Andrew McCabe lied four times to the Department of Justice and the FBI - including two times while under oath with Inspector General Michael Horowitz, according to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) appearing on Fox News.
This is the first time the public has heard more detail of the circumstances behind the decision to fire McCabe just over one day before he qualified for his full pension.
JORDAN: “McCabe didn’t lie just once, he lied four times. He lied to James Comey. He lied to the Office of Professional Responsibility and he lied twice under oath to the Inspector General. Remember, this is Andrew McCabe, Deputy Director of the FBI. This is Andrew McCabe, the text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page talking about Andy’s office, the meeting where they talk about the insurance policy in case Donald Trump is actually President of the United States… Four times he lied about leaking information to the Wall Street Journal.”
Specifically, McCabe authorized an F.B.I. spokesman and attorney to tell Devlin Barrett of the Wall St. Journal, just days before the 2016 election, that the FBI had not put the brakes on a separate investigation into the Clinton Foundation - at a time in which McCabe was coming under fire for his wife taking a $467,500 campaign contribution from Clinton proxy pal, Terry McAuliffe.
The WSJ article in question reads:
New details show that senior law-enforcement officials repeatedly voiced skepticism of the strength of the evidence in a bureau investigation of the Clinton Foundation, sought to condense what was at times a sprawling cross-country effort, and, according to some people familiar with the matter, told agents to limit their pursuit of the case. The probe of the foundation began more than a year ago to determine whether financial crimes or influence peddling occurred related to the charity....Some investigators grew frustrated, viewing FBI leadership as uninterested in probing the charity, these people said. Others involved disagreed sharply, defending FBI bosses and saying Mr. McCabe in particular was caught between an increasingly acrimonious fight for control between the Justice Department and FBI agents pursuing the Clinton Foundation case.
So McCabe leaked information to the WSJ in order to combat rumors that Clinton had indirectly bribed him to back off the Clinton Foundation investigation, and then lied about it four times to the DOJ and FBI, including twice under oath.
Meanwhile - let's not forget, the FBI had evidence from undercover informant William D. Campbell, who recently told Congressional investigators that he collected smoking gun evidence of Russia routing millions of dollars towards a Clinton charity in advance of Clinton's State Department approving the Uranium One deal. Which McCabe was supposed to be investigating... and which the Little Rock field office took over in January of this year.
Also recall that McCabe's team, under Director Comey, heavily altered the language of the FBI's official opinion concerning Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified information - effectively "decriminalizing" her conduct. Comey's original draft - using the term "grossly negligent" would have legally required that the FBI recommended charges against Clinton. Instead, McCabe's team changed it to "extremely careless," - a legally meaningless term.
According to documents produced by the FBI, FBI employees exchanged proposed edits to the draft statement. On May 6, Deputy Director McCabe forwarded the draft statement to other senior FBI employees, including Peter Strzok, E.W. Priestap, Jonathan Moffa, and an employee on the Office of General Counsel whose name has been redacted. While the precise dates of the edits and identities of the editors are not apparent from the documents, the edits appear to change the tone and substance of Director Comey's statement in at least three respects. -Letter from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI)
President Trump noted in a March 16 tweet that Comey "made McCabe look like a choirboy," despite the former FBI Director knowing "all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels."
At the time McCabe was fired, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement at the time that he had "made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor - including under oath - on multiple occasions."
"Confused and Distracted"
After he was fired, McCabe said he was "confused and distracted" when he was talking to investigators - four separate times as we've come to learn.
"I answered questions as completely and accurately as I could. And when I realized that some of my answers were not fully accurate or may have been misunderstood, I took the initiative to correct them," McCabe wrote in a Washington Post op-ed.
So it was all just a big misunderstanding, you see.
In the meantime, people feeling sorry for ol' Andy have set up an "official" Gofundme donation campaign for McCabe's "Legal Defense Fund," which raised almost $400,000 in 10 hours for McCabe.
Hilariously, the description of the campaign starts off: "Andrew McCabe’s FBI career was long, distinguished, and unblemished."
...which ended when McCabe lied four times about leaking to the press in order to appear unbiased after his wife took nearly half-a-million dollars from a Clinton crony.
Good thing McCabe has that legal defense fund!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment