Who would ever have thought the day would come in America when there was no other way of saying it than to say the FBI has gone into the tank. The Wall Street Journal carried a report of how Governor Terry McAuliffe, a very close friend of the Clintons, had directly donated and indirectly cause to be donated to a state senate election campaign of Jill McCabe the sum of “slightly more than $675,000”
This was significant because she is the wife of Andrew McCabe. He would in July 2015 be promoted to FBI headquarters to assume the number three position followed by becoming the second in command to Director James Comey on February 1, 2016.
A May 6, 2016, article in the Los Angeles Times about Andrew McCabe noted in the second paragraph: “Responsible for overseeing investigations of terrorists, spies and corrupt officials, as well as the sensitive inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, . . . and he likes it that way.”
The story about this is being suppressed. The great Clinton cheer leading newspapers the Washington Post and The New York Times carried one article about it. It was written by the Associated Press. It tried to debunk the story but a close reading showed how futile was its attempt. Strangely each paper had the exact same headline: AP Fact Check: No ‘Criminal Act’ in Case of FBI Agent’s Wife.”
It was as if they checked with each other to see how they would carry the story. Both decided it would be best to let it sit in AP’s lap. They would suggest, should anyone inquire why they gave it such short shrift, that they did cover it by putting the AP story in the paper which had checked looked at the story and found nothing there.
The AP article which white washes the whole affair reports: Andrew McCabe “did not become involved in the email probe until after her [his wife’s] bid for office had already failed.” It went on to note that Andrew McCabe said he “sought guidance from agency ethics officers and recused himself of “all FBI investigative matters involving Virginia politics” throughout his wife’s campaign.”
It sounds good except it means nothing. Jill began her campaign on March 12 and it ended on November 2, 2015, less than eight months later. After that McCabe felt free to get involved in the email investigation which had begun in July 2015, and had been ongoing less than four months. He took charge of it on February 1, 2016.
On July 5, Comey announced his decision clearing Hillary Clinton. In other words the FBI’s number two man was in charge of an investigation into Clinton’s emails during the critical five months of its investigation leading up to the day it made its decision. During this time he had a serious conflict of interest. He knew that a close friend of Hillary’s had caused $675,000 to go into his wife’s campaign coffers.
How could he possibly consider that he was able to make an impartial judgment being in that position? McAuliffe was a great help to his wife; wouldn’t he want to show his appreciation for that? That he remained in that position knowing he was indebted to McAuliffe, and that no one suggested he recuse himself, shows how shoddy the ethics at the FBI have become and how its arrogance blinds it.
It was bad enough that Director James Comey’s decision was so wrongheaded without having an ethically challenged second in command assisting him. It was later reported “No trial level attorney agreed, no agent working the case agreed, with the decision not to prosecute — it was a top-down decision, . . . ”
The whole candidacy of Jill McCabe seemed to have been designed by McAuliffe/Clintons with the intent to compromise the FBI. She was a first time candidate for office who was urged to run by McAuliffe and his lieutenant governor. They reached out to her.
There was already a Democratic activist candidate Tom Mulrine opposing the incumbent Republican Dick Black. That candidate thought he had a good chance of beating Black but McAuliffe sent him the word they were going to give financial support to McCabe.
Black said they were puzzled by Jill running against him since they thought she was a Republican. Mulrine a Democratic activist said they had never heard of Jill when she announced and saw that she had voted in a recent primary as a Republican.
At the time McAuliffe solicited her candidacy the Clinton email scandal was already heating up. In August 2014 it was revealed for the first time Hillary had a private email account. Requests were made that she turn them over. In December 2014 “Clinton privately turns over copies of 30,490 “work-related” emails to the State Dept. totaling 55,000 printed pages. No date has been provided as to when she deleted her “private” emails, . . . “
In February 2015 it was disclosed Clinton did not have a government email and the State Department never had access to her emails prior to December. On March 2 the NY Times reports Clinton may have violated federal regulations.
To think things are fine you have to believe that McAuliffe was unaware the Clinton email scandal was heating up; that he picked a woman as the best candidate for the Democrats who no one ever heard of and who was thought to be a Republican; that he caused $675,000 to go into her campaign which allowed her to outspend the incumbent by a two to one margin; and that her husband being in a high up position in the FBI had nothing to do with his actions.
Then you have to believe her husband knowing all this was able to make an impartial decision on the future of one of McAuliffe’s best friends. I have great trouble doing that. There’s something rotten in the Hoover building in DC
Hey MATT !
How do you figure pressure on FBI to “reopen” investigation 10 days before election ??
Regards
AL
Al:
Allow me to take the liberty of answering while you are waiting for Matt’s response.
Someone higher up in the FBI chain of command leaked and Comey knew that the leak would be exposed sooner or later. His announcement does two things.
Based on “new evidence” Comey decided that he needed to redeem his reputation so he chose “sooner.”
Comey realized that he was selling out the FBI and America and decided it wasn’t worth it.
[email protected]
Comey has sold out America and the FBI by trying to throw the election to Trump 11 days before the vote. Since he can’t possibly work with Clinton after this, he’s going to have to resign if she wins. He’s made a mess of everything from beginning to end.
DanC:
I may be wrong, but I think that Comey knew he’d be found out and made the best decision he could make at the best time he could make it. In my view, he had no choice.
Dan:
Agree he has to leave if he does not have the goods to back this up. For him to intrude himself into the election at this point and to have not sat on whatever information he had until after the election tells me he has to have something very highly significant which should be known by the American people. If he doesn’t have evidence that reaches that level he never should have sent such a letter. If he does have that evidence that compelled him to write the letter then he must immediate release it.
Under any circumstance I don’t see how Comey survivess.
Doug:
I did say something like that to Al who by the way was one of Boston’s top trial lawyers. I agree Comey would have sat on it if he did not fear it would come out. What then could it be. He has to have found something significant or else he would not have sent the letter because if what he found did not undermine what he has previously told us he could have always passed it off as nothing new.
I’m not sure Comey cares that much for the FBI since he had already sold them out by not doing a proper investigation in the first place. At this point he only cares about himself as you note. More to come.
By his own words, Comey knew that a crime was committed, but I don’t think he knew about the bribe of $500,000 by the person in charge of the investigation, Andrew McCabe.
The logical conclusion is that when Comey and everyone else learned that McCabe took the bribe of $500,000, he had better change his position and suddenly “found” what he already knew.
This is big and there are many people that should be held accountable for numerous violations of law. See 18 USC 1505 for starters.
[email protected]
Al:
I sent you a reply last night using my iPhone but I don’t see that it went through. Nice to hear from you. As a young defense lawyer I’m sure you learned in an early case that your investigation was not as complete as you should have done it and during the trial something you overlooked came back to bite you. That’s how you become one of the top lawyers in Boston because for the rest of your career you made sure there were no surprises lurking out there for you to be tripped up on. In other words you dotted all the “i”s and crossed all the “t”s.
Comey tried to finesse the email investigation. He did not call a grand jury nor did he pursue it properly with search warrants, etc., because of its political overtones. So he left a lot of stones unturned figuring it did not matter. The day before his letter he learned that he missed something. The last thing he wanted to do was send the letter. It cannot be something trivial or he would have waited. So he had no choice especially since he knows what he was told will be leaked at some point. i HAVE ANOTHER POST COMING OUT ABOUT IT AT 11:00 AM.
Comey forgot the old Marine motto that was posted in very large block letters on the back wall of my Quonset hut which stared at me every time I entered it when I was going through my first summer at Quantico” PRIOR PROPER PREPARATION PREVENTS PISS POOR PERFORMANCE.
SEMPER FI !
Al:
Back to you as the birthday approaches.
Matt
BREAKING NEWS
The media is reporting that the FBI is re-opening the case against Hillary Clinton on the grounds that “new information” has been discovered.
I would guess one of the following or a combination of all:
a. Director Comey has faced too much pressure from Congressional oversight.
b. Director Comey has discovered a conscience and faced the realization that he will go down in history as the single person who sold out America.
c. Internal FBI agents blew the whistle on Comey and he had no other option than to re-visit verified criminal activity.
Any response?
[email protected]
The latest news involves emails from A. Weiner and wife
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/29/us/politics/fbi-hillary-clinton-email.html
FBI probing new Clinton emails
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/28/fbi-probing-new-clinton-emails.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fbi-to-conduct-new-investigation-of-emails-from-clintons-private-server/2016/10/28/0b1e9468-9d31-11e6-9980-50913d68eacb_story.html
Henry:
What a joke? Is McCabe going to oversee this investigation too? Imagine Comey now planning to reinvestigate what he has already found. Why would the result be different?
Perhaps there’s a game afoot – you know you cannot put anything past these folks – now if I were the Clintons I would want to start with a clean slate and no fears of anything coming up later.
So how about this little scheme. She gets elected, Comey (to try to bring back some dignity to the FBI) recommends she be indicted, she protests her innocence, the DOJ indicts her, she expresses outrage, the President then pardons her for all past acts in connection with anything she did that may be criminal, you know how Whitey said they did for him. She’ll yell and scream that she wants to prove her innocence and she does not want to be pardoned but has no choice for “the good of the American people.” (They are always thinking of that.)
That would be a brilliant scam. All it takes is the cojones to do it.
Dan, Come on! McAuliffe, a major fundraiser for the Clintons since the 1990s, who served on the Board of Directors of the Clinton Foundation in 2004, “handpicks” a novice politician, an FBI agent’s wife to run for office and directs $675,000 to her campaign and Dan sees nothing suspicious. Talk about putting the blinders on! Hillary already was under Congressional Investigation (Benghazi), her emails became the subject of investigation in December 2014 (that’s when she sent 30,000 to State Dept. and deleted 30,000 she falsely called “personal”.) and everyone knew the FBI soon would be on her tail. So, who did McAuliffe chose to back? The wife of the FBI agent in charge of its “D.C. field offices”, the guys who’d be sent to investigate Hillary.
2. As for Comey being a Republican? Republican’s can be compromised, too. The Federal Statue criminalized “gross negligence” in handling confidential government records; Comey found Hillary was “extremely careless” in handling confidential records. Gross negligence and extremely careless are synonyms. He laid out a strong case for prosecution, and then failed to prosecute.
Comey failed in his duty to faithfully execute the laws. Did FBI agent McCabe persuade Comey to lay off Clinton?
You think that FBI agent felt no obligation to the people (McAuliffe and Clinton) who helped kick-start and substantially financed his wife’s campaign.
You cannot see even the appearance of impropriety?
What I see is that Comey has rolled over to right-wing political pressure and restarted the email investigation less than two weeks before the election! It’ s a outrageous excursion into partisan politics by Comey and the FBI.
Bill:
Clinton supporters always allege a right wing conspiracy if you point to facts showing how corrupt they are. Next they will be saying McCabe did not know McAuliffe was best friends with the Clintons.
Looks like we’ve got a right-wing conspiracy, no? Comey and the FBI trying to throw the election to Trump with less two weeks to go before the voting.
This is another example of the right wing howling at the moon. Since James Comey is inconveniently a Republican, another reason is needed to explain why the conservative law enforcement bureaucracy we know as the FBI is working to protect Hillary Clinton of all people. We’re now asked to believe that because a Clinton ally donated money to the state Senate campaign of the wife of an FBI official, the Bureau engaged in a high-level criminal conspiracy to spare Clinton indictment. Sorry, but I find this theory to be ridiculous. I certainly wouldn’t have fixed the case against Clinton because somebody’s wife was running for the virginia state senate. In fact, it’s pretty laughable. Matt tells us that no trial level attorney or FBI agent agreed with Comey’s decision. But you have drill down to discover this is based on the claims of a single anonymous source who talked to not-always-reliable Fox News .
Dan:
The facts are simple. The FBI number two guy was in charge of an investigation into the emails of Hillary Clinton well knowing that a best friend of Hillary had contributed about two-thirds of million dollars to his wife’s campaign. Normal ethics would require that he recuse himself from the investigation — ask yourself if you would feel comfortable making a decision on an important issue in that situation?
It would have been simple for him to step aside. So why didn’t he? You don’t think that meeting with McAuliffe who convinced his wife to run as a Democrat and promised that money had any effect on him? He knew that it did during her campaign because he recused himself then. What changed that he then went back and took over the investigation?
Sure, the FBI source is not that reliable, but you may note that there have been many people who found that Comey’s decision was suspect and they were not connected with Fox news but even people who supported Clinton. Comey admitted if it were other people in the government who had done that they would be punished. Then we see that another general is punished for confirming a story that is already in the media.
Comey may be a Republican but he likes his job, he knew Clinton was going to win, he knew he would have to work with her, and he came down against prosecuting her in a case that easily should have gone the other way. She was too big to prosecute. When you scream “right wing” you’re falling for the old nonsense Bill and Hillary put out that anyone who opposes what they do is part of the big right wing conspiracy. Yes, must be so, why complain about things like the Mark Rich pardon or the Clinton’s pay to play schemes. It’s all right wingers howling at the moon.
The FBI should be abolished. So should the DEA, ATF and ICE. Merge them all into one unit called FLE( Fed Law Enforcement) . Get rid of all the administrators and bureaucrats Pres. Jackson imposed a four year term on all office holders. A similar step is needed today. Term limits for all pols, judges and office holders. A clean sweep is needed.
NC:
Not only the office holders, there should be limits on how long people can be in any position in a bureaucracy in a democracy. They get accustomed to controlling things and removed from the people. Look at the life time prosecutors in the federal system who seem to more and more out of touch. I probably should not have been harsh on Ortiz because she was a waif following them.
We do need a federal law enforcement agency. We don’t have to abolish them but we do have to open their doors so we can see and understand what they are doing. The FBI definitely needs a good going over.
Is there anyone left in the federal government in whom the the citizens can place their trust and confidence? I’m hard pressed to name anybody.
Paul:
It is getting to the point that many people feel that way. The Republicans if they had a decent candidate could have easily won this time but they put up a guy with all sorts of problems. The federal government is much too removed from the people. A good example is the Bundy verdict.
There’s something rotten in the Hoover building in DC.
And there is something even more rotten outside the Hoover building – Ma Barker Klinton, the basilisk that seeks to infest the Oval Office again, and the Klinton Krime Family, the stench of which has infected the Hoover building and the entire US.
Matt – I second and third it – great post.
So, Hillary comes to Virginia and raises $500,000, $200,000 of which goes to Jill McCabe (see above.)
From the Washington Times: McAuliffe “hand-picks” McCabe. (Another Dem already announced, but McAuliffe’s people forced him out.)
Jill McCabe had never run for political office. McAuliffe personally met with her, before she announced. Clinton’s people refuse to say if Hillary ever met her personally.
Here’s a quote from the Wash. Times showing McCabe’s FBI fingers were already into the Clinton email probe. (He was in charge of field personnel.)
“Mr. McAuliffe’s political action committee ponied up $467,500 to Mrs. McCabe’s campaign, and the state Democratic Party gave more than $200,000 at a time when Mr. McCabe headed the FBI’s Washington field office. That field office provided the manpower for the investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s secret email system. Mr. McCabe would later be promoted to the third-ranking post at the FBI, and then named deputy.
Mrs. McCabe was running to unseat state Sen. Dick Black, a Republican, and ousting him would have swung control of the Virginia state Senate to Democrats.
Mr. Black, who won the race, said Mr. McCabe should resign from his post.
He also told The Washington Times that Mr. McAuliffe irked local Democrats last year by handpicking Mrs. McCabe to run for the seat. The senator said he wondered whether the money influenced the FBI’s investigation.”
Bill:
McCabe if he has a single ethical bone in his body should have recognized he had no right to oversee that investigation. The problem is as I have long pointed out the FBI agents think they are not bound by the same laws as the rest of us. Keep in mind how Hoover was having his agents doing illegal wiretaps, illegal mail openings, and breaking into peoples homes and offices and the agents willingly did it. Nothing has changed.
What makes this stink is there was a candidate running against Black who was a military guy like Black who had been well known in the Democratic party of the area. How does McAuliffe decide to reach out to someone not even a Democrat and put her into the race? Of all the people in the district she was picked. What was special about her — she was a doctor who worked at a pediatric hospital. That’s it. No record as a Democrat.
Get used to it — its how the Clintons work.
Grifters-in-Chief
The Clintons don’t draw lines between their ‘charity’ and personal enrichment.
“Here’s the lasting takeaway: The Clintons spent their White House years explaining endless sleazy financial deals, and even capping their exit with a scandal over whether Bill was paid to pardon financier Marc Rich. They know the risks. And yet they geared up the foundation and these seedy practices even as Mrs. Clinton was making her first bid for the presidency. They continued them as she sat as secretary of state. They continue them still, as she nears the White House.
This is how the Clintons operate. They don’t change. Any one who pulls the lever for Mrs. Clinton takes responsibility for setting up the nation for all the blatant corruption that will follow.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/grifters-in-chief-1477610771
Henry:
The article says they know the risks. What risks. They are above the law.
Matt:
Well said.
The DOJ has established their role as a criminal enterprise and a complicit Congress because so many members are the beneficiaries of crime and a public held hostage.
So, if the Department of Justice obstructs justice and engages in verified criminal activity, where does a regular citizen seek the justice promised to all Americans and take advantage of “rule of law”?
Anyone?
[email protected]
Doug:
I suggest you see what the average citizen is starting to do. Look at the Bundy case. I’d have to guess they think if the DOJ is corrupt then there is no use convicting anyone.
Matt, great post.
It gets worse:
See: http://www.wnd.com/2016/10/mcauliffe-fbi-hillary-payoff-scandal-explodes/
Nice post. Matt.
It’s the end of the FBI as we know it. (Actually, the end has been in progress for some time now.)