Last week FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was fired a couple of days before his twenty year retirement date, thereby depriving him of a substantial portion of his pension. Boy, what a kick in the pants for that guy.
Don’t know what he did to deserve kick in the pants? That puts you in good company with most Americans. (Some Fox viewers will think they know, but like most things they learned on Fox News, they will have gotten their facts completely wrong.)
So, this is part of the Trump administration’s frantic effort to prove that the FBI and the whole intelligence “apparatus” are out to get them. The FBI?
You mean the same FBI that handed the election to Trump on a silver platter?
You mean the same FBI that handed the election to Trump on a silver platter?
You mean the same FBI that handed the election to Trump on a silver platter?
You mean the same FBI that handed the election to Trump on a silver platter?
You mean that Federal Bureau of Investigation? The one that was led by James Comey before he got his ass handed to him for (a) failing to swear a loyalty oath to Trump, and (b) failing to drop the Russia collusion investigation?
How did the FBI deliver the election to Trump on a silver platter?
Although this is recent history, let’s just review how it came about that the FBI (through its former director, James Comey) delivered the election to Trump on a silver platter.
- While Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was investigated 13 times for her role in the Benghazi incident, in which three United States military contractors and the US Ambassador to Syria were killed.[1]
- During the investigations, it was discovered that Hillary Clinton maintained a private email server at home, on which she did state department business.
- Multiple investigations, including one conducted by the FBI, found that Clinton’s use of a private email server for public business was not criminal, although it was also not approved. It showed poor judgment and opened Clinton to the possibility that her server would be hacked.[2]
- FBI Director announced his findings that no charges should be filed against Clinton on July 5, 2016.[3]
- In the meantime, Anthony Weiner (who really turned out to be a dick), the husband of Huma Abedin, Clinton’s Chief-of-Staff at the State Department, was being investigated multiple times for “sexting” (which eventually landed him in prison).
- In September of 2016, pursuant to a news report, a new sexting investigation was opened against Weiner, resulting in the seizure of his phone and laptop.
- On his laptop investigators found some sensitive emails from Huma Abedin related to State Department business.
- On that basis, Comey re-opened his investigation on October 28, 2016, or eleven days before the November 8 election.
- Then, on November 6 (or two days before the election) Comey announced that his review had found nothing new, and he was closing the investigation again.
Needless to say, by the time Comey announced for a second time that nothing illegal had been found, the damage had been done.
And that, my friends, is how James Comey handed the election to Donald Trump on a silver platter.[4]
What did Andrew McCabe do to deserve his kick in the pants?
The Grand Old Party has been gunning for McCabe – even though he, like James Comey – is a registered Republican ever since he refused to kill the Russia investigation after Comey was fired.
Let’s acknowledge at the outset that there is massive amounts of evidence that the Trump administration colluded with the Russian government of Vladimir Putin.[5]
- Andrew McCabe became the Acting Director of the FBI on May 9, 2017 after James Comey was fired.
- On May 11, McCabe testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on the Russia investigation. During that testimony McCabe publicly contradicted President Trump that Comey had “lost the confidence of the FBI rank and file” (one of the many claims the Trump administration made after Comey was fired for doing his job).
- McCabe was not selected for the top job at the FBI when Trump chose the current director Christopher Wray instead. As part of the selection process Trump had (allegedly) asked McCabe whom he had voted for in the Presidential election.
- According to Republicans, McCabe was supposedly also part of an anti-Trump cabal that approved using the Steele dossier to help get a FISA warrant against Carter Page, a consultant to the Trump campaign, and a significant cog in the connection between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.[6]
- On January 29, 2018, after he was not selected for the top job, McCabe stepped down from his role as Deputy Director, with the intent of taking accrued leave until his formal departure on March 18, at which point he could get his full pension.
- On March 16, 2018, McCabe was fired, pursuant to a report by the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility.[7] He was allegedly fired for “his decision to allow FBI officials to give information about the Clinton Foundation investigation to the media and for misleading investigators about that decision.”
- This firing two days ahead of schedule prevented McCabe from received the full pension he would otherwise have been entitled to.[8]
So, I love it when Republicans suddenly become concerned about the mishandling of the Clinton investigation by the FBI. This is the same party, whose Presidential candidate literally goaded the Russians to hack into Hillary’s server and retrieve her “deleted” emails in order to disadvantage her politically.
Hypocrisy much?
BTW, if you were paying attention, you may have noticed that in all the Clinton emails disgorged by Wikileaks, there was nothing especially embarrassing in there. If anything, it portrayed Clinton as serious, not particularly tech savvy, and concerned about her staff.
But proving that no good deed goes unpunished, Trump – and believe me, this was personal – was sure to give Andrew McCabe a kick in his pants on the way out the door.
[1] Although Republicans tried mightily to prove it, it turned out that Hillary Clinton had no role in the aftermath of the incident, and was not involved in a coverup.
[2] Ironically, there is no evidence to prove that her server was hacked while she was Secretary of State.
[3] For details on what was and was not found against Clinton, check out this article from FactCheck.org. Of course, the Trump started the “lock her up” chants based on his false claims that Hillary must have been guilty of something.
[4] This was, of course, not the only reason that Clinton lost. There have been plenty of persuasive arguments that her own inept campaign had much to do with her loss, but from a polling perspective, these last-minute doubts appeared to be decisive in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Clinton lost the electoral college.
[5] The full scope of that has not yet been revealed because Bob Mueller has not yet concluded his own Special Counsel investigation.
[6] The Steele dossier, the Nunes memo, and the connections between the Trump campaign and Russian interests are well beyond the scope of this article, but will require another extensive disaggregation of fact from fiction in the future.
[7] There had also been an investigation of McCabe from the Inspector General of the Department of Justice over concerns that he should have recused himself from the investigation of Hillary’s email server, since his wife wqas running as a Democrat for the Virginia State Senate.
[8] Apparently Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan of Wisconsin and Seth Moulton of Massachusetts both offered to hire McCabe for a couple of days so he could retire with his full pension. As of this writing, it does not appear that either offer was accepted.