In the runup to the event of the firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on Friday, two days prior to his retirement (scheduled for tomorrow), I was troubled by both the notion that this would be an enormously petty action by an Administration (or, more accurately, a President) which imagined the FBI’s inquiry into Russian meddling in the Presidential Election was politically motivated merely because McCabe, then a deputy director, has a wife who is a registered Democrat. This seemed like the shoddy work of someone undeserving of an elevated position.
Then came the news that an internal Justice Department inquiry suggested McCabe was guilty of wrongdoing. An internal FBI inquiry would suggest that this would be less a politically motivated lynching, but more likely an actual actionable indiscretion by McCabe. After Attorney General Sessions fired McCabe after months of intense pressure from President Trump (to the extent that it appears Trump was the primary motivation), CNN reported:
The origin of his dramatic fall stems from an internal review conducted by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz. That report — the details of which have not been publicly released — is said to conclude that McCabe misled investigators about his role in directing other officials at the FBI to speak to The Wall Street Journal about his involvement in a public corruption investigation into the Clinton Foundation, according to a source briefed on it.
Andrew McCabe has vigorously disagreed with the report.
So what to think? Lawfare’s Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes cover what we know in detail, with the knowledge of experienced national security lawyers. While counseling patience in the absence of the release of the damning report, they do have some troubling questions:
There are, however, at least two features of the action against McCabe that warrant consternation, even if McCabe himself behaved badly enough to justify the sanction. The first is the timing, which is hard to understand. The only factor we can fathom that might justify it is the notion that if McCabe in fact had acted very badly, the window to punish him and thus make an important statement to the bureau workforce was closing.
But we are unaware of prior cases in which authorities rushed through the merits against a long-serving official in a naked and transparent effort to beat the clock of his retirement. Michael Bromwich, a former Justice Department inspector general who is representing McCabe, described the process as follows:
The investigation described in the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report was cleaved off from the larger investigation of which it was a part, its completion expedited, and the disciplinary process completed in a little over a week. Mr. McCabe and his counsel were given limited access to a draft of the OIG report late last month, did not see the final report and the evidence on which it is based until a week ago, and were receiving relevant exculpatory evidence as recently as two days ago. We were given only four days to review a voluminous amount of relevant evidence, prepare a response, and make presentations to the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. With so much at stake, this process has fallen far short of what Mr. McCabe deserved.
Even allowing for a certain degree of lawyerly hyperbole in this account, the process described here seems highly irregular. McCabe, in his statement Friday, suggested one possible reason for the acceleration:
The release of this report was accelerated only after my testimony to the House Intelligence Committee revealed that I would corroborate former Director Comey’s accounts of his discussions with the President. 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.
In an interview with the New York Times, McCabe said directly that his dismissal “is part of an effort to discredit me as a witness.”
Without commenting on the appropriateness of firing McCabe, they still discern the curves of another attempt at obstructing justice. If they see it, is there little doubt that it’ll catch Mueller’s attention as well?
Naturally, President Trump, long infuriated by various aspects of Deputy Director McCabe’s existence, as noted above, celebrated on Twitter in his usual faux-triumphant manner:
Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI – 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!
Why do I say faux? Because it’s actually a frantic spin to tarnish the FBI. Consider the statement “… great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI …” as if they suffered under former Director Comey. Subsequent interviews with numerous FBI employees revealed that Comey was actually widely respected and even admired. Keep this in mind when reading anything from Trump in regards to this matter – it really changes the tone and purpose of Trump’s releases. You begin to realize that he sounds desperate, not triumphant.
I checked National Review, but beyond a simple news report, no opinion has yet been rendered.
Former CIA Director John Brennan (2013 – 2017) has little patience with this circus, as he posted in response to President Trump on Twitter:
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. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America…America will triumph over you.
A more honorable man than Trump would be humiliated by Brennan. Trump, though? I’m not sure he’ll take it in the proper vein.
Kevin Drum sees it as Trump’s insecurities writ large:
This whole affair has been contemptible from the start. Trump knows perfectly well that he won the election solely because of the FBI’s interference. This is something he finds intolerable, so he has invented a fantasy in which that never happened. In fact, he’s spent the entire past year spreading the preposterous lie that the FBI actually helped Hillary. Then he went about defaming and firing all the people whose very existence was a continuing rebuke to his election triumph. McCabe is one of them.
Which suggests the President is a man not in command of his faculties, but a victim of his emotional needs. Such men are easily manipulated.
Andrew McCabe’s statement is here, and is worth a read by every American.
And former FBI Director Comey has posted a most interesting statement on Twitter:
Mr. President, the American people will hear my story very soon. And they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not.
In the context of Mr. Comey’s statement, what are we to think about the situation? Certainly, it’s reasonable to settle back and wait for more information to come forth. However, for the partisan, that is quite unsatisfactory, for the feel the pull of the tribal loyalty, while forgetting the importance of getting to the truth of the matter, regardless of who comes up guilty – and who innocent.
That’s what concerns me. For the moment, there’s really not enough information. However, for those who need a preliminary position, my approach is to look to the history of the principals of the matter. To my knowledge, Comey and former CIA Director Brennan were (or are) highly respected by all. The whispers of corruption only came after it became apparent that they (Comey in particular) might have information suggesting that President Trump is, shall we say, less than he would like to pretend to be.
And President Trump? There is documented proof in media and legal records that he will lie to advance himself, and will do so as often as necessary. This is not proof positive that his position in this incident is the defective one, of course, but that combined with the entire timing is certainly the sort of thing, for a preliminary position, which moves me to consider that, regardless of McCabe’s culpability in the Justice Department investigation in which it was suggested he may have abrogated FBI conduct standards in the Clinton investigation – and which would have perhaps damaged Clinton’s campaign even more than he would have otherwise, much to Trump’s benefit – I see this as a dirty move on Trump’s part.
But I stand ready to change my position as more information comes out.
