Tag Archives: Andrew McCabe

No Criminal Charges for McCabe

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by Daveda Gruber:

On Friday the Justice Department has indicated that it will not indict former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe on criminal charges.

An investigation into accusations from the agency’s independent watchdog that lasted almost two years found that McCabe lacked sincerity when he was questioned about leaking information to the media.

McCabe’s attorneys Michael Bromwich and David Schertler, received a letter from Justice Department attorney J.P. Cooney and Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Gaston which said that the criminal investigation into McCabe is now closed.

Cooney and Gaston wrote, “We write to inform you that, after careful consideration, the government has decided not to pursue criminal charges against your client, Andrew G. McCabe. Based on the totality of the circumstances and all of the information known to the government at this time, we consider the matter closed.”

In statements given to media, Bromwich and Schertler confirmed that they received a phone call from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, D.C.

The call in question was followed by the letter notifying them that “the criminal investigation of Andrew McCabe has been closed.”

Bromwich and Schertler  added that “This means that no charges will be brought against him based on the facts underlying the Office of the Inspector General’s April 2018 report. At long last, justice has been done in this matter.”

The two went on to say, “We said at the outset of the criminal investigation, almost two years ago, that if the facts and the law determined the result, no charges would be brought. We are pleased that Andrew McCabe and his family can go on with their lives without this cloud hanging over them.”

McCabe served at the FBI for 21 years. He became the acting director in May 2017 after President Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey.

The Attorney General at the time, Jeff Sessions fired McCabe in March 2018. That came after the inspector general found he had repeatedly misstated his involvement in a leak to The Journal regarding an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report in 2018 that showed McCabe lacked candor with FBI Director James Comey, FBI investigators, and inspector general investigators about his authorization to leak some allegedly sensitive information to the Wall Street Journal that revealed the existence of an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

Comey said he did not permit McCabe to tell the media. Horowitz wrote that McCabe’s actions were “designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of Department leadership” and “violated the FBI’s and the Department’s media policy and constituted misconduct.”

McCabe’s legal team, on the other hand, said McCabe’s story changed because he was surprised by and unprepared for the question during his May 2017 interview. The attorneys also said that he was preoccupied with other major events. They went on to say that once Comey was fired later that day, he didn’t think about his answers again as he dealt with leading the bureau for a time.

Horowitz concluded that McCabe misled his team too.

Horowitz said, “It seems highly implausible that McCabe forgot in May what he recalled in detail during his November inspector general testimony. In our view, the evidence is substantial that it was done knowingly and intentionally.”

McCabe has maintained his innocence and said the inspector general’s conclusions relied on mis-characterizations and omissions, which included information that was said to be favorable to McCabe.

McCabe also known as Andy was allegedly the “Andy” who former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page texted about in the famous texts between the two lovers, at the time.

Honestly, I have believed that McCabe was going to be indicted. I have alleged that Strzok, Page and McCabe were in a big part of backing the “insurance policy” that turned out to be the Russian Witch-hunt that came from the Dossier written by Christopher Steele.

Can I say that I am deeply disappointed that the people who I see as potentially guilty are all going free so far?

Why is it that most people who were investigated for being on the side of President Trump are usually indicted and some have been found guilty of crimes that are similar to the allegations against people on the left?

It appears to me that there is a distinct two tier judicial system in play here.

I can always be reached on Twitter to discuss political views.

@DavedaGruber

What Did the FISA Report Show?

 
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by Daveda Gruber:

On Monday the inspector general for the Justice Department finally released the internal review concerning the origins of the Russia investigation.

The report concluded that there was no intentional misconduct or political bias surrounding efforts to seek a highly controversial Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant found by investigators. The warrant was, in fact, to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Page was observed during the months at the start of the Russia investigation dealing with election interference.

At least 17 significant errors were found by the IG probe and a new audit into the FISA process and procedures will be launched.

The report, which is nearly 500 pages, said, “We did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that political bias or improper motivation influenced the FBI’s decision to seek FISA authority on Carter Page.”

The unverified dossier that was compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele was undoubtedly anti-Trump but former FBI bosses James Comey and Andrew McCabe were shown as not acting with political bias.

Even the overall surveillance efforts targeting Page to secure the original FISA warrant for him in October 2016, were shown to have no bias, as reported by IG Michael Horowitz and his investigators.

Representative Devin Nunes, R-Calif., and the Republicans have contested the FISA warrant and the subsequent renewal applications. They claim that the FBI misrepresented key evidence and omitted exculpatory information used to support the warrant application came from the dossier compiled by Steele, who the Horowitz team has questioned why the FBI considered him to be a credible source.

The question of why news reports were used to make Steele look more credible was also brought to the FBI.

The Inspector General claims that his team has reviewed over one million records and has conducted over 100 interviews, including several witnesses who agreed to be interviewed just recently.

Page, who has been investigated as a foreign agent, has been vocal about his belief that he was unjustly targeted and not interviewed for the Horowitz probe and never charged with a crime.

Horowitz is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning to answer questions about his probe.

This investigation is over as far as Horowitz is concerned but Barr has assigned the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, John Durham, to conduct an inquiry into alleged misconduct and alleged improper government surveillance, which are criminal in nature, on the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.

At this time, former Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, has been criticized by Horowitz in a separate inquiry for statements that were made by McCabe during a Hillary Clinton related investigation of which he has maintained no wrong doing and has not been indicted but he is facing possible federal charges.

Is “Andy” McCabe Going Down?

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by Daveda Gruber:

The Justice department has allegedly rejected a desperate appeal from former deputy and acting director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe.

Allegedly, it has been recommended by U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu that McCabe appealed the decision of the U.S. attorney for Washington all the way up to Jeffrey Rosen who is the deputy attorney general.

Potential charges of the former top FBI official relate to DOJ inspector general findings against him regarding misleading statements concerning a Hillary Clinton-related investigation.

McCabe’s legal team has said that they received an email from the Department of Justice which said, “The Department rejected your appeal of the United States Attorney’s Office’s decision in this matter. Any further inquiries should be directed to the United States Attorney’s Office.”

McCabe was recently hired by CNN as a commentator and paid for his service. He had previously spent twenty-one years working for the FBI.

McCabe became the acting FBI director in May 2017 after President Trump fired former FBI director James Comey.

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe in March 2018. The IG had found McCabe had repeatedly misstated his involvement in a leak to The Wall Street Journal. This was in regard to an FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

McCabe sued the FBI and the Justice Department over being fired. He argued it was part of Trump’s plan to rid the bureau of leaders he perceived as disloyal to him.

McCabe argued in his complaint that FBI Director Chris Wray and Sessions, the two officials responsible for demoting and then firing him, created an excuse to force him out, which was in agreement with the president’s wishes.

The reason given for McCabe’s being fired was that he had misled investigators over his involvement in a news media leak.

McCabe has denied any wrongdoing and says that the real reason for his firing was “his refusal to pledge allegiance to a single man.”

I’ve told people on Twitter, who have asked me, who I thought would be indicted. I’ve always answered, “Andy.”

Come on folks, someone big had to go down, right? McCabe is a big fish to fry but others may get a free pass.

“Insurance Policy” on Trump Revealed in Transcripts: Want to See?

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by Daveda Gruber:

On Tuesday House Judiciary Committee Republicans released hundreds of pages of transcripts from last year’s closed-door interview with ex-FBI attorney Lisa Page.

The long and drawn out Russian meddling probe  ultimately brought up and gave center stage to explosive texts between then-lovers Page and her partner then-FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok.

The transcripts from last year’s interview with Page brought to light revealing new details about the bureau’s controversial internal discussions regarding an “insurance policy” against then-candidate Donald J. Trump.

Page got her name recognized when it was revealed by the Justice Department inspector general that she and Strzok exchanged numerous anti-Trump text messages. Page and Strzok were deeply involved in the FBI’s initial counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling. They investigated potential collusion with Trump campaign associates during the 2016 election. Later, they both served on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

In the text messages that were shared by Page and Strzok the so-called “insurance policy” was mentioned on numerous occasions.

During her interview with the Judiciary Committee in July 2018, Page was questioned about the texts. Page answered questions for about 10 hours total on July 13 and July 16.

Page ultimately confirmed that the “insurance policy”  referred to the Russia investigation. She explained that officials were proceeding with caution, concerned about the implications of the case while not wanting to go at “total breakneck speed” and risk burning sources as they presumed Trump wouldn’t be elected anyway.

Page also confirmed that investigators only had a “paucity” of evidence at the start.

The full text of the questions can be seen here:

Lisa Page Interview Day 1 by on Scribd

Lisa Page Interview Day 2 by on Scribd

After the questioning began, then-Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., asked about the text sent from Strzok to Page in August 2016.

The text reads, “I want to believe the path you threw out in Andy’s [McCabe’s] office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take the risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

FBI agents had named the investigation into the Trump campaign, “Crossfire Hurricane.”

Page said, “So, upon the opening of the crossfire hurricane investigation, we had a number of discussions up through and including the Director regularly in which we were trying to find an answer to the question, right, which is, is there someone associated with the [Trump] campaign who is working with the Russians in order to obtain damaging information about Hillary Clinton. And given that it is August, we were very aware of the speed and sensitivity that we needed to operate under.”

Page also said that, “if the answer is this is a guy just being puffery at a meeting with other people, great, then we don’t need to worry about this, and we can all move on with our lives; if this is, in fact, the Russians have coopted an individual with, you know, maybe wittingly or unwittingly, that’s incredibly grave, and we need to know that as quickly as possible.”

If you read the transcripts, you will see that it was never expected that Trump would be the President of the United States. In fact, the D.C. swamp agreed and Page said that all they needed was an allegation, and claimed “it is entirely common, particularly in a counterintelligence investigation, that you would only have—you would have a small amount of evidence” in launching a probe.

The pair worked on the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server and then Page served a short detail on Mueller’s team and then returned to her post at the FBI in 2017.  She then ultimately left the bureau in May 2018.

Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team after the texts were discovered and was reassigned to the FBI’s Human Resources Division. He was fired in August 2018.

Recently, former FBI Deputy Director McCabe, said he did not recall ever discussing the “insurance policy” with Strzok or Page.

I believe that “Andy’s” bubble burst with revelations that Page remembered the situation clearly.

Did a Coup D’etat Nearly Take Down President Trump?

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by Daveda Gruber:

Did you ever want to be a fly on the wall to see and hear what was going on in a particular situation? I have thought about it many times. What I did not realize is even though I wasn’t there to see and hear, I already knew the answers to some questions that were rather important and stuck in my mind.

On Monday President Trump drew a conclusion that, for some reason, I had already written about. When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi spoke about a “wrap-up smear,” it appeared clear that this method was used by the FBI in securing a FISA warrant against then candidate Donald Trump and eventually getting a special counsel to investigate it.

By putting two and two together, I fully understood what it meant and came up with what the “insurance policy” was that Lisa Page and Peter Strzok were referring to and implicating “Andy,” who is former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, with them.

McCabe was clear on his statement that Rosenstein was “absolutely serious” when he suggested recording Trump in the tumultuous days following James Comey’s firing as FBI director.

President Trump accused Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and McCabe of pursuing an “illegal and treasonous” plot against him.

Trump called McCabe a liar before lashing out at top DOJ and FBI officials, including ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

McCabe was fired last year by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Trump did not hold back when he tweeted:

McCabe recently wrote a book and revived some issues during promotional interviews for the forthcoming tell all book.

McCabe appeared on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and detailed private DOJ alleged discussions about secretly recording and potentially ousting the president.

McCabe claimed he “never actually considered taking [Rosenstein] up on the offer.” He said he did discuss the matter with the FBI’s then-general counsel, James A. Baker.

Last autumn Baker told lawmakers during a closed-door deposition that McCabe and Page came to Baker “contemporaneously” and told him details of the meeting where Rosenstein made the comments about the wearing of a wire. Baker told congressional investigators he took the word of McCabe and Page “seriously.”

McCabe told CBS News that “I think the general counsel had a heart attack” when he told him of Rosenstein’s plan.

McCabe added, “And when he got up off the floor, he said, ‘I, I, that’s a bridge too far. We’re not there yet.”

The plot thickened when days later, Rosenstein appointed former FBI Director Robert Mueller as a special counsel to oversee the bureau’s investigation into allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials through the Russia probe, which has also involved examining whether the president obstructed justice.

Rosenstein, who has repeatedly has denied he “pursued or authorized recording the president,” has denied McCabe’s suggestion that the deputy attorney general had broached the idea of invoking the Constitution’s 25th Amendment.

The 25th Amendment allows Cabinet members to seek the removal of a president if they conclude that he or she is mentally unfit.

The Justice Department resonated both denials in a statement released last week and said that Rosenstein “was not in a position to consider invoking the 25th Amendment.”

This differs from what McCabe said in the interview, “Rod raised the [25th Amendment] issue and discussed it with me in the context of thinking about how many other Cabinet officials might support such an effort.” He then added that he believed Rosenstein was “counting votes or possible votes” to remove Trump from office.

Baker, in his testimony to Congress, provided even more details about the alleged 25th Amendment discussions and said that two Cabinet officials were “ready to support” such an effort.

Baker testified, “I was being told by some combination of Andy McCabe and Lisa Page, that, in a conversation with the Deputy Attorney General, he had stated that he…this was what was related to me…that he had at least two members of the president’s Cabinet who were ready to support, I guess you would call it, an action under the 25th Amendment.”

Allegedly, Rosenstein told McCabe he might be able to persuade then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and then-Secretary of Homeland Security and later White House chief of staff John Kelly to invoke the 25th Amendment.

This whole scenario stinks of a Coup d’etat to me. It is my opinion that the “insurance policy” was contrived to take the newly elected President Trump out of office. Sadly, the Mueller lead Russia investigation was started with fabricated lies that were written about in the mainstream media and given relevance and then were blown up by the Democrats.

Now, go back to Pelosi’s description of the “wrap-up smear” and it will all make perfect sense to you as it is to me.

The “Deep State” is alive and well and living in the murky waters of “the swamp.”