McCabe Fired

Brightdreamer

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Shame. It's just so vindictive. I can't wait for this debacle to be over.

Assuming it ends with actual improvement, and not an even worse debacle, I agree - though I don't know that we can make that assumption anymore. This whole fiasco has exposed some deep-running rot, that it even got this bad in the first place, and it won't be a simple fix to keep it from happening again.

As for this move, agree that it's vindictive and petty and absolutely emblematic of this regime. Surprised they didn't give him a wedgie on the way out.
 

Catherine

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As for this move, agree that it's vindictive and petty and absolutely emblematic of this regime. Surprised they didn't give him a wedgie on the way out.

I think they saved the wedgie for Tillerson.

As far as this turning into something worse--I'm hoping it leads to impeachment. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but this can't go on for the entire four years.
 

Brightdreamer

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As far as this turning into something worse--I'm hoping it leads to impeachment. Maybe I'm too optimistic, but this can't go on for the entire four years.

I want to believe, too... though the cynic in me can't help wondering how many people in Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, etc., hunkered down in a country they no longer recognized, told themselves again and again "This can't go on another year... this can't go on another year..."
 

Kjbartolotta

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I want to believe, too... though the cynic in me can't help wondering how many people in Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, etc., hunkered down in a country they no longer recognized, told themselves again and again "This can't go on another year... this can't go on another year..."

They ended too. God help us, we just have to get through it. Even Putin will be out of power some day. *vague platitude*
 

nighttimer

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I have a hope. My hope is not that Robert Mueller's grand jury hands down indictments of Trump and the whole rotten gang of thugs and thieves in his shitty administration. No, my hope is somewhere in the CIA or the FBI or the NSA, there is the next Mark Felt who goes to the press or the public with THE Story that pulls down this whole rotten criminal cabal.

I cannot believe there are no patriots in the government who are looking aghast in horror and disgust at what Trump is doing to national security and this nation's national security agencies, how he has humiliated and disrespected their work and gotten rid of first James Comey and maliciously destroyed James McCabe's career and now denied him his pension out of pure spitefulness.

Mostly for the unforgivable sin of not pledging his undying loyalty to Trump.

It's not a matter of "if" Trump comes for Robert Mueller's head. It's a matter of when and he'll get it and do not look to Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer or Paul Ryan to stop him from taking it. We already knew this was a stupid man in the White House. Now we have yet another reminder of how vicious, petty and venal it is. So when Trump fires Sessions so he can appoint another stooge who hasn't recused himself to fire Mueller and Ron Rothestein, don't come off as shocked by any of it. This was as inevitable as the sunrise following the sunset.

If our intelligence community does not defend itself and the nation it is sworn to defend from the depravities of Donald J. Trump, Putin's President, who's left to do it?
 
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travelgal

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Trump is the Nero of America. He'll burn the country before he goes down.

Putin must be laughing his way all the way to the bank.
 

Snitchcat

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I'm more upset at the fact that my friends, who live in the US, have to go through this, and there's next-to-nothing I can do to help them.
 

cbenoi1

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I want to believe, too... though the cynic in me can't help wondering how many people in Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, etc., hunkered down in a country they no longer recognized, told themselves again and again "This can't go on another year... this can't go on another year..."
The Boiling Frog(tm) principle. Even if you do manage to kick the bums out I hope you realize the stink is not going to come off that easily.

-cb
 

Jolly-Boo

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I'm shocked he wasn't fired via twitter.

I imagine you'd have to look pretty far to find someone in the intelligence community who isn't biased against Trump or at the very least doesn't have the occasional "what a moron!" moment.
 

ap123

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I have a hope. My hope is not that Robert Mueller's grand jury hands down indictments of Trump and the whole rotten gang of thugs and thieves in his shitty administration. No, my hope is somewhere in the CIA or the FBI or the NSA, there is the next Mark Felt who goes to the press or the public with THE Story that pulls down this whole rotten criminal cabal.

I cannot believe there are no patriots in the government who are looking aghast in horror and disgust at what Trump is doing to national security and this nation's national security agencies, how he has humiliated and disrespected their work and gotten rid of first James Comey and maliciously destroyed James McCabe's career and now denied him his pension out of pure spitefulness.

Mostly for the unforgivable sin of not pledging his undying loyalty to Trump.

It's not a matter of "if" Trump comes for Robert Mueller's head. It's a matter of when and he'll get it and do not look to Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer or Paul Ryan to stop him from taking it. We already knew this was a stupid man in the White House. Now we have yet another reminder of how vicious, petty and venal it is. So when Trump fires Sessions so he can appoint another stooge who hasn't recused himself to fire Mueller and Ron Rothestein, don't come off as shocked by any of it. This was as inevitable as the sunrise following the sunset.

If our intelligence community does not defend itself and the nation it is sworn to defend from the depravities of Donald J. Trump, Putin's President, who's left to do it?

I hope you're right, and wish for the same. My fear is rooted in the longer this goes on, the harder it will be for that as-yet-imaginary patriot to take action from a position of power, and the fewer people will be left to take action on his/her action.
In the meantime, there are still many levels of hell waiting for us. In addition to the steps being taken to strip democracy out of our country through appointing unqualified and heavily biased judges, repealing regulatory restrictions, stripping rights and freedoms, and very real possibility of war (nuclear and otherwise), the people who used to be the most extreme of paranoid, we-will-defend-ourselves, stockpiling don't-take-our-guns extremists have grown in number, completely emboldened by our current government.

I really wish people would stop making jokes about this administration's bumbling missteps, they've been more than effective.
 

Brightdreamer

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It's not a matter of "if" Trump comes for Robert Mueller's head. It's a matter of when and he'll get it and do not look to Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer or Paul Ryan to stop him from taking it. We already knew this was a stupid man in the White House. Now we have yet another reminder of how vicious, petty and venal it is. So when Trump fires Sessions so he can appoint another stooge who hasn't recused himself to fire Mueller and Ron Rothestein, don't come off as shocked by any of it. This was as inevitable as the sunrise following the sunset.

Totally agreeing, here - and that man only has this much latitude, and this much power, because others handed it to him and refuse to take it away. He was, and remains, a distraction from the real and lasting, possibly permanent crippling of our nation, our world even.

As for the firing, I keep seeing "rapid response" things circulating online, promising an immediate public walkout in response to a Mueller sacking. I wish I could believe it would do any good... the will of the public seems like an afterthought at best to this regime, which is apparently answerable to nobody - nobody in this country, at any rate...
 

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McCabe is not going gentle into that good night. Here's McCabe's Statement.

For the last year and a half, my family and I have been the targets of an unrelenting assault on our reputation and my service to this country. Articles too numerous to count have leveled every sort of false, defamatory and degrading allegation against us. The President's tweets have amplified and exacerbated it all. He called for my firing. He called for me to be stripped of my pension after more than 20 years of service. And all along we have said nothing, never wanting to distract from the mission of the FBI by addressing the lies told and repeated about us.
No more.

Here's what McCabe says about the ostensible disciplinary reason to fire him:

The OIG investigation has focused on information I chose to share with a reporter through my public affairs officer and a legal counselor. As Deputy Director, I was one of only a few people who had the authority to do that. It was not a secret, it took place over several days, and others, including the Director, were aware of the interaction with the reporter. It was the type of exchange with the media that the Deputy Director oversees several times per week. In fact, it was the same type of work that I continued to do under Director Wray, at his request. The investigation subsequently focused on who I talked to, when I talked to them, and so forth. During these inquiries, I answered questions truthfully and as accurately as I could amidst the chaos that surrounded me. And when I thought my answers were misunderstood, I contacted investigators to correct them.

I believe him. I believe that he followed the appropriate FBI process.

Here is the reality: I am being singled out and treated this way because of the role I played, the actions I took, and the events I witnessed in the aftermath of the firing of James Comey. The release of this report was accelerated only after my testimony to the House Intelligence Committee revealed that I would corroborate former Director Comey's accounts of his discussions with the President. The OIG's focus on me and this report became a part of an unprecedented effort by the Administration, driven by the President himself, to remove me from my position, destroy my reputation, and possibly strip me of a pension that I worked 21 years to earn. The accelerated release of the report, and the punitive actions taken in response, make sense only when viewed through this lens. Thursday's comments from the White House are just the latest example of this.

I believe that this is #45's desire for revenge and, even more, his desire to stop any investigation that will get too close to his ties to Russia and #45's business practices.
 

cbenoi1

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I believe that this is #45's desire for revenge and, even more, his desire to stop any investigation that will get too close to his ties to Russia and #45's business practices.
I also believe there will be plenty of rank-and-file agents who will work odd hours - for free. There is no stopping this freight train. It's all about timing now.

-cb
 

MaeZe

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I'm shocked he wasn't fired via twitter.

I imagine you'd have to look pretty far to find someone in the intelligence community who isn't biased against Trump or at the very least doesn't have the occasional "what a moron!" moment.

Trump did not have the authority to fire him or he might have. Technically he had to go through Sessions the same way Trump can't fire Mueller directly. Instead Trump pressured Sessions who himself is putting up with being called Mr Magoo in public by Trump and knows he's walking on shaky ground. Sessions just proved he's nothing but a weak-willed ass-kisser.

What may be of interest is who was involved in and how the IG came out against McCabe. But we'll have to wait to find that out. I find it hard to believe there weren't some Trump lovers involved even if Trump didn't directly appoint any of them. And McCabe said his involvement in the leak was mischaracterized, so I'm holding out some benefit of the doubt.

Regardless, the punishment did not fit the offense, and I have to bite my tongue to get that out because McCabe was no more a saint than Comey was in this whole mess.

To hear Fox News tell it, McCabe committed the same crime as Flynn pleaded guilty to. The hypocrisy reeks.

The irony of this bullshit: WA Po: Report said to fault FBI’s former No. 2 for approving improper media disclosure, misleading inspector general. The disclosure (aka leak) was that the FBI was investigating the Clinton Foundation.

The McCabe offense was indeed offensive, just like Comey's offense of discussing Clinton's email server investigation in public while keeping the investigation of the Trump campaign secret. Part of me wants to say fuck these assholes, they got the POTUS they wanted. And we're all suffering the consequences.

Going back further, the reason the FBI was investigating the Clinton Foundation was almost entirely partisan based. There were more than a few FBI investigators so biased against Clinton they readily bought into the outright lies and misleading BS in the book, Clinton Cash. The book used misleading assertions and outright falsehoods supposedly establishing quid pro quo between donations to the Clinton Foundation and actions Clinton took as Secretary of State in the donors' favor.

The reason the investigation went nowhere, to the ire of those biased FBI investigators, is because there was no actual evidence of any quid pro quo. The timing of donations the book claimed were connected didn't match up at all. Many of the decisions attributed to Clinton were not made by her. And there were many supposedly corrupt donations to the Foundation that had actual, clearly not corrupt, charitable goals. The foundation has an excellent independent rating for the donated money going to the charities intended.

[Pro-Clinton digression into the foundation and Clintons, feel free to skip] The foundation did have failures or mistakes and actions imperfectly executed. Money spent on housing in Haiti went to a Clinton's friend's company and the housing was never built. Bill and Hillary do hobnob with world leaders and the obscenely rich. I am not saying the Clintons are saintly philanthropists. But the Clinton Foundation actually has provided many good works around the globe from work with HIV and AIDs to significant actions to promote women's economic independence.

There is no evidence it is or ever was some slush fund for the Clintons. And the speaking fees Hillary earned were not out of range for those of men with similar credentials. But it's so easy to feed anti-Clinton confirmation bias that has been cultivated for decades. Too many people want to believe the crap that is in the Clinton Cash book just as they want to believe the speaking fees Hillary earned must have been corrupt payments and must not have been deserved. [End digression before I start ranting. ;) ]
 
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MaeZe

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McCabe is not going gentle into that good night. Here's McCabe's Statement.

Here's what McCabe says about the ostensible disciplinary reason to fire him:

I believe him. I believe that he followed the appropriate FBI process.
I don't disagree. But there still is the FBI leaking and outright announcing the investigation into Clinton while keeping secret the investigation into Trump before the election.


I believe that this is #45's desire for revenge and, even more, his desire to stop any investigation that will get too close to his ties to Russia and #45's business practices.
Clearly.
 

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I don't disagree. But there still is the FBI leaking and outright announcing the investigation into Clinton while keeping secret the investigation into Trump before the election.

Yep. But that's not part of the current complaint from the DOJ (though I agree, it needs looking at).

And as usual with the current administration, I'm trying to figure out who wants to cover up what, and why, what's the issue and what's the smoke screen.
 

MaeZe

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Just Security (not sure of their cred. but the transcript is likely valid) has a transcript which shows that Sessions has violated his promise to recuse himself from matters such as the firing of McCabe, in this context.
GRASSLEY: During the course of the presidential campaign, you made a number of statements about the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, relating to her handling of sensitive emails and regarding certain actions of the Clinton Foundation. You weren’t alone in that criticism. I was certainly critical in the same way as were millions of Americans on those matters, but now, you’ve been nominated to serve as attorney general. In light of those comments that you made, some have expressed concerns about whether you can approach the Clinton matter impartially in both fact and appearance. How do you plan to address those concerns?

SESSIONS: Mr. Chairman, it was a highly contentious campaign. I, like a lot of people, made comments about the issues in that campaign. With regard to Secretary Clinton and some of the comments I made, I do believe that that could place me objectivity in question. I’ve given that thought.

I believe the proper thing for me to do, would be to recuse myself from any questions involving those kind of investigations that involve Secretary Clinton and that were raised during the campaign or to be otherwise connected to it.

GRASSLEY: OK. I think, that’s — let me emphasize then with a follow up question. To be very clear, you intend to recuse yourself from both the Clinton e-mail investigation and any matters involving the Clinton Foundation, if there are any?

SESSIONS: Yes.

Guess it was a risk Sessions didn't want to take, reminding Trump again that Sessions had recused himself.
 
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Larry M

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... And as usual with the current administration, I'm trying to figure out who wants to cover up what, and why, what's the issue and what's the smoke screen.

That would be, IMO: 45's heavy involvement with Putin, the Russian oligarchs and their mob.

Ryan, McConnell, Cornyn, Nunes, Chaffetz, Gowdy, Cruz, and others are also deeply involved. Putin has something on all of them, and it's likely for different reasons than the hold he has on 45 - such as Russian tampering in the election. They are desperately trying to cover this up and make it go away to save their own sorry asses. Just my opinion, of course.
 
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MaeZe

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Hah! I hope McCabe takes advantage of this:

Representative Pocan Extends Job Offer to Andrew McCabe
WASHINGTON, DC (March 17, 2018) – U.S. Representative Mark Pocan (WI-02) today extended an offer of employment to Andrew McCabe, the former Deputy Director of the FBI, so that he can reach the needed length of service after President Trump fired him just days before he was set to retire.

“Andrew McCabe’s firing makes it clear that President Trump is doing everything he can to discredit the FBI and undermine the Special Counsel’s investigation,” said Rep. Pocan. “While Speaker Ryan and House Republicans have become complicit in the President’s destruction of our democracy, we must do all that we can to ensure that the investigation into Russia’s interference in our election is completed and that future elections are safeguarded from these kinds of attacks.”

"My offer of employment to Mr. McCabe is a legitimate offer to work on election security. Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of American democracy and both Republicans and Democrats should be concerned about election integrity,” continued Rep. Pocan. “From Governor Walker’s outrageous voter ID laws that kept an estimated 17,000 registered Wisconsin voters from the polls in 2016, to Republicans in Pennsylvania gerrymandering a map to rig elections in their favor, our electoral systems are under attack. We must take serious steps to not only secure our elections from foreign actors like Russia, but also ensure that the American people have faith that their votes matter.”

It's what the country needs, these legislators standing up to Trump.
 

ElaineA

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More than one congress member has made the offer. Also just saw a couple of tweets from Asha Rangappa (former FBI & current CNN analyst) about FBI agents who actually broke the law and were permitted to retire: John Connelly and John Morris, who protected Whitey Bulger were allowed to retire, and "Robert Hanson--who spied for the Russians for 18 yrs--was allowed to keep his pension. Also, McCabe has hired former DOJ Inspector General Michael Bromwich as his attorney. Obvs knows a thing or two about how this should have gone.

That said, as dirty as all this is, the GOP is still sitting in complicit silence. If they won't step up, there are very few avenues left for stopping Trump. He's obviously feeling triumphant, which makes me worry he's going to grow more and more brazen. Today feels incredibly grim to me.
 

Larry M

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... That said, as dirty as all this is, the GOP is still sitting in complicit silence. If they won't step up, there are very few avenues left for stopping Trump. He's obviously feeling triumphant, which makes me worry he's going to grow more and more brazen. Today feels incredibly grim to me.

I feel the same - grim. Congressional Republicans are ignoring the checks and balances built into the system. Clearly, they have no desire or need to call out 45 on his authoritarian behavior. Democracy is dying as a result of their silence and refusal to do their jobs.