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FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to Retire in Early 2018

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to Retire in Early 2018

Trump seems to celebrate on Twitter.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Andrew_G._McCabe.jpg

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has decided to retire by March as he has come under fire from Republicans in Congress due to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russia.

McCabe took over the FBI after Trump fired James Comey in May, but he has surfaced in the news recently after he supposedly appeared in anti-Trump texts between two FBI employees. He spent seven hours in front of the House Intelligence Committee earlier this week, frustrating Republicans with his non-answers.

McCabe’s full pension becomes available in early March so he has to make it at least until then. From The Washington Post:

When Trump fired Comey in May, McCabe stayed to run the agency until a new director was in place and to take the political heat for decisions made by his former boss.

“Andy’s in a difficult position now . . . because of the hyperpartisan political environment,’’ said John Pistole, who held the FBI’s No. 2 job for six years under former director Robert S. Mueller III. Mueller now serves as special counsel, running the investigation into whether any Trump associates conspired with Russian agents to interfere with the 2016 election.

Pistole said McCabe “is weathering the storm.”

“It’s disappointing,” he added, “to see how the criticism of the FBI is being used to try to undermine the credibility of the Mueller investigation. I think they’ve figured out they can’t undermine Bob’s integrity, so they’re just going to go after whoever they can dig up any dirt on.’’

The Dossier

McCabe testified before the committee about the dossier produced against Trump and the FBI’s investigation into then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server. He could not provide them much information and actually contradicted testimonies given by previous witnesses. Now the committee will issue new subpoenas next week.

McCabe told the panel that the FBI worked hard “to verify the contents of the anti-Trump ‘dossier’ and stood by its credibility.” However, he could not tell the lawmakers if “the bureaur has been able to verify the substantive allegations in the dossier, or even identify a substantive allegation that has been corroborated.”

The lawmakers asked him which part of the dossier was true and McCabe only pointed to the part “that the unpaid, low-level Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page visited Moscow in July 2016.”

Fox News reported:

The sources said that when asked when he learned that the dossier had been funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, McCabe claimed he could not recall – despite the reported existence of documents with McCabe’s own signature on them establishing his knowledge of the dossier’s financing and provenance.

The Anti-Trump Texts

I blogged last week that Republicans may end up at a dead end if they focus on the infamous “insurance policy” text message between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Mueller removed Strzok from his investigation last summer when he discovered the texts. Fox News reported at the time:

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office – that there’s no way he gets elected – but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” Strzok texted on Aug. 15, 2016. “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

Some lawmakers surmise “Andy” is a reference to Andrew McCabe, and now want to know about his communications with Page and Strzok.

“This [text] is the one that concerns me the most,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said on “Fox & Friends” Thursday, one day after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein defended the Mueller probe in testimony before Goodlatte’s committee.

“Andy is presumably Andrew McCabe … and this text is very troubling because it suggests that they’re doing something, they have a plan to take action to make sure that Donald Trump does not get elected president of the United States at the highest levels of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Journalist Del Quentin Wilbur unleashed a tweet storm that reminded people Strzok and Page didn’t like a lot of people, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), former Attorney General Eric Holder, and Chelsea Clinton.

A readout on these texts showed Wilbur that Strzok and Page had a concern about competence.

Trump’s Wrath

Of course Trump unloaded on the news on Twitter:

Trump does have a point. Republicans have long thought that Hillary received special treatment from the FBI during the investigation. Those who sit on the Intelligence Committee said McCabe’s testimony to them did not sway them to change their mind. The testimony took place behind closed doors so we do not know exactly what McCabe told them.

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Comments

Not good enough. If he helped destroy our justice system then he needs to be destroyed.

    This is America. We don’t destroy criminals. We imprison them.

    So imprison McCabe – next door to hillary klinton. And at the rate things are going, McCabe’s cellmate just might be Sessions.

      I would love to see Trump fire McCabe 60 days before he qualifies for a full pension.

      It’s pretty obvious why McCabe has let this slip out – he knows his career is finished, and he’s trying to talk them into laying off, and letting him limp his way to a pension before he gets the boot.

His boss, Sessions, allowed him to get away with being evasive when testifying before the U.S. freakin’ Congress. Who the hell is running the DOJ, McCabe or Sessions? Sessions should fire him for being evasive. Where I went to prep schhol, the honor code forbade a boy from being evasive when questioned. You would get kicked out of school.

Inside the beltway, evasion and subterfuge seem to be SOP. Sessions has to go. He has no cojones.

    MarkS in reply to tiger66. | December 23, 2017 at 8:46 pm

    Sessions is not running the DOJ, he is being run by the DOJ

    Sessions is as likely compromised – and kept on a short leash – by some past corruptions as that pathetic drunk boehner was.

    Everybody is catching on. Sessions is not long for the job, and he’ll likely resign in disgrace.

      I have been following Session for almost 10 years. I disagree with you. He stuck by Trump when nobody else was. I am still holding on to the fact that when he is in action, he has some of the most common sense logic I have ever seen.

      I think he is hanging low for a reason. I think he knows how to get even. It is IMO, but I still believe in the guy.

4th armored div | December 23, 2017 at 7:45 pm

if McCabe broke the law, why is he allowed to get a pension ?????

If you crossed CA governor moonbeam brown with jeb! bush, you’d get McCabe.

If he isn’t a spitting image of a morph between the two….

I remember when LI comment threads were not the SwineReports, and any comment mentioning The NOT-Conservative Tree Sloughs was a laugher.

Talk about corruption of an institution…

    The only corruption is you, a bitter old butt hurt that stands with the progs on everything. The whole damn government has been exposed as a corrupt cesspool and all you can do is rant your Trump hatred.

    Tell us about your character some more.

Seems the bright-bark team is now occupying LI

McCabe is trying to get out of there as fast as he can. Once retired, he can refuse house/senate requests to testify.

McCabe has developed severe memory defects, which appear to have begun only recently, co-incident with his testimony. Perhaps he can seek a medical retirement immediately, based upon a diagnosis of rapid-onset Alzheimer’s Disease.

That’s “president Trump”, dear.