I’m not sure if he meant to admit this or if he’s just so brazen that he doesn’t care. Probably the latter.

Andrew McCabe, who’s currently facing a coming indictment for lying to the FBI (while also moonlighting as a CNN analyst of course), did an interview on his time at the FBI during the Trump-Russia investigation. Along the way, he made a pretty important admission regarding the origins of the probe.

”We open the case, and then we think, ‘OK, now who are we actually going to investigate? Who do we know who is associated with the campaign who has known, significant ties to Russian intelligence? We quickly come up with four names.” 3 from the dossier: https://t.co/nwHIs0aA4m

— Julie Kelly (@julie_kelly2) October 11, 2019

McCabe said the FBI opened its case in late July 2016 based on information about Trump adviser George Papadopoulos.

“We open the case, and then we think, ‘OK, now who are we actually going to investigate?’” McCabe said at the event, which aired Tuesday on C-SPAN.

“Who do we know who is associated with the campaign who has known, significant ties to Russian intelligence?” he asked rhetorically. “We quickly come up with four names that will not surprise you.”

Wait, so they started the investigation without even knowing who they were going to investigate? Why, it’s almost as if they were simply fishing around Trump’s campaign for political reasons.

Seriously though, that’s probably something he shouldn’t be saying out loud, as it confirms what most of us have been saying for years. This entire fiasco started without probable cause under the false pretenses of a counter intelligence investigation, which effectively removed all guardrails on Comey and McCabe. Instead of having a crime or action to go on, they simply started chumming the waters and filling in the blanks as they went.

If you listen carefully, McCabe is admitting he had **no predicate at all to open a full enterprise CI investigation**

—PapaD: vague Downer tip

—Flynn: he sat next to Putin

—Page: Russians tried to recruit him years ago (and failed)

—Manafort: He worked in Ukraine for money

— Undercover Huber (@JohnWHuber) October 11, 2019

It’s also no coincidence that three of their first four targets came from the Steele dossier. In this same interview, McCabe sought to defend the document even as it’s been exposed as the dumpster fire that it is.

He also sought to defend Steele and his salacious dossier, which the FBI used to obtain surveillance warrants on Page.

“It is raw source reporting,” McCabe said, “and Steele presented it as such.”

“We knew that Steele was working a number of different sources, some of which has sub-sources, and sub-sub-sources, and he would represent that in the reporting, as any good source should. It didn’t come with his imprimatur of, ‘this is all gospel.’ It was like, ‘this is what I’m hearing,’” said McCabe, who is under Justice Department investigation.

“That’s how good sources report.”

It should scare everyone that this guy was at the highest levels of ensuring national security. “That’s how good sources report?” By funneling abject garbage sourced from Russians that was so ridiculous that it was nearly all debunked the moment it went public? If that’s true then we should just disband the FBI because they suck at their jobs. They treated the Steele dossier as legitimate for months while it took news outlets a few days to tear most of it apart. That’s America’s best and brightest? Or perhaps just most partisan.

This guy needs to be brought down hard. If he walks after all this, justice is truly not blind in this country.

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