Make him sit down to plead the 5th like a big boy.
The FBI’s number two went all over the bureau. (FreeMartyG)
Fired former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe has issues with consistency.
And the results are similar to what you might expect from a potty-training toddler. So is his whining.
As you may recall, back in March the FBI fired McCabe. Perhaps ironically, the Bureau’s second biggest tuna was canned over his own so-called “lack of candor” with investigators.
Now, for legal reasons, I can’t say that McCabe lied under oath to the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG), because if he did then that would make him a federal felon. That being said though, the Paperback Oxford English Dictionary 7th Edition has only one definition for the word candor, and that’s “the quality of being open and honest.”
Yet, apparently McCabe changed his story about the unvestigation into Hillary’s private email server more often than Hillary tries to guess Bill’s Facebook password.
If I could just address Mrs. Clinton here for a moment. By the way Hil, here’s a tip from an actual computer security professional whose email has never been hacked. Try: 409–>BlueDress
No luck? How about: 18yoCigarBox
That work? Good. No need to thank me Hil, I’ll just take 20% of America’s stockpile of “lost” FBI text messages.
So back to McCabe and speaking of whining, toilet-training toddlers, extricating these texts from the bowels of the world’s premiere bent “investigative agency” is like reaching into a diaper genie and pulling out 140 character gold nuggets.
For example:
Lisa Page: “(Trump’s) not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”
Peter Strzok: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it,”
But of course they didn’t. Lisa Page, aka “Bonnie,” left the FBI in disgrace last month. Then, just this week, Peter “Clyde” Strzok was escorted out of FBI HQ after having been transferred to the HR department.
And speaking of number two, the agency exchange below regarding one of Hillary’s IT staffers was particularly insightful:
FBI Employee: “How did the (witness) go?”
Agent 1: “Awesome. Lied his ass off… Ridic(ulous).”
FBI Employee: “Would be funny if he was the only guy charged in this deal.”
Agent 1: “I know…. Even if he said the truth and didn’t have a clearance when handling the secure fax – ain’t no one gonna do (bleep).”
That confidence that nobody in the agency was actually going to do (bleep) may have explained McCabe’s apparent surprise when he was first fired on the recommendation of senior FBI ethics officials a few months ago. Back then, he defiantly released a statement to the media that he would be silent “no more.”
Subsequently, McCabe quickly raised over half a million dollars in an online legal defense fund with the help of Bill Clinton’s own former DOJ Inspector General (IG) Michael Bromwich, and a tweet from MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.
More recently though, McCabe did an abrupt about face after the current OIG announced that it actually had the 50,000+ text messages which the FBI initially claimed that it had “lost” due to a “misconfiguration” during McCabe’s tenure and that McCabe might be called to testify before Congress – under oath. Almost overnight, it seemed, McCabe went from fervently insisting that he would be silent “no more” to demanding immunity in exchange for answering questions from legislators.
McCabe’s critics might chalk up the sudden change of heart (and possibly a corresponding sudden change of diaper) to the same so-called “lack of candor” for which he had apparently been fired in the first place.
And that may very well be the case. But if McCabe rather smugly feels entitled to immunity, then his feelings of entitlement might also belie an inaccurate impression of the mechanics of Congressional testimony, if not a critical misunderstanding of his situation.
McCabe may find that he is in no position to demand anything after these latest revelations that his former agency – where he was number two in charge – inaccurately claimed that those 50,000 text messages had been lost and then stonewalled Congressional subpoenas to provide them to legislators for months. The simple facts that McCabe was fired from that number two spot for what many Americans might consider to have been lying under oath and that he has now been referred to the DOJ for criminal charges by Congressional representatives certainly aren’t bolstering his bargaining position either.
So, rather than testifying voluntarily under a grant of immunity, McCabe may find himself compelled to answer questions “under penalty” of a Congressional subpoena. (“Under penalty” is the literal translation from Latin of the word “subpoena.”)
In turn, that could very well mean that McCabe’s best option – or perhaps most precisely his least bad one – would be to answer by pleading the 5th Amendment – publicly.
And wouldn’t that be interesting? Perhaps especially so if it happened before Congress and therefore on live television for the whole nation to watch in real time? In comparison, the American people would never see such a broadcast from federal court since TV cameras aren’t allowed in there.
So, come on McCabe, be silent “no more.”
Marty Gottesfeld defended former figure skater Justina Pelletier when she was maimed at Harvard-affiliated Boston Children’s Hospital. The Obama administration arrested him in February 2016 and he’s being held without bail by judges with apparent conflicts of interest. See FreeMartyG.com, the FreeMartyG Facebook page and the @FreeMartyG Twitter account for more information
