Fired FBI Official Now Discovering The 'Civilian' Delight Of Being Jerked Around By Govt' Agencies

from the welcome-to-the-private-sector,-Andy dept

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's career came to a sudden end earlier this year. Following in his predecessor James Comey's footsteps, McCabe swiftly found himself on the front sidewalk with a Sessions footprint on his ass. An Inspector General's report followed soon after, detailing many reasons McCabe might have been fired -- lying to investigators, leaking stuff to the press, evading concerns about his investigative neutrality in light of his wife's acceptance of donations from a Clinton-linked PAC... We don't know if any of these are why Trump fired McCabe, but pretty much any one of these things makes a firing justifiable.

Lying to the FBI is serious business, even when it's just its oversight. Ask anyone who's been charged with nothing but lying when the FBI fails to build a better case. For McCabe, though, it was just a little "administrative misconduct." Something that could be addressed with a writeup or, in this case, a firing. That the trigger was pulled hours away from McCabe's retirement sucks for McCabe, but I find it very difficult to sympathize with career government employees who feel they're still owed a lifetime of retirement benefits after they've been fired for cause.

McCabe is still trying to get what he thinks taxpayers owe him. He claims the firing was "politically motivated." Given the general nature of Trump's personnel decisions, he's probably not wrong. But the IG report shows him engaged in behavior that could result in termination. McCabe doesn't believe that's the case and he's demanding the DOJ hand over documents and manuals related to internal policies and firing practices. And he's doing this like an actual civilian: by filing FOIA requests.

Unsurprisingly, that's not working. McCabe's lawyers are asking the DC court to force the DOJ to hand over all policies and manuals. As is argued in this quasi-FOIA lawsuit [PDF], the DOJ has been shirking its obligations to the public for decades.

Defendants have been required for over 50 years to proactively disclose the kinds of documents at issue here, and there is no just reason for either their failure to do so now or for any further delay. Defendants’ breach of their disclosure obligations have prejudiced Mr. McCabe and Plaintiff in fundamental ways, all of which flow from one of FOIA’s core concerns: No citizen should “los[e] a controversy with an agency because of some obscure and hidden [administrative material] which the agency knows about but which has been unavailable to the citizen simply because he had no way in which to discover it.”

His FOIA request was only a few days old at the time of the filing, so this lawsuit isn't really about non-responsiveness. It's about the DOJ deliberately playing keep-away with documents McCabe needs to determine whether or not his firing was done in accordance with DOJ policy.

This cannot possibly come as a surprise to McCabe. A career fed would know federal agencies don't turn over documents without a fight, even when their legal obligations are clear. The FBI is barely responsive to its own oversight, so there's no reason to believe the DOJ is going to proactively post documents for public consumption. And when it's facing a potential lawsuit over a firing, it's definitely going to amp up the stonewalling and denials. McCabe probably wouldn't have minded Joe Citizen being dicked around this way, but it irritates him when he's on the receiving end of treatment like this:

FOIA mandates that Defendants proactively disclose the applicable policies and procedures in an electronic format without waiting for an affirmative request. Defendants have failed to do so. When Plaintiff requested the pertinent documents, Defendants variously refused to comply and failed to properly, timely, or sufficiently respond. They even barred Plaintiff from accessing Defendants’ physical library, which contains some (or perhaps all) of the documents at issue here.

When you're forced out of government service, you suddenly become keenly aware of the injustices -- large and small -- perpetrated daily by federal agencies. For someone who used to be near the top of the fed food chain, this pettiness and opacity must be almost unbearable. When you're on the inside, it just looks like a measured response to stupid members of the public who won't mind their own business. But once you're on the outside looking in, you realize how much effort you must make just to force government agencies to comply with federal law and their own internal policies.

Filed Under: andrew mccabe, fbi, foia

Report Says Former FBI Official Andrew McCabe Lied About Self-Serving Leaks To Journalists

from the unfortunately-for-Trump,-both-Comey-and-McCabe-can't-both-be-lying dept

The Inspector General of the FBI has released a report detailing the incidents leading up to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's firing. Whether or not these were the reasons the White House chose to can him isn't confirmed, but the report [PDF] does show there was plenty of justification for his termination.

According to the report, McCabe violated FBI policy multiple times during the investigation process with dishonest or misleading answers while under oath. On top of that, his unauthorized disclosure of the status of a Clinton Foundation investigation to a Wall Street Journal reporter violated department policy on media relations.

The leaks appear to have been McCabe's damage control efforts. The Wall Street Journal had already published an article detailing McCabe's involvement in his wife's unsuccessful 2015 state senate campaign. During this run, McCabe's wife received $675,000 from a political action committee run by the state's governor (Terry McAuliffe) who had "long-standing ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton."

Given Clinton was one of the candidates in the 2016 presidential race, suggestions were made that McCabe should recuse himself from the investigation. The FBI's official statement said McCabe's supervision of the investigation did not begin until after his wife's senate campaign was over. But the WSJ article painted a different picture: McCabe's office provided personnel and resources to the Clinton Foundation investigation while his wife was still campaigning (and receiving money from a PAC tied to a Clinton buddy).

With another article two days away, the WSJ reached the FBI for comment on McCabe's involvement. At that point, McCabe apparently took a hands-on approach. The info the WSJ had contradicted McCabe's own narrative about recusing himself from the investigation. Instead, the journalist had sources stating McCabe had tried to kill the Clinton Foundation investigation.

According to Special Counsel’s contemporaneous notes of the call and testimony to the OIG, she and AD/OPA learned during the first call that Barrett had sources who were adamant that McCabe gave a purported order to “stand down” on the CF Investigation before the 2016 presidential election, implying that McCabe wanted to shut down the investigation for improper reasons.

McCabe -- engaging in several texts and phone calls with FBI media intermediaries -- provided the WSJ with a different narrative. The OIG report quotes the WSJ article:

According to a person familiar with the probes, on Aug. 12, a senior Justice Department official called Mr. McCabe to voice his displeasure at finding that New York FBI agents were still openly pursuing the Clinton Foundation probe during the election season. Mr. McCabe said agents still had the authority to pursue the issue as long as they didn’t use overt methods requiring Justice Department approvals.

The Justice Department official was “very pissed off,” according to one person close to McCabe, and pressed him to explain why the FBI was still chasing a matter the department considered dormant. . . .

“Are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?” Mr. McCabe asked, according to people familiar with the conversation. After a pause, the official replied “Of course not,” these people said.

Following this spin attempt, McCabe then began ringing up field offices and "admonishing them for leaks." These would be the same leaks McCabe provided to the WSJ. While officials in New York and DC remember these calls from McCabe, McCabe apparently does not.

From that point on, the report details several divergences between McCabe's sworn statements and those of others, like then-FBI director James Comey. McCabe, however, could not present a clear timeline of this authorization when questioned by FBI investigators. And so it goes for several pages, with McCabe's testimony being disputed by everyone else involved. Not only does Comey not recall there being any leak authorization, but that McCabe himself presented the leak to Comey as unauthorized.

I have a strong impression he conveyed to me “it wasn’t me boss.” And I don’t think that was by saying those words, I think it was most likely by saying “I don’t know how this shit gets in the media or why would people talk about this kind of thing,” words that I would fairly take as “I, Andy, didn’t do it.” And I actually didn’t suspect Andy, after conversations with [my chief of staff], my worry was, was his aide [Special Counsel] doing it.

McCabe's Chief of Staff also had no idea McCabe was behind the leak. In fact, the COS felt the leak did more harm than good, benefitting McCabe at the expense of the FBI and DOJ.

I just can't imagine that the Deputy would have authorized the leak. It just doesn't seem to serve, I mean, I guess it serves, it serves the purpose of the Deputy by saying, hey look, do you want us to shut this thing down? I guess it serves Andy in that way, but it really, it really highlights a dysfunction between the FBI and the, and DOJ. And to that end, it doesn't really serve the greater good.

The denials of wrongdoing by McCabe are rebutted thoroughly by the OIG report. Some are as simple as noting clear discrepancies between McCabe's testimony and that of others involved. Some are even worse, showing someone running a fine-tuned surveillance apparatus somehow thought his own communications would escape the attention of investigators.

[W]with regard to McCabe’s claim that he did not know where Special Counsel was or what she was doing during the relevant time period, FBI records show that McCabe was in frequent telephone and text communication with Special Counsel during that time period and had several communications with her regarding her calls with [WSJ journalist Devlin] Barrett, including a 51 minute call after her first call with Barrett and a 23 minute call after her final call with Barrett. McCabe’s own text messages reflect that McCabe was keenly interested to learn about the results of Special Counsel’s calls with Barrett. We therefore found that McCabe’s claimed ignorance regarding Special Counsel’s activities on those days was demonstrably false.

Unfortunately, there's a portion of the populace that feels anyone the Trump Administration fires is a martyr to the Resistance cause. And they're putting their money where their bias is. McCabe's legal defense crowdfunding effort raised more than $500,000, showing there are plenty of Americans willing to hand additional money to a well-paid public servant who committed career suicide by apparently covering up his involvement in a self-serving leak.

McCabe's legal team has issued a response [PDF] to the OIG report which takes issue with a few of its conclusions. About the only rebuttal with merit is related to the leak. As his legal team points out, McCabe was authorized to selectively leak information to journalists, much like many high-ranking government officials. The rest of it is little more than semi-plausible explanations as to why there might be an incredible amount of inconsistencies in McCabe's sworn testimony.

There are reasons to be concerned about how the firing was handled. McCabe was basically 24 hours away from qualifying for a pension, so the decision to fire him rather than let him resign looks more vindictive than judicious. And while McCabe's leak may have given some people the impression FBI investigations weren't subject to personal political leanings, it appears to have been pushed out to clear McCabe of any Clinton-related suspicions, rather than serve the greater purpose of protecting the reputation of the FBI or DOJ.

Filed Under: andrew mccabe, coverups, doj, fbi, hillary clinton, leaks, lies