The FBI has a long and sordid history of breaking the law to infiltrate and disrupt peaceful protest groups and stifle dissent against Americaâs war machine and racist oppression.
This is a tiny potato.
So he was fired 26 hours before he was set to retire, now heâs being investigated for possibly deceiving investigators about the approval of a media disclosure?
Nice to see Trumpâs desire of punishing opponents is being kept in check.
This might just be what a witch hunt looks like.
Yet another reminder that Comey was not one of the good guys. He put his thumb on the scales for Trump hoping to pick up some brownie points with Republicans in Congress. He thought that he could not be dismissed before his term was up.
Trump would have been perfectly entitled to sack Comey when he entered office just like G. W. Bush sacked Freeh when he came into office. But not after asking him to drop the Flynn probe knowing that the trail would lead to his own criminality.
McCabe has little to fear as there is really no possibility of a jury convicting him and he will definitely get his pension restored by the next administration.
McCabe has denied the allegations that he intentionally misguided Comey or investigators and has claimed that Comey knew about the media disclosures.
Some unusual issues have cropped up around the FBI leadership of late. Based on how Comey and Rosenstein have comported themselves and said, I wonder how much of the GOPâs culture war craziness has infected the FBI leadership in an institution traditionally and still mostly focused on crime.
I understand that TPM readers have a reflexive reaction (which I share) to defend McCabe and justify his actions. But we donât really know what he did. If he did mislead or deceive investigators intentionally, he ought to be prosecuted. He was the No. 2 guy at the FBI. If he broke the law, and if we we want to curb the agencyâs propensity to operate outside the law, McCabe would be a good person to start with.
The matter was referred to the US Attorney to make a decision about further action, if any. There is no way that the office could responsibly conduct that investigation without questioning Comey, since one of the allegations is that McCabe didnât tell the truth to Comey.
First, neither McCabe nor Comey is a democrat or a liberal.
One can view this abstractly as three sides: Democrats (âloyal oppositionâ), Republicans, and Trumpers. Republicans have some problems operating ethically while placating the Trumpers. Comey tried to placate, but he would only go so far. McCabe didnât even try.
Did he mislead investigators? idgaf.
My bet is that McCabe is being harrassed, but wonât be charged owing to 1. Difficulty of proving to a jury, his intent, 2. Trumpâs unhinged tweets about him have predjudiced the case and 3. No way does the FBI and DOJ want to be subjected to discovery by McCabeâs attorneys, one of whom us an ex DOJ IG.
Maybe but until McCabe Doesnât come clean and says âyes we did screw Hillary in the days before the election, because . We overdid it and got trump elected, which is a national tragedy, we deserved getting fired and screwed with an unscaled fishâ there will be no sympathy from me.
Not everyone Trump targets is without blame, but all are targeted unjustly (because justice, like felonies, requires intent, and Trump has no capability of intending to be just or fair).
Did McCabe break the law? Maybe. Is it just and correct that he is being targeted and pursued by Trumpâs investigators? Absolutely not. Where that âjusticeâ matters is that a lot of crimes (a lot of crimes) go unpunished or lightly punished, including those like what McCabe is accused of. Trump is putting his tiny little baby thumbs on the scales of justice here, making those crimes seem as large as he can, which all good people should stand against.
In the end, I think Ralph_VonHoist above has it right. Trump has prejudiced the case and no judge would allow prosecution to go forward, as the first institutional line of defense, and even if they do go forward things would have to get really bad before what would come out in discovery would look âgoodâ for Trump in comparison. The fact that generally such a crime as alleged here would be dealt with administratively at worst (and stripping a man of his pension seems like a pretty severe administrative punishment) just adds to the fact that the worst that will come of this is a report and fuel for angry distraction tweets.