Thread by @JewhadiTM

As McCabe plays the indignant & outraged victim, let’s revisit McCabe’s leak, his multiple lies, his attempts to cover his tracks, shall we?

https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1228381456830996485

(Via @AndrewCMcCarthy)

McCabe’s Leak

In October 2016, McCabe directed his counsel, @NatSecLisa to leak investigative info about the FBI’s @ClintonFdn probe to reporter Devlin Barrett.

The leak confirmed the existence of the investigation, something the FBI is supposed to resist. While his high rank gave him the power to authorize such a disclosure if it were in the public interest, the IG found that McCabe’s leak “was clearly not within the public interest.”

In fact, the Bureau’s then-director, James Comey, had tried to keep the Clinton Foundation probe under wraps, refusing to confirm or deny its existence even to the House Judiciary Committee.

Regardless, McCabe orchestrated the leak “to advance his personal interests” — to paint himself in a favorable light in comparison to DOJ officials amid an internal dispute about the Clinton Foundation probe (specifically, about the Obama DOJ’s pressure on the FBI to drop it)

As the IG put it: “McCabe’s disclosure was an attempt to make himself look good by making senior department leadership . . . look bad.”

McCabe’s account has been contradicted by Comey, a witness who is otherwise sympathetic to him and hostile to the Trump DOJ, and whose actions — like his — are being examined in prosecutor John Durham’s probe of the Trump-Russia investigation.

Comey’s testimony is directly at odds with McCabe’s version of events, and the IG painstakingly explained why the former director’s version was credible while his deputy’s was not. (Comey was, nevertheless, exceedingly complimentary of McCabe after the IG report was published.)

.@NatSecLisa is regarded by McCabe backers as key to his defense. She reportedly told the grand jury that, because McCabe had authority to approve media disclosures, he had no motive to lie about the leak. That’s laughable.

McCabe did serially mislead investigators, so plainly he had some reason for doing so. But even putting that aside, the IG’s conclusion was not that McCabe lacked authority to leak; it was that he lacked a public-interest justification for exercising that authority.

He leaked for self-promotion purposes, then he lied about it because it was humiliating to be caught putting his personal interests ahead of the FBI’s ‘integrity’.

That said, Page’s account does illuminate a problem for prosecutors: It’s tough to win a case when your witnesses are spinning for the defendant.

McCabe’s Multiple False Statements

Barrett’s Journal article appeared on October 30, 2016. The very next day, McCabe deceived Comey about it, indicating that he had not authorized the leak and had no idea who its source was.

In Comey’s telling, credited by the IG, McCabe “definitely” did not acknowledge that he approved the leak.

Then, the FBI’s Inspection Division (INSD) opened an investigation of the leak. On May 9, 2017, McCabe denied to 2 INSD investigators that he knew the source of the leak.

This was not a fleeting conversation. McCabe was placed under oath, and the INSD agents provided him with a copy of Barrett’s article. He read it and initialed it to acknowledge that he had done so. He was questioned about it by the agents, who took contemporaneous notes.

McCabe told the agents that he had “no idea where [the leaked information] came from” or “who the source was.”

On July 28, 2017, McCabe was interviewed by the IG’s office — under oath and recorded on tape.

In that session, he preposterously claimed to be unaware that @NatSecLisa, his FBI counsel, was directed to speak to reporters around the time of the October 30 Journal report. McCabe added that he was out of town then, and thus unaware of what Page had been up to.

In point of fact, McCabe had consulted closely with @NatSecLisa about the leak. A paper trail of their texts and phone contacts evinced his keen interest in Page’s communications with Barrett. Consequently, the IG concluded that McCabe’s denials were “demonstrably false.”

Clearly concerned about the hole he had dug for himself, McCabe called the IG’s office four days later, on August 1, 2017, to say that, shucks, come to think of it, he just might have kinda, sorta told Page to speak with Barrett after all.

He might even have told her to coordinate with Mike Kortan, then the FBI’s top media liaison, and follow-up with the Journal about some of its prior reporting.

As the IG observed, this “attempt to correct his prior false testimony” was the “appropriate” thing for McCabe to do.

Alas, when he was given an opportunity to come in and explain himself, he compounded his misconduct by making more false statements while under oath:

In an interview with investigators on November 29, 2017, McCabe purported to recall informing Comey that he, McCabe, had authorized the leak, and that Comey had responded that the leak was a good idea.

These were quite stunning recollections, given that the deputy director had previously disclaimed any knowledge about the source of the leak. But McCabe took care of that little hiccup by simply denying his prior denial.

That is, he insisted that he had not feigned ignorance about the leak when INSD interviewed him on May 9. Indeed, McCabe even denied that the May 9 interview had been a real interview.

To the contrary, he claimed that agents had casually pulled him aside at the conclusion of a meeting on an unrelated topic, and peppered him out of the blue with a question or two about the Journal leak.

As @GenFlynn could tell you, that sort of thing can be tough on a busy top U.S. government official . . . although Flynn did not get much sympathy for it when McCabe was running the FBI.

Again, the IG concluded that McCabe’s version of events was “demonstrably false.”

McCabe Covers His Tracks

Again, the Journal story generated by McCabe’s leak was published on October 30, a Sunday. Late that afternoon, McCabe called the head of the FBI’s Manhattan office. Why? Well . . . to ream him out over media leaks, that’s why.

McCabe railed that New York agents must be the culprits. He also made a similar call to the Bureau’s Washington field office, warning its chief to “get his house in order” and stop these terribly damaging leaks.

It is worth remembering McCabe’s October 30 scolding of subordinates when you think about how he later claimed that, on the very next day, he’d freely admitted to his superior, Comey, that he himself was the source of the leak.

Quite the piece of work, this guy: To throw the scent off himself after carefully arranging the leak, McCabe dressed down the FBI’s two premier field offices, knowing they were completely innocent, and then pretended for months that he knew nothing about the leak.

This is the second-highest-ranking officer of the nation’s top law-enforcement agency we’re talking about, here.

McCabe is not out of the woods yet: The Durham investigation is a separate matter and is continuing. But it is unclear whether he will face any criminal charges arising from that inquiry.

McCabe, though he undeniably misled (lied to) investigators, remains a commentator at @CNN

In the meantime, Papadopoulos is a felon convicted and briefly imprisoned for allegedly misleading investigators, while @GenFlynn and Stone are awaiting sentencing on their false-statements charges.