You Will Anyway: Andrew McCabe update

Friday, October 15, 2021

Andrew McCabe update

The Justice Department has agreed to restore full law enforcement benefits and provide some attorney fees for former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired by the Trump administration only hours before his retirement three years ago.

[...]

The Justice Department demoted and then dismissed him on the eve of his 50th birthday in March 2018, when his FBI annuity would have vested.

NPR

So shitty. Trump vindictiveness.

McCabe opened investigations into Trump after the then-president fired then-FBI Director James Comey in the spring of 2017.

[...]

One of McCabe's attorneys at the time said a senior Justice Department official told him the department was making things up as it went along. Correspondence among the FBI, the Justice Department and the inspector general obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and other means suggested a race to get rid of McCabe under pressure from the White House.

[...]

A day after the dismissal, Trump tweeted that it represented "a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI - A great day for democracy."

[...]

Trump had accused McCabe of conflicts of interest because McCabe's wife, Jill McCabe, ran without success for a seat in the Virginia Senate and accepted contributions from Democratic Party stalwart and then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Andrew McCabe countered that he had run the arrangement past FBI lawyers and ethics officials.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz later examined McCabe's conduct as part of a broader review of FBI activities in the election year of 2016. Horowitz concluded that McCabe "lacked candor" when he spoke with investigators about disclosures he authorized to The Wall Street Journal during the heated presidential race. Prosecutors brought the matter to a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., but McCabe was never charged with criminal wrongdoing.

[...]

The Justice Department did not admit wrongdoing or apologize to McCabe in the court filing late Thursday.

[...]

The deal will restore McCabe's full retirement package, purge his personnel file, allow for the return of his FBI badge and cover fees for his attorneys at the Arnold & Porter law firm.

It should have included some punitive damages.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.