This week former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe made a great many shocking and disturbing statements about his decision to initiate both a counter-intelligence and obstruction of justice investigation against Donald Trump. He also elaborated why he placed those investigations into the hands of special counsel Robert Mueller, as well as the investigation of Russians who had attacked the 2016 election and at least four individuals within the Trump campaign who had interacted with Russian intelligence assets during the campaign. Many would argue that the most shocking was his statement that he and the Department of Justice had felt, after the firing of FBI director James Comey, that Trump himself may have been a Russian asset. Then there were the discussions he claims he had with deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein over the possible use of the 25th Amendment to have Trump removed by his cabinet as unfit for office or to have Rosenstein wear recording equipment to capture and record improper and illegal actions by Trump in real time.
However, there is a credibility issue hanging over all of these claims by McCabe based on the fact that he was fired by the FBI due to the DOJ Inspector General allegation that he lied to them during their investigation of leaks to the media which apparently came from within the FBI. He’s been repeatedly called a liar and a partisan hack by Trump supporters who’ve been able to use the Inspector General report to dismiss anything he’s said. In response he made probably the most shocking accusation yet: that the DOJ Inspector General, who was an Obama appointee, was not “unbiased” in their report, that their final analysis was “incomplete” and missing significant facts and even worse, that their conclusions were “rushed” and may have been influenced and pressured by the Trump administration to specifically undermine McCabe and allow for any future claims he made to be discounted and disavowed.
Is this last claim merely a deflection by McCabe intended to minimize his own wrongdoing, or is there evidence that the IG report against him truly could have been tainted, compromised, and biased by influence and pressure from the Trump administration?
McCabe made his defense argument during his interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper earlier this week.
The Inspector General report was initiated based on a release to Devlin Barrett of the Wall Street Journal, which described a contentious conversation between McCabe and the DOJ over whether the FBI should continue to pursue an investigation of the Clinton Foundation when the DOJ had decided that that case was essentially a dry hole and determined that they would not authorize any search warrants or subpoenas on the case.
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 Mr. McCabe, and pressed him to explain why the FBI was still chasing a matter the department considered dormant. Others said the Justice Department was simply trying to make sure FBI agents were following longstanding policy not to make overt investigative moves that could be seen as trying to influence an election. Those rules discourage investigators from making any such moves before a primary or general election, and, at a minimum, checking with anticorruption prosecutors before doing so.
“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.
McCabe was the source for this leak, using his press office to talk to Barrett and also his FBI counsel Lisa Page. Later, when FBI Director Comey discussed this report with McCabe, he said he didn’t know the source for this leak. As a result Comey initiated an investigation into the source, which was handed over to the Inspector General—and they eventually came to this conclusion.
We found that, in a conversation with then-Director Comey shortly after the WSJ article was published, McCabe lacked candor when he told Comey, or made statements that led Comey to believe, that McCabe had not authorized the disclosure and did not know who did. This conduct violated FBI Offense Code 2.5 (Lack of Candor – No Oath).
We also found that on May 9, 2017, when questioned under oath by FBI agents from INSD, McCabe lacked candor when he told the agents that he had not authorized the disclosure to the WSJ and did not know who did. This conduct violated FBI Offense Code 2.6 (Lack of Candor – Under Oath).
We further found that on July 28, 2017, when questioned under oath by the OIG in a recorded interview, McCabe lacked candor when he stated: (a) that he was not aware of Special Counsel having been authorized to speak to reporters around October 30 and (b) that, because he was not in Washington, D.C., on October 27 and 28, 2016, he was unable to say where Special Counsel was or what she was doing at that time. This conduct violated FBI Offense Code 2.6 (Lack of
Candor – Under Oath).
So on these three occasions McCabe denied being the source for the leak or knowing who was the source, but that changed and McCabe came forward voluntarily several months later and admitted that he was indeed the source. He explained to the IG that he had simply forgotten his involvement in the Wall Street Journal story. However, the IG claimed that this admission was itself “a lie.”
We additionally found that on November 29, 2017, when questioned under oath by the OIG in a recorded interview during which he contradicted his prior statements by acknowledging that he had authorized the disclosure to the WSJ, McCabe lacked candor when he: (a) stated that he told Comey on October 31, 2016, that he had authorized the disclosure to the WSJ; (b) denied telling INSD agents on May 9 that he had not authorized the disclosure to the WSJ about the PADAG call; and (c) asserted that INSD’s questioning of him on May 9 about the October 30 WSJ article occurred at the end of an unrelated meeting when one of the INSD agents pulled him aside and asked him one or two questions about the article. This conduct violated FBI Offense Code 2.6 (Lack of Candor – Under Oath).
The IG also claimed that although McCabe as FBI deputy director was authorized to release information to the press, they argued that there wasn’t a sufficient “public interest” to justify this release.
Lastly, we determined that as Deputy Director, McCabe was authorized to disclose the existence of the CF Investigation publicly if such a disclosure fell within the “public interest” exception in applicable FBI and DOJ policies generally prohibiting such a disclosure of an ongoing investigation. However, we concluded that McCabe’s decision to confirm the existence of the CF Investigation through an anonymously sourced quote, recounting the content of a phone call with a senior Department official in a manner designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of Department leadership, was clearly not within the public interest exception. We therefore concluded that McCabe’s disclosure of the existence of an ongoing investigation in this manner violated the FBI’s and the Department’s media policy and constituted misconduct.
In response to this, McCabe has said that the IG report is incomplete and inaccurate on several points and that it was unduly influenced by pressure from the Trump administration and rushed specifically in order to fire him before he reached full vesting for his retirement.
McCabe initially responded to the IG report with a scathing letter.
The OIG investigation has focused on information I chose to share with a reporter through my public affairs officer and a legal counselor. [Page] 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.
But looking at that in isolation completely misses the big picture. The big picture is a tale of what can happen when law enforcement is politicized, public servants are attacked, and people who are supposed to cherish and protect our institutions become instruments for damaging those institutions and people.
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.
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.
I have always prided myself on serving my country with distinction and integrity, and I always encouraged those around me to do the same. Just ask them. To have my career end in this way, and to be accused of lacking candor when at worst I was distracted in the midst of chaotic events, is incredibly disappointing and unfair. But it will not erase the important work I was privileged to be a part of, the results of which will in the end be revealed for the country to see.
I have unfailing faith in the men and women of the FBI and I am confident that their efforts to seek justice will not be deterred.
McCabe’s primary defense to all this is fairly simple: he forgot. During his discussion with Comey and in his first two informal questions with the Inspector General staff, he simply didn’t remember that he had authorized this release to the Wall Street Journal, and when he did eventually remember he voluntarily came forward on his own to correct the record with a formal interview.
The IG decided they didn’t believe him.
Now, it should be noted that this is merely their opinion because the IG may be an investigative body, but they aren’t a judge or a jury. McCabe hasn’t yet had a chance to offer his side of the story and have it determined that either his claims or the IG opinion is more valid. He hasn’t been convicted of anything, and under the rules that many in the GOP often flout these days, he should be considered “innocent until proven guilty” because at this point, nothing has been proven.
But could it possibly be true that the IG effectively railroaded him at the behest of Trump? That's a difficult pill to swallow, although there are several pieces of evidence that make this not exactly impossible.
First of all, there is the fact that the Trump administration is currently intervening in two other Inspector General investigations.
In the first, House Democrats have pointed out that the Trump admin has tried to interfere with an investigation of Education Secretary Betsy Devos by removing the Department of Education’s Inspector General.
Democrats suggested that the Trump administration tried to get rid of the Education Department’s acting inspector general, Sandra Bruce, for looking into Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ decision to reinstate an accreditor of for-profit colleges.
[...]
In a letter sent on Tuesday, five House and Senate Democrats referred to a letter sent on January 3 from Mick Zais, the deputy secretary of education, which asked Bruce’s office to “reconsider any plan it might have to review” the controversial decision to reinstate the accreditor, according to Politico, which has reviewed the letter. The letter was signed by Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), and Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI).
Democrats say Zais’ letter is a “clear attempt to violate the statutory independence” of the inspector general’s office. Zais also wrote that it is “disturbing that your office appears to be responding to a Congressional request that is really a disagreement over policy and the merits of the Department’s decision.” Democrats also said they want more documents about the decision to replace Bruce by March 5.
Secondly, Department of Homeland Security Inspector General John V. Kelly has written a scathing letter to Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen because her deputy Christine Ciccone, who used to work at the State Department under Rex Tillerson, has been refusing to meet with them as they investigate claims that she retaliated against employees at State who weren't “sufficiently loyal” to Trump, which would be a likely violation of the Hatch Act and civil service protections.
On March 15, Reps. Engel and Cummings released documents obtained by whistleblowers that showed senior Trump administration officials discussing the need to “clean house” at the Department, with political appointees targeting career civil servant employees they believed did not adequately support President Trump’s agenda. The State Department failed to reply to that letter and its requests for documents by a March 28 deadline.
“There should be no political litmus test for civil servants. In fact, our system depends on their willingness to serve the public through multiple administrations and their ability to provide professionalized and expert counsel no matter the party in power. Career State Department employees take an oath to uphold the Constitution; not to serve one Secretary, one President, one Congress, or one viewpoint. They serve the American people,” wrote the Ranking Members.
In his letter, the current Homeland Security IG stated the following:
Ciccone, Acting DHS Department Inspector General John V. Kelly wrote to DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen Wednesday, “is a key witness in State [Department Office of Inspector General] review; however, she has been unwilling to schedule an interview despite repeated requests made to both her and her attorney over many months.” (Read his full memo below.)
Kelly added later: “Ms. Ciccone’s handling of this situation is not consistent with her obligations as an employee under this directive. Further, Ms. Ciccone’s refusal to comply with State OIG’s request for an interview sets a dangerous precedent contrary to the fundamental tenants of the IG Act, with the potential to undermine our critical oversight function. Therefore, I recommend that you take appropriate disciplinary action against Ms. Ciccone.”
So it’s apparently not above the Trump administration to mess around with Inspector Generals, but did that happen in this particular case? At the moment, direct evidence of that is scarce, but circumstantial evidence abounds.
On Dec. 23, 2017 deputy FBI director McCabe announced that he’ll retire in 2018. That very same day, Trump tweet ranted about Clinton emails, Leakin’ Comey, and McCabe’s retirement.
Trump’s claim of impropriety here is actually bogus because Newsweek reported that in 2015 McCabe sought out advice on disassociating himself from his wife’s state Senate campaign in Virginia in order to comply with ethics and conflict of interest requirements. In short, he was advise to recuse on issues involving Clinton which touched on Terry McCauliff’s and his PAC, but it didn’t matter because his wife’s election was over before the Clinton investigation began.
On Friday, the FBI revealed that on April 29, 2015 it had informed McCabe, then the assistant director in charge of the bureau’s Washington field office, how he should act given that the “potential conflict of interest" of his wife’s state senate campaign. The memo, “Protocol Regarding Potential Conflicts of Interest,” also “identified several areas where [McCabe’s] disassociation would be appropriate.” It also referenced that his wife was being “supported by the governor of Virginia” and that McCabe had proactively approached Bureau colleagues for guidance.
The FBI investigation into Clinton’s emails began in July 2015, prior to the end of McCabe’s wife’s loss in November of that year. According to an internal memo released by the FBI on Friday McCabe only began overseeing the Clinton investigation in 2016, four months after his wife’s defeat at the polls.
And the suggestion that he was secretly a Democrat since he wife ran for office as a Democrat, which Trump brought up immediately after firing Comey as he began to grill him about who he voted for in the election [McCabe told him he didn’t vote], while complaining about his wife’s politics and her having accepted money from Terry McCauliff’s PAC is also wrong because CNN confirmed that McCabe didn’t vote in the 2016 Presidential Election, but he did vote during the GOP Primary — which meant he was probably registered as a Republican.
Also, NBC reported that Trump called McCabe on the day Comey was fired to complain about him using a Government plane to return to DC. McCabe said he wasn’t consulted on that then Trump asked “How it felt for his wife to lose” her bid for State Senator in Virginia. Trump has recently claimed innocence on this by saying “he didn’t say his wife was a loser to his face”, but that’s a petty moot point since the report was that this conversation was over the phone.
But there were more than just tweets and phone calls. There were also reports from Axios that then-FBI director Wray had threatened to resign because of pressure being applied on him by Trump and Sessions to fire his deputy Andrew McCabe.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions — at the public urging of President Donald Trump — has been pressuring FBI Director Christopher Wray to fire Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, but Wray threatened to resign if McCabe was removed, according to three sources with direct knowledge.
[...]
McGahn has been informed about these ongoing conversations, though he has not spoken with Wray about FBI personnel, according to an administration source briefed on the situation. Trump nominated Wray, previously an assistant attorney general under George W. Bush, last June to replace James Comey as director.
Trump has also tweeted negatively about other senior FBI officials who are allies of Comey, including the former top FBI lawyer James A. Baker who was recently “reassigned” after pressure from Sessions.
This effort was most likely made because McCabe continued to confirm statements by former FBI director James Comey about Trump’s attempts to get him to “let Flynn go” and demand his “loyalty.” On Dec. 19, 2017, deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe testified before the House Intelligence Committee behind closed doors for 14 hours.
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Leaks claim that Republican members complained that McCabe is “overly friendly” to Democratic members.
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McCabe confirmed Comey’s claims that Trump had repeatedly demanded his loyalty. In addition to contemporaneous notes Comey kept, he told McCabe about his private dinner meeting with Trump with the loyalty pledge as well as his February meeting, where Trump cleared the room and asked him to “go easy” on Michael Flynn.
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Republicans questioned McCabe intensely over the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation, suspecting it may have been rigged in her favor by FBI agent Peter Strzok. Rep. Jim Jordan states after the interview that "Everything that I've heard reinforces what I believed before."
In fairness, Wray later denied the report that he had threatened to resign to protect McCabe, but that’s fairly standard for the Trump administration.
It was also more than a bit curious that just 26 hours before McCabe was due to retire, he was summarily fired by Jeff Sessions, supposedly as a result of the Inspector General’s conclusions.
Jan. 29:
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Andrew McCabe very suddenly departs the FBI, as he has enough vacation until his retirement kicks in. This causes a new acting deputy director to be selected and highlights concerns that Christopher Wray may have finally caved under pressure.
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Comey praises McCabe for “standing tall.”
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NBC reports that Trump called McCabe on the day Comey was fired to complain about his use of a government plane to return to Washington. McCabe said he wasn’t consulted on that, and then Trump asked how it felt for his wife to lose her bid for state senator in Virginia.
The IG report on McCabe was dated nearly three weeks later on Feb. 13, and wasn’t released to the public until April 13. However on March 16, Sessions fired McCabe just 26 hours before he reached his 50th birthday and would have become fully vested for his retirement.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has fired former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe — and as CNN’s Evan Pérez noted, was terminated just 26 hours before he became eligible for his pension.
In his statement, Sessions said that he came to the conclusion to fire McCabe “after an extensive and fair investigation” of allegations that McCabe made an “unauthorized disclosure to the news media.”
That was rather odd, and it smacked of retaliation and vindictiveness. It seemed somewhat like the IG report was being used as an excuse for this firing, just as the letter from Rod Rosenstein had previously been used as an excuse to fire James Comey. It was a way both to stick the screws to McCabe but also essentially discredit him as a supporting witness for anything James Comey had said to Congress, or potentially to Mueller.
But there are other problems with the IG, because while this was going on they were also doing a second investigation of James Comey’s handing of the Clinton email investigation. Yet months before that report was completed, personal text messages between the chief FBI investigator on the case Peter Strzok and his apparent girlfriend Lisa Page (who was Andrew McCabe’s chief counsel) were released to the media and first reported by the Washington Post.
The former top FBI official assigned to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election was taken off that job this summer after his bosses discovered he and another member of Mueller’s team had exchanged politically charged texts disparaging President Trump and supporting Hillary Clinton, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.
Peter Strzok, as deputy head of counterintelligence at the FBI, was a key player in the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server to do government work as secretary of state, as well as the probe into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election.
[...]
The people discussing the matter did not further describe the political messages between Strzok and Page, except to say the two would sometimes react to campaign news of the moment.
The Justice Department inspector general’s office said in a statement Saturday that its investigators are “reviewing allegations involving communications between certain individuals, and will report its findings regarding those allegations promptly upon completion of the review of them.’’
A spokesman for Mueller’s office said Strzok was removed “immediately upon learning of the allegations’’ and added that Page left the Mueller team two weeks before it became aware of the allegations.
The FBI declined to comment.
It is rather ironic that the same Inspector General who was actively investigating Andrew McCabe for an unauthorized leak (even though he had the authorization to provide such leaks) happened to have a very convenient leak of their own, which tarnished the reputation of several members of the Clinton and Trump investigation team months before their final report was completed. That report determined that there was no evidence that Strzok or Page ever actually did anything improper or biased as part of their duties on the job.
Rumors raged for months that they were “violently biased” against Donald Trump, but somehow reports that they had also criticized Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, and others was buried.
There’s also the fact that McCabe’s lawyer has stated that he has an email that was sent between McCabe and Comey where he disclosed that he was the source of the leak.
But Michael Bromwich, McCabe’s attorney, told The Washington Postthat claims of email evidence “clearly show that Mr. McCabe advised Director Comey that he was working with colleagues at the FBI to correct inaccuracies before the stories were published, and that they remained in contact through the weekend while the interactions with the reporter continued.”
Bromwich also slammed Republicans for “attempting to create a false narrative” about McCabe’s ouster.
“We deeply regret being compelled to respond to this selective leaking with any comment at all,” Bromwich added.
“Nevertheless, one thing is clear: Mr. McCabe never misled Director Comey. Director Comey’s memory of these interactions was equivocal and speculative, while Mr. McCabe’s recollection is clear, unequivocal and supported by documentary evidence,” Bromwich continued. “Director Comey has no specific recollection of what Mr. McCabe told him, while Mr. McCabe remembers the two discussed the article before and after its publication.”
The revelation sheds new light on a matter of keen interest to Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who is investigating how the bureau handled its probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. The inquiry, once complete, is expected to determine that McCabe authorized the disclosure of sensitive information to reporter Devlin Barrett, then of the Wall Street Journal. Barrett now works for The Washington Post.
If McCabe has this evidence, it would confirm his claim that he never made any deliberate attempt to conceal his involvement in the leak and instead did what he claimed: He forgot.
Sunday, Feb 24, 2019 · 9:28:45 PM +00:00 · Frank Vyan Walton
Ok, I have additional issues regarding Lisa Page, who was Andrew McCabe’s office counsel and actually participated in the leak to the WSJ, FBI Counterintelligence Deputy Peter Strzok and the all the other leaks the IG was supposed to be investigating all this time.
The IG report for the Clinton email investigation, which was code-named “Midyear Exam”, not only didn’t find that Page and Strzok shaded the investigation to Clinton’s favor, they actually found the opposite.
As we describe in Chapter Twelve of our report, most of the text messages raising such questions pertained to the Russia investigation, which was not a part of this review. Nonetheless, the suggestion in certain Russia- related text messages in August 2016 that Strzok might be willing to take official action to impact presidential candidate Trump’s electoral prospects caused us to question the earlier Midyear investigative decisions in which Strzok was involved, and whether he took specific actions in the Midyear investigation based on his political views. As we describe Chapter Five of our report, we found that Strzok was not the sole decisionmaker for any of the specific Midyear investigative decisions we examined in that chapter. We further found evidence that in some instances Strzok and Page advocated for more aggressive investigative measures in the Midyear investigation, such as the use of grand jury subpoenas and search warrants to obtain evidence.
[...]
Strzok told the OIG that he did not take any steps to try to affect the outcome of the presidential election, in either the Midyear investigation or the Russia investigation. Strzok stated that had he—or the FBI in general — actually wanted to prevent Trump from being elected, they would not have maintained the confidentiality of the investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and members of the Trump campaign in the months before the election.
Page similarly stated that, although she could not speak to what Strzok meant by that text message, the FBI’s decision to keep the Russia investigation confidential before the election shows that they did not take steps to impact the outcome of the election.
The leaking of Strzok and Page’s text messages months earlier — either by someone at the DOJ or IG’s office — pretty much buried the lede that they didn't actually show any bias for Clinton or against Trump in performing their professional duties.
At the same time that Page and Strzok were texting there were numerous DOJ and FBI leaks that were being funneled through Rudy Giuliani who had direct links to the New York FBI Office since he used to be the mayor and also U.S. Attorney for the SDNY where he had been Comey’s boss.
Shortly before the election, Comey announced that he was reopening the probe into Clinton’s private server after more emails were found on the computer of former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who was married to a top Clinton aide.
A few days later, Giuliani went on Fox News and bragged that he knew in advance about the new emails.
“Did I hear about it? You’re darn right I heard about it,” said Giuliani, a prominent Trump surrogate and former New York City mayor. He added that he had expected the news to come out weeks before.
Let me just emphasize here that Giuliani admitted that he’d known about the Weiner emails “for weeks” prior to it actually being reported. He knew about them before Comey knew about them and so did Devin Nunes.
That — should be considered a problem, a big problem.
Before Comey even had a chance to decide what to do about these new emails — Giuliani and Nunes already knew about them and certainly would have leaked it on their own if Comey hadn’t eventually decided get ahead of them by sending a letter to Congress and then getting a search warrant — which of course was leaked to press almost immediately mostly likely by Nunes.
The IG report also buried the fact that long before this quite a few of their text messages between Stzrok and Page weren’t just opinions about the candidates in the election, they were also quite a few of their messages were they specifically talked about how infuriated they were by leaks and media reports to the Murdock-owned New York Post about their own investigations which they argued were politically motivated by FBI agents like to the New York Office and it's former Chief, James Kallstrom who actually didn’t know anything about the case.
Page: Yeah and I made the mistake of reading some stupid NYPost article about how some agents are ready to revolt against D [Director Comey] because of MYE [Clinton Email Investigation]. Now I’m really angry.
Strzok: There are a bunch of ignorant people out there blinded by their politics.
Page: Sometimes reminds me how how deeply politics, like religion, can blind objectivity.
Strzok: You can’t read that sh*t and frankly let them the b [Bureau] is better off without them.
Page: I can’t help it, it’s click bait. I emailed it to you.
Also that NY Post article (which is leak #2) is here:
Veteran FBI agents say FBI Director James Comey has permanently damaged the bureau’s reputation for uncompromising investigations with his “cowardly” whitewash of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information using an unauthorized private email server.
Feeling the heat from congressional critics, Comey last week argued that the case was investigated by career FBI agents, “So if I blew it, they blew it, too.”
But agents say Comey tied investigators’ hands by agreeing to unheard-of ground rules and other demands by the lawyers for Clinton and her aides that limited their investigation.
“In my 25 years with the bureau, I never had any ground rules in my interviews,” said retired agent Dennis V. Hughes, the first chief of the FBI’s computer investigations unit.
Instead of going to prosecutors and insisting on using grand jury leverage to compel testimony and seize evidence, Comey allowed immunity for several key witnesses, including potential targets.
Counter-intelligence investigations aren’t like criminal investigations, they were looking to see if national security had been compromised, not just trying to hang a charge on someone. Yes, they gave some witnesses — who were also technically Hillary Clinton’s lawyers — some immunity so they could get the facts and the truth from them. Hillary didn’t get mirandized because she wasn’t under arrest when she was interviewed. [Her lawyers were with her because she insisted — which is her right — and lawyers from the DOJ were their too, which is different from the situation with Michael Flynn because neither White House or DOJ counsel were present during the interview where he lied to Strzok and another agent about his conversations with Kislyak. If he’d brought WH Counsel, DOJ Counsel would have been there too.]
On October 30th Strzok and Page responded to a report in the Washington Post saying that Comey’s letter about Weiner to Congress defied DOJ Policy. This is Leak #3.
Page: This is all Matt. Justice Officials warned FBI Comey decision to update congress was not consistent with DOJ policy — The Washington Post.
Strzok: Yeah I saw that, makes me feel better about throwing him under the bus in the forthcoming CF article.
Page: Yep the tone is all anti-Bu (Bureau) Just a tiny bit from us. And serves him right, he’s gonna be pissed.
Notice that Page right here talks about the WSJ leak in reference to "CF" — the Clinton Foundation — and someone at Justice named "Matt” who is likely the unnamed DOJ official who had argued with McCabe over that case. This is likely the leak that McCabe was fired over.
That WaPo report whose source was likely this “Matt" said the following:
Senior Justice Department officials warned the FBI that Director James B. Comey’s decision to notify Congress about renewing the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server was not consistent with long-standing practices of the department, according to officials familiar with the discussions.
FBI officials who work closely with Comey on Thursday contacted attorneys at the Justice Department. Their message: Comey intended to inform lawmakers of newly discovered emails potentially connected to the Clinton email investigation.
Justice officials reminded the FBI of the department’s position “that we don’t comment on an ongoing investigation. And we don’t take steps that will be viewed as influencing an election,” said one Justice Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the high-level conversations.
“Director Comey understood our position. He heard it from Justice leadership,” the official said. “It was conveyed to the FBI, and Comey made an independent decision to alert the Hill. He is operating independently of the Justice Department. And he knows it.”
The IG seemed to indicate that McCabe’s leak to the WSJ was a personal act in retaliation for "Matt" leaking to the WaPo, but as Page indicates — since she helped facilitate that leak — McCabe’s leak to the WSJ had already taken place and the resulting article was "forthcoming.” Also it was pretty clear that Loretta Lynch and Sally Yates basically agreed with “Matt”, so why single him out exactly?
After McCabe’s leak to the WSJ it seems that someone high up in the DOJ, likely either Loretta Lynch or Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates came down hard on Page and had her sidelined from future meetings with the Crossfire Hurricane team. After this Page and Strzok specifically discussed whether they should have publicly outed Kallstrom and other former FBI agents who had been leaking criticism of their investigation.
Page. Oh God (Redacted)
Strzok: What is she saying? She does realize that you’ve been in EVERY conversation that has been had about the case right?
Page: That we should have gone on the record saying that [former New York FBI Office Chief ]ames] Kallstrom and others may not be credible (which may be valid) but then saying we could pull his folks if we wanted to. Because she knows all about our policy of investigating members of the media.
Because she’s an expert who knows everything. I’m telling you it’s wildly infuriating. She has some good points but then assumes wildly impossible understanding of things to make groundless assertions. Told her twice she was either calling me stupid or a liar.
Strzok: What crime are we investigating? That’s a terrible idea, go to war with the formers? Jesus (redacted) that would make me blind with rage.
Page: “Leaking information about ongoing investigations. Which is incorrect information. By agents who don’t know about things talking to him.” See? That’s the thing, that we should have gone after agents talking harder and sooner, is not unreasonable. But the following discussions falls into uninformed assertions.
A little background on Kallstrom and his relationship with Rudy Giuliani:
The man who now leads “lock-her-up” chants at Trump rallies spent decades of his life as a federal prosecutor and then mayor working closely with the FBI, and especially its New York office. One of Giuliani’s security firms employed a former head of the New York FBI office, and other alumni of it. It was agents of that office, probing Anthony Weiner’s alleged sexting of a minor, who pressed Comey to authorize the review of possible Hillary Clinton-related emails on a Weiner device that led to the explosive letter the director wrote Congress.
Hours after Comey’s letter about the renewed probe was leaked on Friday, Giuliani went on a radio show and attributed the director’s surprise action to “the pressure of a group of FBI agents who don’t look at it politically.”
...
Back in August, during a contentious CNN interview about Comey’s July announcement clearing Hillary Clinton of criminal charges, Giuliani advertised his illicit FBI sources, who circumvented bureau guidelines to discuss a case with a public partisan. “The decision perplexes me. It perplexes Jim Kallstrom, who worked for him. It perplexes numerous FBI agents who talk to me all the time. And it embarrasses some FBI agents.”
Kallstrom is the former head of the New York FBI office, installed in that post in the ’90s by then-FBI director Louis Freeh, one of Giuliani’s longtime friends. Kallstrom has, like Giuliani, been on an anti-Comey romp for months, most often on Fox, where he’s called the Clintons a “crime family.” He has been invoking unnamed FBI agents who contact him to complain about Comey’s exoneration of Clinton in one interview after another, positioning himself as an apolitical champion of FBI values.
Somehow I don’t think that someone who calls the Clintons a "crime family" is exactly “apolitical.”
Here’s a clip from Fox last December where Kallstrom repeatedly says Comey was “out of his mind” and an “educated nimwit”, who “got away with investigating the President for a year before the Special Counsel” — which is not true, Trump wasn’t personally added to the counter-intelligence investigation by McCabe until after Comey was fired — “’because he was a lieutenant in Obama’s intel army… including Brennan, et al, Clappa [sic] et al, this whole conspiracy, y’know, first of all to stop Trump, if he by some miracle was elected, and make his administration worthless.” [Yeah, he has that backwards, totally.]
There is ample evidence that Kallstrom solicited and distributed illegal leaks from the FBI to the media — and yet he gets to pontificate here about Comey’s mentality and moral fiber specifically because the IG hasn’t released their report about him and his cohorts yet. At this point I’m not sure, with Rudy Giuliani now Trump’s personal lawyer, that they ever will.
Think about how that would go over in the White House.
Here are some more leaks discussed by Strzok and Page on this subject from November 3rd concerning FBI leaks that were decidedly Anti-Clinton.
Strzok: An article to share, FBI agents knew of Clinton emails weeks before director briefed. Ok, now I’m getting angry.
….
Sorry Rybicki [Comey Chief of Staff James Rybicki] called. Time line article in the post is super specific and not good. Doesn’t make sense because I didn’t have specific information to give.
Page: What post article?
Strzok: Just went up. WaPo.
Page: Goddammed bills opaque comments. Can I send to team?
Strzok: Yes.
That report (Leak #5) went like this:
The FBI has obtained a warrant to search the emails found on a computer used by former congressman Anthony Weiner that may contain evidence relevant to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, according to law enforcement officials.
One official said the total number of emails recovered in the investigation into Weiner (D-N.Y.) is close to 650,000, but that reflects many emails that are not related to the Clinton investigation. But officials familiar with the case said that the messages include a significant amount of correspondence associated with Clinton and her top aide, Huma Abedin, Weiner’s estranged wife.
FBI agents investigating Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state knew early this month that messages recovered in a separate probe might be germane to their case, but they waited weeks before briefing the FBI director, according to people familiar with the case.
That’s an internal FBI leak — the fourth one in a series — about on an ongoing case involving the Clinton’s which certainly didn’t come from Page or Strzok since they were complaining about it.
What we see here is a leak war going on between people in the DOJ who are leaking about the Clinton Foundation Investigation, FBI personnel — likely from New York — who are leaking about the Clinton investigation and also the Weiner Investigation mostly to make Comey look “weak” on Clinton. The FBI is not supposed to do politics, but clearly, some of them were.
The fact is that there wasn’t a “Deep State” cabal of Trump Haters running this investigation, but there was a pack of Hillary-Haters in the New York FBI who were trying to undermine it and repeatedly doubted it’s credibility. They even admitted to calling it “Trumpland.”
Current and former FBI officials, none of whom were willing or cleared to speak on the record, have described a chaotic internal climate that resulted from outrage over director James Comey’s July decision not to recommend an indictment over Clinton’s maintenance of a private email server on which classified information transited.
“The FBI is Trumpland,” said one current agent.
This atmosphere raises major questions about how Comey and the bureau he is slated to run for the next seven years can work with Clinton should she win the White House.
The currently serving FBI agent said Clinton is “the antichrist personified to a large swath of FBI personnel,” and that “the reason why they’re leaking is they’re pro-Trump.”
The agent called the bureau “Trumplandia”, with some colleagues openly discussing voting for a GOP nominee who has garnered unprecedented condemnation from the party’s national security wing and who has pledged to jail Clinton if elected.
Josh Marshall at TPM pointed out Comey’s Counsel James Baker told the IG that there was a pack of current and former agents based in New York who were out to “Get that Bitch” and this had a direct impact on the “messaging” of the investigation.
Anderson told the OIG that she expressed concerns about criticizing uncharged conduct during discussions with Comey in June 2016. She said that the decision to include such criticism “was a signal that…we weren’t just letting her off the hook…. [O]ur conclusions were going to be viewed as less assailable…at the end of the day if this kind of content was included.”
Baker told the OIG that “there were multiple audiences” for the criticism of former Secretary Clinton in Comey’s statement. He recounted hearing that FBI employees not involved in the Midyear investigation hated former Secretary Clinton and had made comments such as, “[Y]ou guys are finally going to get that bitch,” and, “[W]e’re rooting for you.” Baker stated, “And if we’re not going to get her on these facts and circumstances, then we’d better explain that now.” Related to this idea, notes taken by Strzok at a May 12, 2016 meeting involving the Midyear team state, “Messaging thoughts: Workforce Qs: (1) If I did this, I’d be prosecuted; (2) Petraeus, Berger, etc. were charged; (3) Overwhelming conservative outlook.”
This was a major concern to both Comey and Loretta Lynch which is something that again was noted in the Mid-Year Exam IG report where FBI agents were being paid off with sporting tickets and drinks buy journalists for the “inside scoop.”
Concerns about the impact of possible leaks on the Midyear investigation, particularly in the October 2016 time period, are described in Chapters Ten and Eleven. Several FBI officials told us that their concerns about potential leaks were a factor that influenced them in the discussions about the possibility of sending a notification letter to Congress on October 28, 2016,regarding the FBI’s discovery of Clinton-related emails on the Weiner laptop. As then FBI General Counsel Baker starkly characterized that decision to us, “[I]f we don't put out a letter, somebody is going to leak it.”
Against this backdrop, and as noted at the time the OIG announced this review, we examined allegations that Department and FBI employees improperly disclosed non-public information. We focused, in particular, on the April/May and October 2016 time periods. We have profound concerns about the volume and extent of unauthorized media contacts by FBI personnel that we have uncovered during our review.
[…]
In addition to the significant number of communications between FBI employees and journalists, we identified social interactions between FBI employees and journalists that were, at a minimum, inconsistent with FBI policy and Department ethics rules. For example, we identified instances where FBI employees received tickets to sporting events from journalists, went on golfing outings with media representatives, were treated to drinks and meals after work by reporters, and were the guests of journalists at nonpublic social events. We will separately report on those investigations as they are concluded, consistent with the Inspector General (IG) Act, other applicable federal statutes, and OIG policy.
Comey was fully aware that NY FBI and their former head Kallstrom was decidedly pro-Trump and was dropping anti-Hillary leaks all over the place for months.
Comey said that he feared “a pretty reasonable likelihood” that Clinton emails being discovered on Weiner’s computer would get to the press through the New York office.
“The team that had done the investigation was in the counterintelligence division at headquarters, of the emails,” Comey said. “And there were no leaks at all, very tight. But the criminal folks in New York were now involved in a major way—and I don’t want to single anybody out ’cause I don’t know where it was coming from, but there’d been enough up there that I thought there was a pretty reasonable likelihood that it would leak.”
It all comes down to an understanding of the nature of the office, Comey said: “Counterintelligence is different. They’re so used to operating in a classified environment. They’re much tighter. But once you start involving people whose tradition is criminal, and in New York which has a different culture, there is a reasonable likelihood it was going to get out anyway.”
In their report on the Clinton Email investigation the IG noted that Comey had told Loretta Lynch that there was a “secret cadre” of FBI Agents in New York who had a “deep, visceral hatred for Clinton.”
October 31st: Loretta Lynch and Comey discuss letter to Congress and issue of anti-Clinton bias in New York Field Office, a pattern of bias she says “has put us where we are today.” According to Lynch, Comey said it had become clear to him “that there is a cadre of senior people in New York who have a deep and visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton. And he said it is, it is deep. It’s, and he said, he said it was surprising to him or stunning to him … and it was hard to manage because these were agents that were very, very senior, or had even had timed out and were staying on, and therefore did not really feel under pressure from headquarters or anything to that effect.” (IG Report, p. 387)
The IG was aware of this because James Comey didn’t ask them just to investigate the WSJ leak, he had also asked them to investigate all of these leaks including leaks to Rudy Giuliani about the Wiener emails, which they apparently did.
WASHINGTON ― Rudy Giuliani says FBI agents interviewed him in his room at the Trump International Hotel earlier this year regarding his 2016 remarks predicting a “surprise” in the closing days of the presidential race that would benefit then-Republican nominee Donald Trump.
“That’s all they asked about. What was I talking about in terms of ‘surprise’?” Giuliani told HuffPost Tuesday. “What was I talking about when.”
[...]
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), a member of the Trump transition team, recently admitted that FBI officials gave him inside information about the Clinton investigation in September, 2016. And FBI and Justice Department officials have long suspected that disgruntled anti-Clinton forces in the FBI’s New York field office were feeding Giuliani and James Kallstrom, the pro-Trump former head of that office, information that hurt the Clinton campaign.
Giuliani told HuffPost that he spoke with Kallstrom as well as one other former FBI official he would not identify.
Again, it is ironic that after all this time, nearly a year since the IG report on McCabe had been released, there has yet to be a report or any prosecution referral for any of the other anti-Hillary leaks which were apparently funneled through Kallstrom to Devin Nunes, the New York Post and Giuliani.
I don’t know that this really means anything, but since they already had admissions from Nunes and Giuliani that they had received info from FBI sources, and they already knew that Kallstrom was involved it just seems a little strange that they haven’t seemed to have wrapped that investigation up even after all this time particularly since the IG made the criminal referral to the DC Attorney General against McCabe last April.
Again, it’s not conclusive obviously but it seems there might be merit to McCabe’s claim that the IG may have “rushed” his investigation and their report to beat the expiration of his final vacation day just so that his retirement wouldn’t be fully vested or else they’ve been slow-rolling the investigation of Kallstrom and company since as yet even that case hasn’t been fully investigated and generated a any kind of report almost a full year later, or both. Meanwhile, 10 months after the initial criminal referral for McCabe was made Mueller’s office has managed to put forth an indictment for Roger Stone for lying to Congress in September of 2017 — which only a few months after McCabe was intererviewed by the IG in May and July of 2016 — and yet Stone’s criminal referral from Mueller almost immediately generated an indictment and an arrest the very same night that it was turned over to the DC U.S. Attorney for prosecution, but that same DC office is still apparently nowhere near an indictment or an arrest for McCabe.
Isn’t it a bit curious that McCabe’s case is so far behind Stones’ when they’re both rather similar — lying under oath — and should be fairly open and shut? Either they lied or they didn’t right? Exactly how hard could it be to put the IG investigators before a Grand Jury, read selected passages from the IG report and ask them “Is this what Mr. McCabe said to you on this date?” in order to get 9 out of 16 of them to vote that there’s sufficient probable cause for an indictment? Perhaps, the DC offices lack sufficient evidence against McCabe to convince a grand jury to indict, or else they’re re-re-investigating the case all over again from scratch. Either way, it doesn’t seem that the IG report alone has inspired unbridled confidence in DC for moving to prosecution against McCabe. At least, not yet. Perhaps we’ll see.
By comparison it took the Chicago prosecutor about 2 days to get a grand jury to indict Jusse Smollet for making a false police report, so there’s that then.
It’s also rather strange and ironic that knowing about all these anti-Hillary leaks which were in play all at the same time that the IG would determine that there was “no public interest” in McCabe’s leak to the WSJ, and that rather than his petulantly using it to air a public “beef” with "Matt” at the DOJ it was clearly intended to counter the Kallstrom narrative that the FBI was “going easy” on Clinton.
It could be argued whether playing “counter leak” was wise or appropriate, but it seems clear — as noted above by Anderson and Baker — that the overall concern about Kallstrom’s anti-Hillary leaks was the same concern that prompted Comey’s intense criticism of Hillary Clinton personally even though they didn’t find she had willfully done anything illegal. In an over enthusiastic effort to prove the FBI was being “fair” they ended up being rather unfair to Hillary Clinton. Obviously, the IG has been critical of that decision by Comey, and it follows that they’d critical of McCabe for doing something similar, but making the case that McCabe deliberately lied about it for purely personal reasons beyond a reasonable doubt is another matter completely and frankly not that likely with all this mitigating evidence.
I can't say that the IG's final report on McCabe was influenced or pressured by Trump’s obvious hatred for Comey and McCabe and desire to see them both gone, but it does seem to be missing some context as to why McCabe would have had good reasons for his leak to the WSJ at the time, and it doesn’t make sense that he would try to lie about this — particularly to Comey — when he had full authority to do it, didn’t actually need Comey’s permission, and had no real reason to deliberately try to conceal it from either the IG or Comey in any case.
It makes more sense that he just forgot.