Andrew McCabe
deep state target
see retaliation
:{jessie liu fired/quit b/c did not prosecute (ledeen)
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// m traitor g no not dangerous, brn fail
no x gfx pix
an 11 25
President Donald Trump is targeting his former FBI Director in a series of social media posts, including a repost that accused Christopher Wray of treason.
Trump reposted a post on Monday that placed Wray among sixteen people — including several former FBI officials — and labeled them as “Obama’s Russia HOAX Treason Club.”
Those depicted as members of the alleged “Treason Club” include Wray’s predecessor, former FBI Director Jim Comey; former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe; former CIA Directors John Brennan and Gina Haspel; former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Another post that Trump reposted accused former Director Wray of lying when he testified before Congress that he did not put FBI agents in the crowd on January 6.
Trump wrote: “Wray lied!!!”
The president also reposted a post he wrote in September, that reads in part, “It was just revealed that the FBI had secretly placed, against all Rules, Regulations, Protocols, and Standards, 274 FBI Agents into the Crowd just prior to, and during, the January 6th Hoax.”
Trump did not appear to provide evidence that supported his allegations.
Wray has denied there were FBI agents in the crowd as some form of operation.
A September Associated Press headline reported: “Alleged FBI documents do not prove federal agents incited Jan. 6 Capitol attack.”
Trump has also been calling for the prosecutions of his political adversaries, including U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA), New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director Comey, and former National Security Advisor John Bolton.
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an 1 23
former President Donald Trump in 2018 had an infamous press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Finnish capital of Helsinki in which he signaled that believed Putin's denials about having interfered in the 2016 election despite assessments to the contrary from American intelligence agencies.
Four-and-a-half years later, Trump is now touting his trust of Putin over American intelligence agencies as a source of pride.
In a post on his Truth Social account, the former president attacked former officials at the FBI and CIA whom he accused of trying to undermine his presidency by investigating his campaign's multiple contacts with Russian agents during the 2016 presidential race.
"Remember in Helsinki when a 3rd rate reporter asked me, essentially, who I trusted more, President Putin of Russia, or our 'Intelligence' lowlifes," he wrote. "My instinct at the time was that we had really bad people in the form of James Comey, McCabe (whose wife was being helped out by Crooked Hillary while Crooked was under investigation!), Brennan, Peter Strzok (whose wife is at the SEC) & his lover, Lisa Page. Now add McGonigal & other slime to the list. Who would you choose, Putin or these Misfits?"
Trump has repeatedly heaped praise on Putin over the years, and even called him a "genius" last year after he launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine that has faced multiple setbacks over the past 11 months while costing the lives of tens of thousands of Ukrainians.
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In a column for MSNBC, the former assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI claims something stinks about reports that former FBI directorJames Comey and former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe were each subjected to a rare and intrusive IRS audits after falling out of favor with Donald Trump.
According to New York Times report, the two high-ranking officials who were ousted by the former president were on the receiving end of rarest of all tax audits jokingly known as "an autopsy without the benefit of death,” and the fact that Trump loathed both men for not buckling to his demands should set off red flags about political manipulation.
In his column Frank Figliuzzi pointed out: "There were almost 153 million individual returns filed for 2017, and the IRS selected only 5,000 for this most comprehensive of audits — that’s about one return out of every 30,600. If that’s not 'random' enough for you: McCabe’s attorney was audited, too."
According to the former FBI man, Trump has often made mention of rogue federal employees doing political dirty work and that should be taken as a clue that something is rotten in the IRS.
"During Trump’s administration, we heard him endlessly rant about a so-called 'deep state' of federal employees buried deep within government agencies and intent on using their positions to do him harm. What we really need to know is the extent to which Trump appointees and loyalists who abused their positions may still be in government and still working on behalf of a former president instead of working for the American people," he wrote before focusing on current IRS commissioner Charles Rettig -- h who happens to be a Trump appointee.
Lauding the IRS announcing an inspector general investigation, Figliuzzi suggested Rettig should be taken off-duty until the inquiry is completed.
"Rettig should be walked out of his office — now. At a minimum, he should be suspended pending the Inspector General inquiry.If the IG determines anyone at IRS violated the law, there should be a criminal referral and a swift prosecution," he wrote. "Congress too must open an investigation into what transpired with these highly invasive audits and plug any gaps identified in a program that may well have been misused to target Americans."
Conceding it might all be an extraordinary coincidence, he added, "...a potential abuse of a system that touches every American’s life is a matter that goes beyond Trump and his own penchant for vengeance. Americans need to trust that their government will not turn its full punitive powers against them simply because they incurred the wrath of a president. If not, this will someday happen again – and we’ll all be wondering how we ignored the lightning strikes that set our democracy ablaze."
You can read more here:
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/irs-auditing-james-comey-andrew-mccabe-concerning-n1296936
The 'random' IRS audit of Trump's enemies leaves me deeply suspicious
IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig has some serious questions to answer.
00:08 /04:33
July 9, 2022,
By Frank Figliuzzi, MSNBC Opinion Columnist
A report from The New York Times revealed this week that both former FBI director James Comey and former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe found themselves on the receiving end of the rarest and most severe level of audit the Internal Revenue Service can conduct.
Former President Donald Trump fired both men from their positions toward the beginning of his term. And before Trump’s term was over, both were subjected to a process that tax lawyers refer to “only partly jokingly, as ‘an autopsy without the benefit of death,’” according to The New York Times. It’s been said that the only things certain in this world are death and taxes. But the odds that both Comey and McCabe would be subject to the IRS’ scrutiny at “random” as the IRS claims leave me deeply, deeply suspicious.
Comey was notified in 2019 that his 2017 tax returns were selected for the rare audit program. McCabe was advised in 2021 that his 2019 returns would be scrutinized under the same program. Now, the chances of being selected for this audit are miniscule. There were almost 153 million individual returns filed for 2017, and the IRS selected only 5,000 for this most comprehensive of audits — that’s about one return out of every 30,600. If that’s not “random” enough for you: McCabe’s attorney was audited, too.
The odds that both Comey and McCabe would be subject to the IRS’ scrutiny at “random” as the IRS claims leave me deeply, deeply suspicious.
Before dismissing this as pure coincidence, let’s consider the following facts: Comey was fired by Trump in 2017 after Comey refused to publicly refute the existence of an FBI investigation into Trump – Russia collusion in the 2016 presidential campaign. “The Department of Justice has authorized me to confirm” the existence of a broader investigation into potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, Comey said during public congressional testimony. “We’re not going to say another word about it until we’re done.”
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McCabe was terminated in 2019, just 26 hours before hitting retirement and pension eligibility.}: The reason given was that he lacked candor while being investigated by the Department of Justice for allegedly inappropriate communication to a newspaper. McCabe later sued for wrongful termination and won in a settlement agreement. While the reason for the settlement isn’t public, clearly DOJ found it necessary to undo McCabe’s firing and reinstate his pension – with back pay – because something was amiss with either the opening of the case, how it was conducted, or how he was terminated.
Inspector general to investigate unusual audits of Trump enemies
July 7, 2022 07:41
McCabe served as acting FBI director when Comey was fired, and in that role continued to oversee the Trump – Russia campaign investigation. Trump publicly harassed McCabe, and McCabe wrote in his book that during a phone call with the president, he mocked McCabe’s wife who ran for state office as a Democrat in Virginia.
Finally, let us note that IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig was appointed by Trump to head the agency in 2018. He was thus the IRS’s leader when Comey and McCabe fell under the audit program. Rettig remains in that role today....
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federal judge delivers blow to AG Barr in battle against former FBI deputy director
Alex Henderson September 25, 2020
U.S. Attorney General William Barr has insisted that former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, now a CNN contributor, was not fired for political reasons, but McCabe has maintained that the…
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/rosenstein-blocked-fbi-from-probing-trumps-russian-ties-then-ordered-mueller-to-ignore-them-as-well
One of the many oddities of the now-terminated Robert Mueller probe into Russian election interference and its links to various members of the Trump campaign and family, and in fact of all known federal probes into Russia’s Trump-related actions, has been the seeming lack of any counterintelligence probe on Donald Trump’s myriad, longstanding financial connections to Russia—and what role those financial ties have played both in the Russian government’s actions on behalf of Trump and their possible leverage over the now-president.
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A new story from *The New York Times*‘ Michael Schmidt reports that that’s because in the first months of the new Trump administration, former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein shuttered that investigation—then ordered special counsel Robert Mueller to steer clear of it himself. It’s not that the counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s known ties to Russian crime figures, to money laundering, and his family’s stated reliance on Russian cash has been kept closely-held: It never existed. And it still doesn’t.
The accusation being leveled by acting Federal Bureau of Investigation director Andrew McCabe against Rosenstein goes further, suggesting that Rosenstein intentionally misled him. Schmidt reports that McCabe launched a counterintelligence probe into Trump’s Russian ties immediately after Trump’s firing of former FBI director James Comey, a move that was widely publicly speculated to be a Trump move to quash investigations into Russian election actions and into numerous of Trump’s top advisers and allies.The fear within the intelligence community was that Trump’s behaviors could be impacted by unknown Russian pressures, representing an immediate national security threat.
Rosenstein, however, ordered the probe shut down. Rosenstein did not tell McCabe that directly, says Schmidt, but instead left McCabe “with the impression that the special counsel would take on [that] investigation” as part of Mueller’s overall Russian interference inquiry.
but separately, Rosenstein told Mueller that he wasn’t to pursue the counterintelligence concerns either.
That means no federal investigation into Trump’s Russian cash have been undertaken during his presidency, despite numerous papers and journalists themselves identifying significant ties between Donald Trump’s finances and individuals close to the Russian government. Not by intelligence officials, not by the special counsel’s team, and not the Senate’s own Russia probes. Through the entirety of Trump’s term, all probes of financial ties to Russian interests—which he has retained, even in the presidency—have each been blocked.
Schmidt’s claims here seem impossible to fully believe. It would require that federal law enforcement officials turn a blind eye to a potentially massive national security threat—the very real chance that Trump was and is being intimidated into, or merely bribed into, pursuing Putin-preferred policies damaging to the United States. Trump’s moves to weaken NATO, his pressure on allies to weaken Russian sanctions and re-elevate Russia as economic leader, and his mostly-successful sabotage of the Ukrainian government’s ability to push back Russian forces during a key Russian military push have each been contrary to longstanding U.S. interests. None have been competently explained, not even by Trump’s own national security officials.
As expert Marcy Wheeler suggests, that both Rosenstein and Sen. Richard Burr specifically chose, in their probes, “not to look into the most obvious source of compromise suggests that someone knows what they would find.” After Trump’s continued pattern of gleeful lawbreaking, it’s now more plausible to believe Trump is acting for personal financial gain in his dealings with Russia than it is to believe his actions rest on any supposed ideological foundation. The Senate and Justice Department both continue to make rigorously sure, however, to leave those questions intentionally unanswered.
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Federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia have embraced politically fraught cases under the United States attorney, Jessie K. Liu, an ambitious prosecutor who has angled for bigger jobs in the Trump administration.
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She aggressively pushed for the prosecution ofMr. McCabe on suspicion of lying to investigators about sensitive law enforcement information provided to a reporter. Mr. McCabe was accused of misleading investigators conducting an administrative review, not a criminal inquiry; typically, such cases are not referred for prosecution.
The relatively straightforward case against Mr. McCabe has dragged on for more than 20 months. Prosecutors have refused to tell Mr. McCabe’s lawyers whether they intend to bring charges.
Ms. Liu’s office also charged Gregory B. Craig, a onetime White House counsel in the Obama administration, after prosecutors in New York passed on the case. Mr. Craig was charged with lying to the F.B.I. about his work for the Ukrainian government, but a jury last year quickly acquitted him, handing Ms. Liu an embarrassing defeat.
Mr. Trump nominated Ms. Liu last month to be the Treasury Department’s under secretary for terrorism and financial crimes. He had previously tapped her to be the No. 3 spot in the Justice Department, but she withdrew from consideration after Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, raised concerns about her conservative credentials.
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ww.nytimes.com › politics › leak-investigation-james-comey
Justice Dept. Investigating Years-Old Leaks and Appears ...
2 days ago - James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, has been a frequent target ... leak of classified information about a Russian intelligence document, ...
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/trump-and-bill-barr-are-still-working-to-cover-up-vladimir-putins-campaign-against-democracy/
no lnx
Trump and Bill Barr are still working to cover up Vladimir Putin’s campaign against democracy
Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon October 25, 2019
During his otherwise subdued testimony before Congress this summer, former special counsel Robert Mueller did turn to more dramatic language when discussing one issue: Russia’s efforts to undermine American democracy.
“Over the course of my career, I’ve seen a number of challenges to our democracy. The Russian government’s effort to interfere in our election is among the most serious,” Mueller said in his opening statement. “This deserves the attention of every American.”
Well, two Americans who have decided to give it their attention are Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr. But instead of trying to stop such efforts, their plan is quite clearly to use the power of the United States government to cover up the Russian conspiracy — and intimidate any law enforcement officials who might feel the urge to fight similar criminal conspiracies going into the 2020 elections.
As the New York Times reported late Thursday, the Justice Department, which Barr took over after Trump ran out previous Attorney General Jeff Sessions for failing to fully evacuate himself of all remaining traces of integrity, has opened a criminal investigation into the origins of the Russian investigation run by Mueller.
Remember this: Mueller uncovered a vast Russian conspiracy that pulled off something the Watergate burglars never could. Russians or their allies successfully stole information from Democratic Party officials that was used to bolster conspiracy theories that eventually cost the Democratic nominee the election. Mueller also discovered that Trump knew about this conspiracy, encouraged it publicly, and attempted to get involved but apparently failed —probably because the Russians concluded he was unreliable, and involving him was more trouble than it was worth. Mueller also discovered that Trump conducted a lengthy campaign to cover up the Russian conspiracy, resulting in a list of 10 incidents that, if Trump were not protected by his office, could result in federal charges of obstruction of justice.
Just because the Mueller investigation is over doesn’t mean Trump’s efforts to cover up for Vladimir Putin’s campaign against democracy have ended. On the contrary, the obstruction of justice campaign has expanded. Now, under the guidance of Barr, it’s being run by the Department of Justice itself.
It’s quite clear what’s going on here. Barr almost certainly doesn’t really believe that DOJ officials, under Mueller’s guidance, broke any laws in investigating the Russian criminal conspiracy or Trump’s efforts to protect it. Instead, by opening this phony investigation, he intends both to shore up Trump’s conspiracy theories claiming that the Russia scandal is all a Democratic hoax, and to use the threat of criminal charges to intimidate any government officials who might have a hankering to protect the 2020 election from any future such conspiracies, involving the Russians or anyone else.
There’s good reason to fear this phony investigation could lead to human rights abuses. Both Peter Strzok and Andrew McCabe were fired from the FBI as part of Trump’s efforts to shore up his conspiracy theories denouncing the Russia investigation. Both men are no doubt aware that Trump may seek seeking to arrest them under false pretenses, as part of his scapegoating campaign.
Another interesting point here is that Barr is doing is exactly what Trump, using the threat of withheld military aid, tried to force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to do: Open up a phony investigation in order to smear Democrats and deny that the Russian government was behind the criminal attack on the 2016 election.
The difference is that Zelensky resisted, even under great pressure from the twin threats of soldiers dying and the possibility of further Russian invasion. Barr, on the other hand, is choosing to be a scumbag of his own accord, using lies and threats of imprisonment to intimidate those who would stand up for democracy.
(It’s worth noting here that Barr takes time out of his busy schedule of undermining democracy to give lectures implying that societal morality is being undermined by adults having consensual sex in the privacy of their own homes. I’d call him out regarding his hypocrisy around Trump, but it’s safe to say the president’s thing isn’t consensual sex. Sexual assault probably falls right into what Barr calls the “customs and traditions which reflect the wisdom and experience of the ages.”)
As Heather Digby Parton noted at Salon, Barr’s in this because he’s a true ideological opponent of democracy, and sees his role as continuing to promote a “long-term project to transform the U.S. into an undemocratic, quasi-authoritarian plutocracy” that goes back at least to the 1980s. In this, Barr’s views are complementary to Putin’s goal of undermining democracy around the world, in order to demoralize the hopes of Russians at home who are getting sick of living under his authoritarian rule.
Trump, on the other hand, is in this for the same reason he does anything: Pure self-interest. Why he has such unwavering enthusiasm for the authoritarian Russian government, and such eagerness to help realize Putin’s goals in the U.S., remains something of a black box. One day, perhaps, his tax returns will finally be released and shed some light on the situation. But there can be little doubt that finances have something to do with it, as Mueller’s investigation revealed. In addition, Trump clearly has the idea that discrediting the Mueller investigation, even if that means trying to prosecute former government officials under false pretenses, will help him in the 2020 election.
Ultimately, this is one more reason that Democrats should stop trying to contain the impeachment inquiry to the Ukraine scandal. After all, what Trump tried to do in Ukraine — use that government’s resources to open phony investigations of his opponents and discredit evidence of his own corruption — is the same thing he is trying to do here. The only difference is, here at home he’s succeeding. The attorney general should not be allowed to use the DOJ as a legal hit squad for the president, devoted to gutting democracy. It’s time to open an impeachment inquiry into Bill Barr, as well.
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Andrew McCabe
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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/sally-yates-has-christmas-warning-trump-look-out-ghosts-mar-lago