democrat Senator Mark Warner of Virginia echoed McCabe’s claim that by firing him and James Comey, “the president has demonstrated a willingness to attack any career law enforcement official who he believes may pose a threat to him.”

Warner repeated earlier calls by other senators and congressmen, including a few Republicans, for the passage of legislation which would prevent Trump from firing Mueller. Then Warner went a step further, issuing a thinly veiled threat of impeachment.

“We must draw a red line. Passing legislation to protect the Mueller probe is a necessary start, but our nation’s elected officials must also summon the courage to challenge those in our ranks who would put partisan politics over truth, or who would put the president’s interests over the interests of justice.

“Congress must make clear to the president that firing the special counsel or interfering with his investigation by issuing pardons of essential witnesses, is unacceptable and would have immediate and significant consequences.

“In the United States of America, no one is above the law. Not even the president,” Warner concluded.

FORMER CIA DIRECTOR BRENNAN RANTS AGAINST TRUMP

Former CIA Director John Brennan, another diehard Obama and Clinton supporter, responded to McCabe’s firing with a blistering tweet directed at President Trump. Brennan wrote, “when the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history.” Brennan added that Trump “may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but (…) will not destroy America… America will triumph over you.”

Senator Rand Paul pushed back at Brennan’s harsh statement, declaring that he had no right to call Trump a “disgraced demagogue” because Brennan was guilty for spying on Americans while he was running the CIA. “This man had the power to search every American’s records without a warrant,” Paul said of Brennan. “What’s disgraceful is attacking the Bill of Rights and the freedom of every American.”

In 2013, Paul filibustered on the Senate floor to block a vote to confirm Brennan’s nomination as Obama’s CIA director, and demanded that Brennan declare his respect for the civil liberties of all Americans. Later, Paul joined a bipartisan call demanding Brennan’s removal as CIA chief after it was learned that the CIA was spying on staffers working for the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Former FBI Assistant Director James Kallstrom told Fox News host Maria Baritromo said that Brennan has no right to accuse anyone else of wrongdoing. Kallstrom said, “I think we have ample facts revealed to us during this last year and a half that high-ranking people throughout the government… had a plot to not have Hillary Clinton indicted so that she could remain the flawed candidate that she was.” He said that the “plot” to fix the 2016 election goes “right to the top” of the Obama administration, including Brennan and the president.

The former senior FBI official cited the incriminating text messages sent by Strzok as proof “they had a backup plan to frame Donald Trump” as a Russian agent. Kallstrom described the Mueller probe as “a total phony” and expressed his sympathy for Trump. “How would you feel… if someone had a phony scheme about you go on for months and months and months?” he asked.

Kallstrom also said that rank and file members of the FBI are happy that their organization’s internal watchdogs took the necessary action by recommending that McCabe be fired. “I think there’s a big sigh of relief and a good feeling about the fact that an organization in the FBI, recommended that he be fired, as opposed to them being mute and having someone else make that recommendation.

“And they’re just gnawing at the bit to actually get involved in a real investigation, not a phony investigation like Jim Comey conducted,” Kallstrom added.

MCCABE IS GETTING OFF EASY

Senator Paul said that if the findings of the Inspector General’s objective investigation are accurate, McCabe deserved to be fired for what he did. “They basically have said that McCabe leaked classified documents. That’s illegal, but then he also lied about leaking classified documents. And so you know the FBI are sticklers on this and they don’t tolerate lying from their agents. And so, if all that’s true, I see no way that he could continue in his office, and that punishment is appropriate.”

Paul compared the relatively light punishment that McCabe was receiving for lying to FBI investigators to the plea deal of a year in jail that was forced upon Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, for roughly the same crime, misleading an FBI investigator.

Senator Paul said, “I’m afraid that the FBI has been terribly damaged by all of this [politicization] really starting with James Comey.” He added that the other “people at the FBI that turn out to be very biased, [such as] McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page. . . went over the top on Trump,” misusing their “enormous power” as members of law enforcement.

George Washington University Law School professor Jonathan Turley notes that McCabe has not denied the Inspector General’s charge that he repeatedly lied to FBI investigators, which is a serious federal crime. Yet McCabe seems to be more worried about losing part of his pension than the possibility that he could be sent to prison. Turley concludes that McCabe apparently believes he is a member of a privileged class of powerful people in Washington “where everyone’s equal but some people are more equal than others,” and that he, like Hillary Clinton, need never fear being sent to jail for their wrongdoings.

Other members of the Obama administration’s national security team who spoke out in defense of McCabe on the night he was fired included the former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. But notably absent from his defenders that night was McCabe’s former boss and mentor, James Comey.

Mob Boss

Conservative commentator Mark Levin compared Comey to a “mob boss” and accused him of directing the FBI conspiracy intended to discredit Trump. “All this was happening under him. Comey is a known leaker, he confessed [to it] because he didn’t want to commit perjury. Now he is caught because his former deputy McCabe testified that Comey knew everything he was leaking while Comey testified that he didn’t. . . The problem is, we don’t have a federal grand jury to investigate [McCabe] or Comey,” Levin told Sean Hannity on Fox News.

Levin also challenged the claim that Mueller has changed the focus of his investigation from Trump collusion with the Russians to Russian interference in the 2016 election. If that were so, Levin argued, Mueller would be putting Comey, McCabe and Mrs. Clinton in front of a grand jury.

“Here’s the big story,” Levin concluded. “The Obama administration did more to interfere with our election than the loathsome Vladimir Putin.”

TRUMP CHANGES HIS STRATEGY

Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with Mueller’s investigation. He feels justified in questioning why it is still ongoing despite its failure to produce any evidence of collusion with Russia, after a year and a half of intensive investigation. In fact, recent findings have uncovered far more numerous and serious instances of wrongdoing by Trump’s accusers than by Trump or members of his camp.

While Republicans in the House and Senate successfully redirected their investigations to uncover the illegal and unfair tactics employed by Trump’s accusers, Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation is still pressuring Trump loyalists such as Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort to turn against the president in order to save their own skins after they got caught lying to investigators or for crimes they may have committed that were totally unrelated to the presidential campaign.

Most recently, Mueller directly targeted Trump by issuing a subpoena for the records of his business, the Trump Organization. Last July, Trump had told the New York Times that Mueller would be crossing a “red line” if he started looking into his family’s finances.

On the advice of his personal lawyers, Trump and his team have been careful to cooperate fully with every request by the Mueller team. The lawyers had expected that Mueller would have decided on his own by this time to shut down the investigation because of its lack of results. But now that Mueller has crossed Trump’s “red line,” and shows no sign of concluding the investigation any time soon, Trump has changed his strategy, openly questioning the need for Mueller’s investigation to continue.

TRUMP HAS HAD ENOUGH OF MUELLER

A few hours after McCabe was fired, John Dowd, one of President Trump’s private lawyers, said, “I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt dossier.”

The statement prompted a storm of controversy. Dowd quickly issued a second statement declaring that he had expressed his own opinion and was not speaking directly on behalf of the president.

Marc Short, Trump’s legislative director, repeated Dowd’s message in a televised news interview. “We have cooperated in every single way, every single paper they’ve asked for, every single interview. There’s a growing frustration that after a year and millions and millions of dollars spent on this, there remains no evidence of collusion with Russia,” Short said.

Trump then weighed in personally, issuing a tweet which challenged the one-sided political bias of Mueller’s investigative team. “Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans? Another Dem [was] recently added… does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!”

Several hours later, Trump issued another tweet declaring that, “the Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime.”

For months, Trump has been saying that allegations he conspired with the Russians to influence the 2016 election were a “hoax” and that he is the target of a politically inspired “witch hunt,” but this was the first time that Trump referred to Mueller by name in his complaining tweets.

TWO GOP SENATORS PANIC OVER TRUMP’S RESPONSE

Trump’s critics spoke out against his latest tweets which they saw as an implied threat that Trump was ready to fire Mueller. They warned that such a move would trigger bipartisan criticism that could lead to a constitutional crisis.

Senator Lindsey Graham said on CNN that “If [Trump] tried to do that, that would be the beginning of the end of his presidency, because we’re a rule-of-law nation.” Graham then endorsed the way that the Special Counsel is conducting his investigation. “When it comes to Mr. Mueller, he is following the evidence where it takes him, and I think it’s very important he be allowed to do his job without interference, and there are many Republicans who share my view,” Graham said.

Senator Jeff Flake, who never misses an opportunity to bash President Trump, said that the American people would see the firing of Mueller “as a massive red line that can’t be crossed.” Never Trumper Flake added that he hoped Trump’s advisers would convince him not to fire the Special Counsel because, “we have confidence in Mueller.”

Congressman Trey Gowdy, who has been in the forefront of Republicans defending Trump, said, “I would just counsel the president [if you don’t follow my advice], it’s going to be a very, very long, bad 2018, and it’s going to be distracting from other things that he wants to do and he was elected do. Let it [the Mueller investigation] play out its course. If you’ve done nothing wrong, you should want the investigation to be as fulsome and thorough as possible.”

MCCABE HAS ONLY HIMSELF TO BLAME

Gowdy added that he had no problem with the firing of McCabe. “Andy McCabe has undercut his credibility all by himself. He didn’t need any help doing that. . .

“It was the FBI who said he made an unauthorized disclosure and then lied about it. That wasn’t President Trump. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t crazy House Republicans. It was his own fellow FBI agents that said he leaked and then lied about it. So, if he’s got credibility issues, he needs look no further than himself,” Gowdy concluded.

Former FBI national spokesman John Iannarelli confirmed in an interview with Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham that the FBI considers a “lack of candor” and “not telling the truth” to its investigators to be “unforgivable” sins by its employees, and justification for their firing.

DON’T EXPECT ANOTHER “SATURDAY NIGHT MASSACRE”

In an attempt to quell growing concerns that Trump’s latest tweets were laying the groundwork to the firing of Mueller, the president’s private lawyer, Ty Cobb, said in a statement, “In response to media speculation and related questions being posed to the administration, the White House yet again confirms that the president is not considering or discussing the firing of the special counsel, Robert Mueller.”

Trump and his political advisors are well aware of the uproar which would result if Trump were to engineer the firing of Mueller without the kind of impartial evidence of wrongdoing which justified McCabe’s firing.

Democrats have been hoping that Trump would make the mistake of re-enacting the so-called “Saturday night massacre.” On October 20, 1973, President Nixon’s attorney general, Elliot Richardson, and deputy attorney general, William Ruckelshaus, resigned rather than carry out Nixon’s order to fire Watergate independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Nixon’s order to fire Cox, which was ultimately carried out by then-Solicitor General Robert Bork, was widely condemned at the time as an abuse of presidential power. It helped pave the way for Nixon’s forced resignation in disgrace on August 8, 1974, rather than face the disgrace of removal from office by impeachment.

In the current case, Attorney General Jeff Sessions cannot be ordered by Trump to fire Mueller because he recused himself from the Russian collusion investigation early last year. Mueller and his investigation are under the jurisdiction of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed him last May. Rosenstein has said as recently as last week that he sees no reason to fire Mueller or close down his investigation, making it much more difficult for Trump to take any direct action against Mueller.

Instead of trying to fire Mueller, it appears that Trump is using the same tactics against him that were employed by President Bill Clinton in 1998 to discredit special Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr. He led the investigation which resulted in Clinton’s impeachment trial.

The major difference between the two cases is that, while Clinton admitted to having lied to a federal judge, Mueller has yet to uncover any evidence to support the charge that Trump colluded with the Russians or committed any other offense serious enough to justify his impeachment.

THE DEFINITIVE REPORT ON THE FBI AND THE 2016 CAMPAIGN

Inspector General Horowitz launched his comprehensive review of the FBI’s handling of the politically sensitive investigations it undertook during the last presidential campaign in January 2017. He has been looking into the unusual way the FBI handled the criminal probe of Mrs. Clinton’s email server, investigating allegations of collusion by the Trump campaign with the Russians, seeking the source of leaks of non-public information by DOJ or FBI officials from those investigations to the media, as well as the deliberate effort by DOJ and FBI officials to mislead a FISA court.

The final version of the Inspector General’s report is expected to be released by the end of May. Many expect it to condemn the way FBI director Comey handled the Clinton email investigation which had a significant impact on the outcome of the election. Others expect the report to reveal more details about how FBI officials misused the unverified accusations in the Steele dossier to advance their anti-Trump agendas, as well as the sinister influence of Fusion GPS, which passed off the Clinton campaign’s fake opposition research against Trump as legitimate intelligence to the FBI and the mainstream media.

It is already clear that the events of the past two years have seriously compromised the reputation and credibility of the FBI and the Department of Justice. Hopefully, the recommendation by the Inspector General to fire Andrew McCabe is the first step towards a far-reaching rehabilitation of those vital law enforcement agencies.

MCCABE’S LAST MONTHS AT THE FBI

When FBI Director Comey was fired by Trump on May 9, 2017, McCabe, as Comey’s deputy, became the FBI’s acting director. Trump interviewed McCabe and briefly considered naming him as Comey’s permanent replacement. On August 2, 2017, Trump chose former Assistant Attorney General Christopher Wray for the position, and McCabe resumed his former duties as deputy director.

By that time, McCabe’s days at the FBI were already being numbered at the White House, which was well aware of the March timing for vetting his retirement pension. In December, Trump tweeted: “FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!”

In January, media reports said that Wray was coming under pressure from Attorney General Sessions to fire McCabe, which Wray initially resisted. But in the end, Wray decided not to include McCabe in his inner circle of FBI policymakers.

Some said that Wray decided to isolate McCabe after he saw the Nunes memo which documented McCabe’s role in misleading the FISA court, based upon the unverified allegations in the Steele dossier. Others say that Wray made up his mind about McCabe after being briefed on the Inspector General’s early findings. Whatever the reason, McCabe realized that his career at the FBI was effectively over. To preserve his dignity, in late January he announced his retirement, while applying his accumulated leave and vacation time to extend his employment in order to qualify for his full government pension on the day he turned 50, on March 18.

DESPERATION AT THE FINISH

At the time, everybody knew that the Inspector General’s report was coming, and that it would likely result in a number of firings of senior FBI and Department of Justice officials. McCabe claimed that the OIG report was deliberately rushed at the end in a vindictive effort to deny him his full pension. His lawyers also complained that they were not given sufficient notice of the charges and access to the evidence against him to defend their client and tell his side of the story before Sessions publicly fired him.

In fact, McCabe’s lawyer, Michael Bromwich, admitted that McCabe’s legal team was given access to an earlier draft of the Inspector General’s report late last month, and they were shown the final report recommending that McCabe be fired a full week before Sessions made the announcement.

McCabe made an all-out, last minute effort to lobby his friends in Washington to prevent his public humiliation. His plight was leaked to the anti-Trump media, which sought to portray his firing as a vindictive act by a vengeful president against a dedicated public servant. The day before Sessions announced the firing, McCabe spent four hours prowling the halls of the Justice Department, pleading his case to anyone willing to listen to him.

That same day, in response to a reporter’s question about McCabe’s fate, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was unsympathetic. She said, “We do think that it is well documented that he has had some very troubling behavior and [is] by most accounts a bad actor.”

MCCABE’S RAPID RISE

McCabe grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, graduated from Duke University and earned a law degree from Washington University in St. Louis. After spending three years in private law practice, he joined the FBI in 1996 and was assigned to its New York City Field Office.

McCabe did not spend much time doing typical FBI field work. He was quickly promoted to management posts in recognition of his administrative skills. He was assigned to manage high profile operations at the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, its National Security Branch and the Washington Field Office. He served as the Associate Deputy Director of the FBI, managing the agency’s personnel, budget, administration and infrastructure, before Comey appointed him to be the FBI’s Deputy Director on January 29, 2016.

DID MCCABE HOST THE PRO-CLINTON ANTI-TRUMP FBI CONSPIRACY?

Trump’s supporters have long believed that McCabe was a ringleader of the conspiracy by FBI and Justice Department officials to protect Hillary Clinton from criminal charges for mishandling classified emails. He was well positioned to do so. When he was the Assistant Director of the FBI, in charge of its Washington Field Office, McCabe was responsible for providing the resources to support the FBI’s Clinton email investigation. After McCabe was promoted to Deputy Director, he had direct oversight responsibility for the investigation from which he refused to recuse himself, despite his wife’s acceptance of large campaign contributions from the Clinton camp.

The FBI’s anti-Trump co-conspirators, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, said in an email exchange that the meeting at which a conversation was held to organize the FBI’s resistance to a Trump presidency on August 15, 2016, took place “in Andy’s office.” It has always been widely assumed that the email was referring to Andy McCabe’s office.

COLLUDING WITH FLYNN’S FEDERAL JUDGE

Most recently, it has emerged from emails that the FBI withheld from congressional investigators that Strzok and Page tried to hide their collusion with federal judge Rudolph Contreras by disguising it as an innocent social get-together with other friends from work. In the emails, Strzok expressed concern that Contreras might have to recuse himself from sitting on cases Strzok was investigating if they were seen meeting one-on-one.

Contreras was the judge who suddenly recused himself last year after accepting a guilty plea from former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn for lying to federal investigators. Strzok was one of the investigators that Flynn supposedly lied to.

It was never revealed why Judge Contreras recused himself from the Flynn case. A coincidence?

Could this be why the FBI was reluctant to turn over the incriminating Strzok emails to a congressional committee?

Contreras also might have been one of the federal judges on the secret FISA court who approved the FBI’s application for a search warrant on Carter Page, based, according to McCabe’s testimony, primarily upon Christopher Steele’s dossier.

McCabe also worked closely with Bruce Ohr, the Justice Department official whose wife worked for Fusion GPS. Ohr was also a longtime friend of Fusion GPS co-founder, Glenn Simpson, who hired Christopher Steele to write and promote the notorious Trump dossier on behalf of the Clinton campaign.

EXPOSING THE FBI’S HIDDEN EVIDENCE

The conservative watchdog organization Judicial Watch has long believed that McCabe was up to his neck in the effort to protect Hillary Clinton and discredit Donald Trump. It has been fighting in court for months to force the FBI to release the documents which might prove it.

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said that the FBI is in “cover-up mode,” and that the complaints by the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, that the FBI “is withholding material from us. . .” are well founded. Goodlatte has threatened to subpoena the agency if it does not turn over to his committee more than one million documents his committee has requested.

Fitton accuses the FBI of trying to block the probe into “what’s been going on with the FBI corruption as it relates to Hillary Clinton and the Russia collusion story.” It appears that what we now know McCabe did to violate the FBI’s ethical principles may only have been the tip of a much larger iceberg of wrongdoing.

McCabe may have violated the law by failing to list on his financial disclosure forms the Democrat campaign contributions that his wife received. He is also accused of violating the Hatch Act by actively participating in his wife’s campaign for office.

But it is more fitting and just for McCabe to be fired for lying to his FBI colleagues, whose professional reputation for strict political impartiality he has helped to undermine.

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