Russiagate: Dig Dong, McCabe is Out

Sessions fires McCabe before he can retire

Attorney General Jeff Sessions late Friday night accepted the recommendation that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who took the reins of the agency during the turbulent days after the abrupt firing of James Comey, be terminated — two days before he was to retire and become eligible for full pension benefits.
. . .
"After an extensive and fair investigation and according to Department of Justice procedure, the Department’s Office of the Inspector General provided its report on allegations of misconduct by Andrew McCabe to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility," Sessions said in a statement at about 10 p.m. ET Friday night. "The FBI’s OPR then reviewed the report and underlying documents and issued a disciplinary proposal recommending the dismissal of Mr. McCabe. Both the OIG and FBI OPR reports concluded that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions."

Clearly making a pitch to become an MSNBC commentator McCabe wrapped himself in the FBI flag:

In statement released after the firing was announced, McCabe said: "This attack on my credibility is one part of a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals more generally. It is part of this Administration’s ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation, which continue to this day. Their persistence in this campaign only highlights the importance of the Special Counsel’s work."

Also, from Stacy McCain: Jeff Sessions Fires Andrew McCabe

Consequences?

Fox News reporter Adam Housley reported on Twitter [Friday night] about the firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, stating his sources were telling him that in the past few days McCabe threatened to “take people down with him” if he was fired. Housley also reported that the Inspector General-Office of Professional Responsibility report had uncovered “tons of stuff” on McCabe unrelated to the Trump investigation and that McCabe’s firing was a morale boost to FBI agents.

No doubt the liberal media will try to portray this as a political vendetta on the part of President Trump, but it appears McCabe was dishonest, and that the FBI had been corrupted during eight years of Eric Holder’s tenure as Attorney General. Clinton broke the law when she used a private email server to conduct official business while Secretary of State; she then obstructed justice by concealing facts from federal investigators. McCabe was apparently part of that cover-up.

When going to the mat,
With an old bureaucrat,
You can threaten him with Hell's own fiery pits.
But if you want to feel the hate,
From a DC invertebrate,
Just threat his "god given" benefits. https://t.co/syekJ7b1w7

— I Came; I Saw; I Got Over Macho Grande (@smitty_one_each) March 16, 2018

In other news, heading off with Stacy McCain, if only for the title, more of the picture comes into focus on why Strzok and Page were demoted, and why FISA judge Contreras was recused: More Skeezy Activities by Obama DOJ Lovebirds Page and Strzok Revealed

Skeezy:

Newly discovered text messages obtained by The Federalist reveal two key federal law enforcement officials conspired to meet with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) judge who presided over the federal case against Michael Flynn. The judge, Rudolph Contreras, was recused from handling the case just days after accepting the guilty plea of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser who was charged with making false statements to federal investigators.
The text messages about Contreras between controversial Department of Justice lawyer Lisa Page and Peter Strzok… were deliberately hidden from Congress, multiple congressional investigators told The Federalist. . . .
The pair even schemed about how to set up a cocktail or dinner party just so Contreras, Strzok, and Page could speak without arousing suspicion that they were colluding. Strzok expressed concern that a one-on-one meeting between the two men might require Contreras’ recusal from matters in which Strzok was involved.

Ace points out that these texts were redacted from what were turned over to Congress, and hints that maybe “a high-level official at the FBI or DOJ was responsible for this deliberate withholding of information from Congress.” Could this be a reference to Andrew McCabe?

Ace: The Federalist: Judge Who Presided Over Michael Flynn's Guilty Plea, And Then Mysteriously Recused Himself, Was Friends With Peter Strzok; Strzok and Page Conspired to Arrange Dinner Parties Where They Could Talk to Judge Without Alerting Others to Their

We're gonna need a bigger special counsel.

And these emails were hidden and never disclosed to Congress. Hmmm. I wonder why.
. . .
I wonder if a high-level official at the FBI or DOJ was responsible for this deliberate withholding of information from Congress.

You mean say, like McCabe, or Comey? What about Rod Rosenstein? It must be handy to have a FISA judge in your pocket. New Text Msgs Reveal FBI Agent was Friends with Judge in Flynn Case.

“Why did Contreras recuse himself?” said Jordan. “Text messages show he had a relationship with Strzok… Why did the DOJ make it difficult for us to get the information? To me, those are the two fundamental questions. We don’t know that answers to either one of those ”

Jordan noted that the text messages provide some context but that some of the communications are not completely clear. He added what is “clear is that the back and forth exchange shows that Strzok and (Contreras) were friends. But we don’t know if the discussion regarding recusal has anything to do with Russia or if they were referring to another case. What we do know is that Contreras recused himself after the guilty plea but we still don’t know why?”

Molly Hemingway: REVEALED: Peter Strzok Had Personal Relationship With Recused Judge In Michael Flynn Case

Flynn’s guilty plea was accepted in federal court by Contreras on December 1, 2017. The New York Times reported the next day that Strzok, who left the FBI to work for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, had been removed from the case by Mueller due to inappropriate text messages between Strzok and another federal official, now believed to be DOJ attorney Lisa Page. On December 5, 2017, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to FBI director Christopher Wray demanding text messages from Strzok as well as any notes he took regarding his interviews with Flynn. Contreras was recused from the Flynn case on December 7, 2017, and the case was reassigned to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, according to federal court documents.

Neither Contreras nor federal judiciary officials have publicly indicated the reason for Contreras’ removal from the case. Contreras’ office declined to comment on inquiries asking about his relationship with Strzok, or why he was not recused from the Flynn case until after he had accepted Flynn’s guilty plea.

Acquit Michael Flynn now:

Former FBI Supervisor: I Warned Comey In 2014 That Warrantless Surveillance Was “Ripe For Potential Abuses”

Think this will merit a chapter in James Comey’s upcoming memoirs? I’d bet … no. Almost four years ago, the man in charge of the FBI’s section on communications analysis raised alarms on the warrantless-surveillance program exposed by Edward Snowden the year before. He went to Comey to warn the then-director that not only was the program ineffective, it created unnecessary burdens on investigators and created openings for “potential abuses” of authority. Now retired, Bassem Youssef tells The Hill’s John Solomon and Alison Spann that Comey ignored the warnings:

An official who supervised the FBI’s Section 215 warrantless phone surveillance program revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013 says he warned then-Director James Comey it was woefully ineffective in catching terrorists and needed to be modified.
Retired Special Agent Bassem Youssef, the chief of the FBI’s Communications Analysis Unit, said in an exclusive interview with The Hill that no action was taken by Comey in response to the concerns he raised. …
Youssef, a decorated counterterrorism agent and prior FBI whistleblower, told The Hill that he sought in the summer of 2014 to get the FBI to reform the program out of concern it gave the FBI easy access to Americans’ telephone data, leaving it open to potential abuse while generating spurious connections between innocent people and bad actors.
“I believe that the program, as it was, was ripe for potential abuses,” he said. “I think that every law-abiding citizen should feel comfortable and secure in their home in terms of their privacy and that was not the case.”

The FBI has insisted that the Section 215 surveillance program has resulted in the disruption of many terror plots against the US, although the number keeps changing. Youssef puts the number at a firm … one. Even that was indirect to the case, Youssef claims in the video . . .

If you got the ability to spy essentially freely on your own people, would you give it up? Nope, someone is going to have to take it away from them.

Finally Ace sings the praises of an article I linked yesterday: The Real Collusion Story: How Hillary, the DNC, Brennan, Clapper and Obama Conspired to Frame Trump for a Crime That Never Even Happened

This is a long piece. 14,000 words.

You should read it. Bookmark it if you don't have time to read it. It'll make for some good weekend reading.

By the way, this is from National Review. A lot of commenters keep saying that NR, as a whole, is part of the NeverTrump conspiracy-theory mass delusion. That's only partly true. Some there are obviously of that stripe, but others aren't.

This is the real story, the one that Washington Consensus doesn't know.

Or do they actually know it, but just won't tell it, as they long ago knew there was no Trump/Russia collusion?

Who's to say.

But read it. I promise, it's worth it.