DOJ Should Just Give Andrew McCabe What He Wants, But They Won’t
185 paragraphs into his complaint against Bill Barr, Christopher Wray, and DOJ and FBI for unlawful termination, Andrew McCabe makes what is probably an untrue statement.
Had Plaintiff pledged his personal loyalty to Trump, voted for Trump in the 2016 election (or falsely told Trump that he had), not worn a T-shirt supporting Dr. McCabe’s campaign, and not been married to Dr. McCabe, Defendants would not have reached the decisions to demote him and terminate him, nor would they have proceeded on the accelerated schedule that deprived him of his full vested pension and related benefits.
The statement is true, insofar as they’re the issues that Trump bitched about for the year leading up to McCabe’s firing in part to discredit the Mueller investigation. They’re true because Trump has claimed they’re true, so there will be abundant evidence to submit to prove they are true. But they’re not true insofar as the Russian investigation is what led Trump to hunt down his perceived enemies, and the DOJ IG investigation is the claimed reason for McCabe’s firing.
But the claims nevertheless assert the principle that FBI employees can’t be forced to take a loyalty oath. And as such, the lawsuit seeks to uphold a principle at the core of our judicial system.
That’s not the only complaint McCabe makes. Along another First Amendment claim, he also makes two due process claims and one mandamus claim that gets into the legal fine print of the way that, in response to pressure from Trump, top DOJ officials fast-tracked an effort to get rid of McCabe.
The legal details are actually of real interest, given that Wray, then Associate Deputy Attorney General Scott Schools, and Jeff Sessions, among others, bolloxed the firing of McCabe. As Schools told McCabe while he was trying to accelerate the review of his termination in March 2018, “We’re making it up as we go along.” DOJ fucked up in two significant ways.
First, they didn’t get around to “firing” McCabe until 10:00 pm on March 16, 2018, after FBI clocked the final day McCabe had to put in before qualifying for retirement at 5:00 pm that same day. FBI registered that day as a full vacation day. By the time Sessions fired McCabe late at night, he claims, he was already legally retired. (Note, there’s a real tragicomic section describing Sessions’ role, including that the firing did not come with any of the official details like time of termination needed for such a firing, that are very similar to the way that Sessions himself would be fired 8 months later).
The other way they bolloxed McCabe’s firing is by demoting him on January 28, 2018. On that day, Wray gave McCabe a choice: to remain at FBI in a demoted role of his picking if he lied and said the demotion was voluntary, or remain in a lesser role of Wray’s choice if he refused to lie. Instead, McCabe took terminal leave, meaning he was no longer one of the positions that the Attorney General or Acting Attorney General could terminate directly. As McCabe described it, Sessions didn’t have the authority to fire McCabe.
Sessions publicly announced that he had terminated Plaintiff “[p]ursuant to [DOJ] Order 1202,”but that did not give Sessions the authority to terminate employees in Plaintiff’s position. DOJ Order 1202, promulgated pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 3151, provides that the FBI Director alone has authority to terminate career FBI senior executives, except that the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General retain authority to remove those who serve in certain enumerated “key positions.” After Defendant Wray removed Plaintiff from the role of Deputy Director in January 2018 and replaced him with Bowdich, Plaintiff remained a career FBI senior executive but did not serve in any of the “key positions” listed in DOJ Order 1202. Defendant Wray, as FBI Director, did not authorize Plaintiff’s termination and in fact previously refused Sessions’ request to terminate Plaintiff. Accordingly, Plaintiff was not, in fact, terminated before his retirement.
[snip]
Additionally, Sessions lacked any authority to terminate Plaintiff due to conflicts of interest and recusals, including Sessions’ March 2017 recusal from “investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States.” Defendants’ pretextual basis for Plaintiff’s termination arose from the OIG investigation of Plaintiff’s actions related to the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, specifically his actions regarding campaign-related articles published in October 2016 by the Wall Street Journal. Sessions’ recusal, on its face, extended to the OIG investigation. Sessions’ recusal was therefore a “disability” under 28 U.S.C §508(a), meaning that he lacked qualification to participate in Plaintiff’s termination. As a result, Sessions had no authority to terminate Plaintiff.
The entire complaint is (as one would expect for a suit filed by four Arnold & Porter lawyers on behalf of a lawyer who happens to be a former top FBI official) very well lawyered in such a way that the legal issues are very narrow, even while invoking the entirety of Trump’s obstructive behavior along the way.
The easiest way DOJ could make this go away would be to grant McCabe’s request, to find that he had retired before he was fired, with the benefits accruing accordingly (McCabe refutes the findings of the DOJ IG investigation against him in more cursory fashion, though it’s key to his due process claims and his allegations reflect badly on the well-respected Michael Horowitz). But to do that, DOJ would rob Trump of one of his favorite petty wins.
So they probably won’t.
![[Photo: Emily Morter via Unsplash]](https://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Question_EmilyMorter-Unsplash-80x80.jpg)
I doubt that I will ever be able to fathom what thoughts would go through the mind of Brett Cavanaugh, reading this post. How on earth does a person rationalize accepting a SCOTUS appointment from someone who screwed a former FBI Director out of his pension?! And that’s without even mentioning ‘Russia’… or ‘Deutsche Bank’… ‘Tis confounding… 🤔
You’re assuming an honest introspection. I don’t think that’s likely to happen with the person you reference.
Brett is probably quite confident that he knows how to stay on Trump’s good side.
Beer!
That’s gonna take a lot of Beer!
Gambling debts gotta get paid.
I can see how Brett Kavanaugh would divorce the distasteful part of his SCOTUS appointment from the good part… Trump will be gone and he’ll still be wearing those robes.
I’m waiting for these two lawsuits to be decided in favor of the plaintiffs. I’ve got to wonder how they arrived at their decisions to go to court nearly simultaneously.
Did he forget that he leaked FBI information amongst other crimes that have not yet been charged with?
Plenty of obvious reasons for his firing, just like others
Not to be obvious “Captain Obvious” but in this forum you need to bring facts and cites. You have not brought squat. You are not in the right place to bot troll in to. Thanks for playing.
Just like the article did!?!
I have no idea what you are talking about, care to elaborate? Or do you think it swell and sufficient to reference an “article” that is not specified?
It might be one of the ones going around in early 2018, like this one:
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/383080-watchdog-fired-fbi-official-mccabe-leaked-to-media-to-help-himself
However, it’s based on an internal IG report under JeffBo Sessions’ DOJ (Michael Horowitz) involving yet another Clinton Foundation investigation designed to deflect attention away from Kaiser Quisling and his Palace. It’s not a slam-dunk objective bit of legal work as CO and Ant-thing try to pretend it is.
The Daily Caller had an update yesterday, so that probably roused the trolls from their stupor.
You mean Marcy’s post? The journalist we’re all here to read who has proven her credibility for years?
For Trump, firing an employee is not a function every manager needs to know how to do, however reluctantly. For him, it is an orgasmic exercise that can reach climax only through the victim’s public humiliation.
If Trump went apeshit over Comey’s flight back after his firing, when out of town on FBI business, he would have a conniption were the FBI to acknowledge that McCabe retired before he was fired. Trump would turn blue, heads would roll, and another item would be added to the abuses of power in the draft articles of impeachment.
It’s telling that he has to have someone else do it for him, nearly every time.
And yeah, it is an abuse of power.
That’s what happens when you run a First World country like a WaWa in Piscataway, New Jersey.
LMAO !! Thank you for that.
A humorous comparison.
Admittedly, the quality of Wawa has declined as the company has expanded, but I can’t imagine one (of about 750 locations), that is run as incompetently as the Trump Organization or the Trump administration.
I don’t know who manages the Piscataway Wawa, but it looks to be reasonably well organized. The manager would probably not 1) stage a photo with a recently orphaned child while smiling and giving a thumbs up, 2) conduct an immigration raid on the same day to deport the same class of people that were murdered, 3) conduct the raid on the first day of school without a plan for how to handle minors, 4) verbally abuse elected leaders in Ohio who said that your visit was “well received,” etc. And all of that is just one day of this kakistocracy.
There’s little doubt in my mind that if they switched roles, the country would be better managed by the Wawa manager, and Trump would quickly run the Piscataway Wawa into the ground. He’d be selling goods to the mob out the back door at half price and not paying suppliers, he’d write three mortgages on the property, he’d launder rubles through the registers, and he’d cancel the baking contract with Amoroso’s to put everything on Wonder Bread to Make Sandwiches White Again.
Actually not so confounding.
Remember Donald Segretti and Nixon’s crew of ratfuckers? (Ratfucking is defined by Wikipedia as “an American slang term for political sabotage or dirty tricks”).
Brett Cavanaugh ascended in the conservative universe because of his talents as a ratfucker. Which is why they’re now going nuts about Congress’ demand for the documents from when he was at the top of his ratfucking game in the Bush White House.
Accomplished ratfucker that he is, he managed to perjure his way onto the DC Federal Court and the Supreme Court. Which is pretty impressive.
I am ever hopeful that kismet will eventually deliver to him not just impeachment, but an orange jumpsuit.
Thanks for this.
If Reader 21 below is correctly informed, it adds some fascinating fuel to the reasons that Trump (or someone whispering in Trump’s ear) wanted McCabe gone: mob, Russia, NY. That trifecta certainly seems to activate sirens at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
I suppose the opportunities for useful information about Kaiser Quisling and the Palace will depend upon which trial judge gets this suit. As I had noted elsewhere McCabe’s firing was timed solely for the purpose of denying him his government retirement benefits. If that was botched by the DOJ, then McCabe’s case is something of a slam dunk, I would think but IANAL.
McCabe has also been a bit noisy lately about Palace antics, so in my opinion that will make it more likely that KQ will fight back. If I’m Congressmen Cummings, Nadler or Schiff (etc., et al) this might be a good time to plan to extend another invitation to McCabe depending on what happens with the case. I wouldn’t think that McCabe would risk his court case to hang KQ and the Palace.
Ew,
Thank you for the poetic justice wafting into the ether above “Sessions publicly announced…”. If Plaintiff should prevail I will celebrate by increasing my Ew subscription.
Andy McCabe started as a respected FBI street agent, battling New York mobsters with connections to sketchy Russians, defending his country.
Looks like he ended it that way too.
Thank you EW, for another great post, and for all your work.
This man, and his wife to be honest, have both served this country and their community respectively. I hope McCabe gets all the data out he wants of this lawsuit, the restoration of benefits, as well as compensation of some sort if he is seeking it, and to steal a line from Ms. Gordon, Godspeed McCabe.
I’m so glad there were good people in the FBI who were calling the shots. Now that they are gone though, it is up to Congress and the Courts,
Nadler had a good interview on Maddow, and it seems like they expect hearings soon with voluntary witness followed by compulsory ones (hopefully). Sounds like he wants to take the gloves off more.
Marcy thank you. Great post.
In McCabe’s book, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump, he says in Acknowlegedments:
“Finally, thank you to each and every person who musters the dignity, the strength, and the courage to stand up for what he or she believes in. Act of bravery and conscience are the lifeblood of a society committed to democracy and justice, decency and fairness. Standing up is more important now than ever.”
Per bmaz’s twtr feed, Donald Trump and spouse no. 3 are not into using horror and mass murder to make political points. Except when they are. They posed for photos with the infant whose parents died shielding him from the Walmart killer in El Paso.
Are Trump and Melania adopting him? (Don’t see how their parenting would qualify.) Are they committing to pay for his upbringing and education? (I hear Penn. admits legacies for a few bucks.) Are they paying for the funerals of his parents? (The president could help this infant and many like it for the cost of a single trip to Bedminster. He won’t.)
If not, Trump and Melania are politicizing this tragedy for partisan political gain. Their behavior, as usual, is sick, arrogant and narcissistic. Thumbs up.
[https://twitter.com/bmaz]
This photo – and global criticism – is making the rounds. It should. Apparently, the baby was discharged from hospital the day before, but was brought back for Trump’s (absolutely not a campaign) photo shoot.
[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/09/trump-el-paso-melania-orphan-baby-thumbs-up]
The “thumbs-up” was really weird even for Kaiser Quisling. Was he happy the baby was OK, or was he happy that someone listened to him?
Also, he dissed the shooter for being a “pussy” that got captured instead of going out in a blaze of glory (like John McCain was also not a “hero” because he was captured, I’m sure that parallel did not escape KQ). I’m sure Crusius is not liking that.
The Guardian has retracted the “pussy” detail but not the disrespect for Crusius or why by Kaiser Quisling.
I saw someone on twitter refer to the photo as “macabre” and that really fits. My first thought was: how can anyone manage a smile on a visit like that? It would be all a normal person could do to keep from crying, like O at Newtown.
For Trump, everything and everyone is a stage prop, useful only to illustrate his Greatness. Melania should know better, but her having married Trump suggests she has no judgment either.
But neither set up this photo and others like it. The gremlins who do are just as evil.
I can only guess that this pic was taken by a staff member thinking it would be one of many images of our president and first lady interacting with the victims of this horrific event.
The fact that it is the ONLY one is as disturbing as the image.
On a related noted. Looking at the video of Trump “self soothing” it probably took 10 minutes to figure out who took the video and gave it to the media.
I am sure it was not an easy choice.
Whoever you are, thank you for your fearlessness.
Have you guys seen this by media matters on hates spread through Facebook?
https://twitter.com/natijomartinez/status/1159810402655637505
Yes! There’s a lot of good research, information and links/screenshots in this thread and that article! [bringing this over to the open thread]
Earl, you should be on Twitter. Clearly you are enough to find my and Marcy’s tweets, but you have good stuff to say. And you should.
Twitter can be maddening at points. And stupid. But, that said, it is, carefully curated, perhaps the greatest information and news aggregator site/platform in history. I fought it off for a long time. Marcy made me do it….and here we are!
You, Marcy, Rayne, Ed, and Jim helpfully post your twts on this site. Close enough for gubmint work.
I think you could be a wonderful voice on social media Earl. You are both incredibly intelligent and a wonderful writer. Really, not blowing smoke up your …
El Paso Orphan’s Family Explains Trump Photo with Baby
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/456881-el-paso-orphans-family-explains-trump-photo-with-baby
Thanks, Jenny,
The gasping announcements that Trump and McConnell might do something about regulating guns in America, at this point, is smoke and mirrors. He and McConnell have alternated playing Lucy with the football for years, preventing gun regulation after each mass shooting.
Please, MSM, stop hyperventilating and wait for them to DO something.
Ditto violent extremism on line:
https://twitter.com/jgeltzer/status/1159826104196259841
6:57 AM – 9 Aug 2019
added: I’m going to post this at the open thread.
earl of h.
good point.
but with facebook technology, these comments are being deliberately made now in order to be turned into facebook ads by brad perscale&co praising dear prez to be played back to groups of individual facebook users during the 2020 election campaign. they will create doubt about general media and democratic criticisms of dear prez among those lightly tuned in to current events or uncertain about dem criticisms.
Vice Adm. Joe Maguire was in the Navy for 36 years, thirty of them in the SEALs or another aspect of SpecOps. That’s the lens through which he views the world and through which he will now focus US intelligence resources.
Putting him in as DNI neuters non-military viewpoints, specifically the political and diplomatic skills needed to navigate through a multi-polar world. It elevates the power of some of the people whose work he should be coordinating or overseeing: Haspel, Pompeo, and Bolton come to mind. I wonder who helped Trump decide on Maguire.
[https://www.npr.org/2019/08/08/749599468/trump-names-new-acting-director-of-national-intelligence]
Does the president mean by “meaningful” background checks what big oil means by “sound” science and the tobacco industry “good” epidemiology?
My best guess is he’s just saying what he needs to until the next news cycle brings in some other thing to distract the media. That anyone (let alone ostensible journalists) would take him at his word for anything is unfathomable. It’s like the NYT headline of Trump vs. Racism. Absurd.
True, Trump’s word vomit rarely has any real meaning. If it does, he abandons it promptly.
I thought they fired him the day before he could retire, not the same day. Am I misremembering this, or did they SAY he was fired the day before he could retire, but then didn’t get around to submitting the paperwork until the next day?
I agree that they should just give him what he wants and not fight this. Give him his pension and pay his lawyers. He’s already gotten a best-selling book out of this, as well as numerous TV appearances. He’s telegenic, so he’s almost certainly going to get a position on one of the news stations as an FBI expert. Every time the DOJ (or Trump) says anything about him, they just make him a more and more high-profile media celebrity.
For @bmaz and the other lawyers: This is a civil suit, which means McCabe gets discovery with respect to the President. How does this work? Can they depose Trump (along with Wray and Sessions)? Because Trump wouldn’t survive a deposition on what he had for breakfast, much less something like this.
Well, now, that is the issue presented. McCabe says his last day was a Friday (which is true) and that at 5:00 pm of that day, his work day and work week had accrued and he could retire unimpaired. They “fired” him after that. And did so in extreme bad faith, and based on improper political considerations.
Frankly, I think that is a fairly decent argument.
I’m still confused. Does the “retirement date” technically fall on a Saturday or Sunday, and THAT’s what they’re using to justify this? (I honestly don’t remember this–sorry for the memory lapses.)
I do not know. My guess is that the claim he had his time in as of 5 pm that Friday is good. The question then is about what exactly the “retirement date” is. I am not smart enough on federal employment law to know. It does strike me as a very legitimate argument though, generally speaking.
Well there is Supreme Court precedence that the president can be forced to be deposed in a civil suit. A nice example of something coming back and biting you in the ass. I would think that from Trump’s point of view, discovery in something like this should be avoided like the plaque. Just make it go away.
I’m sure we can count on the SC’s right-wingers deference to precedence.
A deposition with him would have a “Did you order the Code Red?” moment at least once every five minutes.
Rachel Maddow did a short piece on how Trmp has purged the counter-intelligence experts from the FBI and other agencies on Thursday, August 8. Finally. It was a good introduction to the issue and shows, again, what is going on behind all the blather.
Now I want her to do a piece on the degrees of separation between Jeffrey Epstein and George Nader and Epstein, Nader, and Marc Dutroux, the organizer of a pedophile ring and murderer who was instrumental in the collapse of the Belgian government in the 1990s. All three were active in that decade and my Spideysense is tingling with the possibility that these three are more closely connected than the proverbial six degrees of separation between all of us on this planet.
I suspect that some truly heinous sex crimes are part of the vomit stew we are now having to live through.
If you want to consider possible horrific crimes, you should visit (via Google maps, et al, 35°16’02.1″N 105°58’10.7″W) Epstein’s luxe 57,000 sq ft mansion and “ranch” on 8,000 acres of New Mexico desert near Santa Fe. Deserted, surrounded by more thousands of empty acres of privately owned desert, there is nothing you couldn’t do out there.
And how tough to dispose of, well, anything, in the middle of miles of desert? Why would a Studio 54 party guy like Jeff Epstein want a huge mansion in the desert, far from even the small towns of New Mexico?
The mind reels at the whole concept. I don’t know if cadaver dogs would help in that investigation, given the hostile environment and the years since Epstein may have done the dirty deeds out there. And anything could have been disposed of, many miles away from the estate, in someone else’s thousands of acres of desert. Or not…
I would happily work the Epstein ranch w/my cadaver dog as would the rest of the K9 handlers on my SAR team if there is any doubt victims were buried out there. We’re all in shock from the success Epstein had for so many years. It’s unbelievable to me the sweetheart deal he got the first time around. With the numbers of victims and the specific crimes? Ugh, his penalty reeks of special treatment and corruption.
There’s never been a whiff of Epstein silencing victims other than by intimidation but that should certainly be clarified through interviews w/all his victims and the johns whom he supplied w/girls. It seems Epstein operated in the same way Catholic priests operated — from a position of power that silenced his victims. I think his housing choices were largely based on the need for privacy and isolation that would serve to intimidate his victims from ever attempting to walk away. It would be interesting to compare what the differences in sexual abuse were for his island and his ranch vs his NYC mansion to see what determined his choice of those other locations.
There is a reason you have been placed in permanent moderation. You think you need to comment about everything in the world, including things where you are just blowing ignorant and false nonsense out of your rear end.
You have been repeatedly warned about loading up our comment section like it is your personal little stream of consciousness playground. That is not the purpose of our comment section. This is a forum for intelligent commentary, not a forum for airing of every thought you may have and wish to spend a blog post amount of words on in every comment.
It is not, and it is not going to be. And especially with your run on blather. Nobody gives a flying fuck that you, in your fever dreams, envision taking some dogs to perform an illegal search in New Mexico.
This is just drivel. We do not need drivel, and especially drivel that is so constant as to tie up our comment threads. Deal with this how you wish, but deal or be gone.
How on earth do you manage to read my post and then jump to the gonzo conclusion of accusing me of running down there and engaging in an illegal search? It wouldn’t be “an illegal search” if there were cause for local LE and the FBI to believe there were victims buried on Epstein’s land or nearby and they called for cadaver dogs. You think we just show up w/cadaver dogs and search wherever we want? LE calls in specific cadaver dogs and handlers from K9 units whose work they know because police units don’t maintain cadaver dog teams. LE secures the permission of landowners and neighbors and tells us where we can search and can’t search. They give you the GPS coordinates for your search area. In a situation like this deputies would accompany you and your dog as your flanker. Why didn’t the person who suggested Epstein had possibly buried victims there get called out by you in similar fashion when that is the crazier of the two posts given there’s been no indication yet that Epstein ever killed any of his victims? You think the second half of my post about the tactics Epstein used isn’t a legitimate aspect of the Epstein saga to focus on when those tactics allowed him to successfully seduce thousands of young girls over decades?
Jesus fucking christ. “How do I manage”?
I “manage” because I have had to suffer through every one of your jackass run on comments where you blow relentlessly overwrought and ridiculously run on the mouth bunk.
You and your stupid dogs will never search squat, and if you did, it would be so far out of the Fourth Amendment as to be laughable.
You are a noisy crank, and very close to a crackpot. If you cannot take warnings, we will be seeing you.
Also, too, when you are going to issue belligerent responses, try using paragraph breaks.
That’s a belligerent response? That was just facts. We’re qualified for crime scene searches. We’re nationally certified in water, land and disaster cadaver. When engaged in a crime scene search, we do them under the direct supervision of a LE officer. Am I LE? No, I’m not. I got involved in SAR after several abductions in my area that had horrific outcomes.
Yes, it was. And we do not know your supposed outfit, if you really have one, and I do do not give a fuck about your claimed capabilities, offering to search anything associated with Epstein is beyond clown show idiocy. It is ridiculous.
You consistently engage in chicanery. And make people here respond to your garbage.
I will make a last warning to you. You are about done. Keep being a propagator of dopey junk, and you are done. We do not accept that.
Thought occurs that firing Gordon at #2 might’ve been the main point of the whole exercise of Coats to Ratcliffe to Maguire. 30 years CIA, she was the operational head for ODNI. Russian intel would no doubt have informed their asset that SG needs to be gone going into the 2020. But also that a lot of noise and a well-respected face is needed to replace Coats as DNI. Who is to replace Sue at number 2?
..but then thinking further on it, I’m probably just being paranoid. Oh well, back to Steely Dan.
@gmoke —to your point, the premier Russian mobster (and Putin backer from St Petersburg days) traffics three main commodities: weapons, narco, and what’s the third—oh yeah, humans.
And Putin’s specialty is kompromat.
The director of the ACLU of Texas’s border rights center was allegedly illegally stopped by the Border Patrol while on vacation in California. [https://twitter.com/astridalheli]
It was not at one of the patrol’s many “stop all vehicles” checkpoints in Southern California. It was a specific stop of her car, which requires probable cause. The reason? The ACLU’s Astrid Dominguez was driving a rental car. Uh, huh.
Driving while Hispanic seems to be joining the dangerous practice of driving while African American. Perhaps Ms. Dominguez should have brought along her Green Book.
The Trump regime is not [yet] using water hoses or lynchings, or using Bull Connor’s police dogs to line the way to the voting booth. It is using ICE raids and offensive “policing” by the Border Patrol across its claimed jurisdiction – anywhere within 100 miles of a US border. Gotta keep them [insert expletive] down.
Trump and his GOP must not think their chances in 2020 are good, or that enough people are on board with their campaign to protect America’s purity of essence. They’re right.
“Trump and his GOP must not think their chances in 2020 are good, or that enough people are on board with their campaign to protect America’s purity of essence. They’re right.”
Exactly!!
#RIPGOP
Music to my ears: “Upheaval at the NRA”
https://twitter.com/WaPoSean/status/1161061166753492993
4:45 PM – 12 Aug 2019
Fourth board member resigns from NRA in a sign of further upheaval, via @thamburger [WaPo]
From the WaPo article:
…and one of the GOP’s biggest boosters.
#RIPGOP
From Adrain CARRASQUILLO on the Latinx victims in El Paso and losing sight of them:
This Is What Latinos Think Everyone Got Wrong About El Paso
A well-meaning desire to erase the shooter and his hateful ideology has instead erased the victims and their community.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/amp/story/2019/08/10/el-paso-shooting-227612
yeah? and what about that trump-loving latino family that let their little survivor-child be fondly handled by our prez for a photo op.
what was their role in this “forgetting”.
i haven’t forgot, nor will i.
many more latinos need to wake up about american politics than are woke now,
Who writes this crap?
with respect to horowitz, i’m not real sure of my interpretation, given the time that has passed, but i had the impression that inspector horowitz, well-respected for good reason, nonetheless acted hastily in preparing and presenting his report and with evident concern to sooth the president’s temper when he “sanctioned” mccabe. mccabe was apparently literally lying, but what he claimed to be doing is what senior gov officials do all the time, partially self-serving though it may have been. and then there is the matter of the ig quite evidently doing a favor for a criminally behaving prez.
“… But the inspector general report claims that McCabe later displayed “lack of candor” to FBI and Justice Department officials about his role in these leaks, in at least four instances.
To Comey on October 31, 2016: The day after the latter Journal article published, Comey and McCabe privately discussed it and the leaks behind it. Comey later told the inspector general that McCabe left the impression that he wasn’t involved in the leak and he didn’t know who was. McCabe disputes this, claiming he fessed up to Comey, and that Comey agreed the leak was a “good” idea. The IG writes that the “overwhelming weight” of circumstantial evidence backs up Comey’s account, not McCabe’s.
To the FBI’s Inspection Division investigators on May 9, 2017: A few months later, two FBI investigators questioned McCabe about the article, and asked about the leaks. The agents claim McCabe told them he had “no idea” where the story came from or who the source was — which, of course, would be a lie. McCabe disputes that this happened, and the interview wasn’t recorded. But both agents say this happened, one of them took notes, and they got McCabe to sign his initials on the Journal article, indicating that the topic was discussed.
To the IG investigators on July 28, 2017: Later, investigators from the inspector general’s office questioned McCabe in a recorded interview, and presented him with texts from his subordinate Lisa Page indicating that she was involved in the leak. McCabe said he didn’t know who gave the information to the Wall Street Journal and that he wasn’t aware of her being authorized to do it. However, a few days after saying this, McCabe contacted investigators and said that after thinking about it more, he may have authorized the leak after all. (Marcy Wheeler suggests that McCabe’s change of heart came because he realized those texts from Page made his previous, false story disclaiming knowledge of the leak untenable.)
To the IG investigators again on November 29, 2017: McCabe returned for another recorded interview with IG investigators, this time admitting his role in the leak. Yet Horowitz says he misled them about other matters. McCabe said in this interview that he’d told Comey about the leak and that Comey was okay with it on October 31, 2016, and claimed he never denied knowledge of the leaks to FBI investigators on May 9, 2017. Yet Horowitz doesn’t find either claim to be credible.
From the report, Horowitz clearly believes that McCabe tried to avoid being fingered for the leak by repeatedly misleading investigators and even Comey, his boss, about it. It is this report that Horowitz submitted to the FBI and that the Justice Department cited in firing McCabe in March, and that is reportedly the basis for the criminal referral…”
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/19/17257954/andrew-mccabe-criminal-referral
for one, i thought lying and then “remembering” later has repeatedly been grounds for giving you a chance to “unlie” if you were a trump guy or gal, e.g., sessions, stone, and many other trump miscreants.
for another, hotowitz’s unusual speed and timeliness (for his office) in presenting his report in time to fire mccabe.
for another, there is a lot of soft evidence against mccabe, unlike sessions’ public lies.
for a third, criminal sanctions against a senior official in disfavor with a president likely suspected within the doj/fbi hierarchy to have engaged in and then be further be engaging in criminal behavior himself (obstruction) seems a bit rich for a well-respected official untangler of departmental misconduct.
the ig’s evidence seems pretty thin for charging criminal behavior of a major official under fire from a criminally involved president.
Oldie but goodie: No Collusion! No Obstruction!
New today: NO INFLATION!
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1161259380878323712
5:53 AM – 13 Aug 2019
RAYNE: New Impeachment call:
Rep. David Price D-NC-04
David Price Calls for U.S. House of Representatives to Carry an Impeachment Inquiry Forward
https://price.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/rep-david-price-calls-us-house-representatives-carry-impeachment-inquiry August 13, 2019
I *think* that puts us at 121 Dems + 1 Ind.
Thanks, harpie, for staying on top of this. I am drafting a new Whip It post right now and will add the latest Dems to support an inquiry.
I need to confirm the count, though, we’re still off by one somewhere. I have 122 + 1 right now. ???