According to declassified documents released just prior to former President Trump leaving office, disgraced former FBI official Andrew McCabe was aware of critical exculpatory evidence concerning the firing of then-Director James Comey when he opened up an obstruction of justice investigation into the circumstances of his removal back in 2017. The smoking gun is in the timeline.
Trump fired Comey approximately three weeks after the latter testified to Congress that the FBI was actively investigating interference by Russia in the 2016 election, in addition to purported links between the Trump campaign and Moscow. The date was May 9, 2017.
Comey’s Firing Was No Surprise
McCabe opened the investigation a week later, on May 16, citing Comey’s memos of his private meeting with Trump and comments the former President made publicly at the time as predicates warranting the action. One of the comments alleged by Comey was that Trump had asked him for his loyalty.
However, the newly released documents show that McCabe had engaged then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in a conversation four days prior, on May 12. In his discussion with the man who had taken over for Jeff Sessions, McCabe learned that the Justice Department had been anticipating Comey’s dismissal since January of that year. The likely reason for that decision was Comey’s self-aggrandizing overstep of his job description when he informed the American people that Hillary Clinton would not be charged with keeping a private email server but dressed her down for it anyway.
The newly released documents included McCabe’s memorandum, which stated: “The DAG stated that based on conversations he had with the AG as early as January 2017, he knew that Director Comey was going to get fired.”
This makes clear Comey was already slated for redundancy long before Trump let him go – and yet McCabe apparently saw an opportunity to use the president’s decisive action against the vainglorious head of the FBI as part of a convenient pretext for opening the probe. McCabe greenlighted the investigation one day after Rosenstein named Robert Mueller the special counsel to investigate allegations of collusion between Trump’s campaign team and Russia.
After two years of bitter partisan rancor and baseless, hair-on-fire hyperbole from the mainstream media, Mueller completed the investigation, which found no evidence that anyone in Trump’s campaign had colluded with Russia. Then-Attorney General William Barr also concluded that the evidence presented was insufficient to establish an obstruction of justice charge against Trump. Mueller’s subsequent humiliating performance on television during which he tried in vain to insinuate wrong-doing without proof of such was the last nail in the coffin of the “collusion delusion” – and of Mueller’s once-vaunted reputation.
The Undrained Swamp
One thing seems clear in the aftermath of Trump’s presidency. The threat he posed to the Washington D.C. establishment with his talk of “draining the swamp” of corruption engendered all manner of dubious decisions by those ostensibly in his cross-hairs. His loud pronouncements smoked them out, in effect, and caused hitherto cautious career bureaucrats to take rash actions by which they came undone.
Case in point: the DOJ’s inspector general determined that Andrew McCabe leaked self-serving information to the press to hurt Trump in violation of his oath of office and then lied to cover his tracks. It was for this he was summarily fired. Trump may not have been able to finish the bottomless task he started. Still, the exposure of Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, James Comey, and others was a signal to America of entrenched power and agendas in our federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies and why we have much to fear from them.
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Read more from author Pennel Bird
