Friday afternoon, FBI General Counsel Dana Boente announced his retirement effective June 30.

If you followed the Russia Hoax at all, you know the name. When Sally Yates won a prize in the #Resistance Games for refusing to do her constitutional duty by defending President Trump’s so-called ‘travel ban’ (let’s be clear here, the nations targeted were six failed states who literally can’t control identity documents issued by their own governments and Iran, a designated state sponsor of terrorism) and was fired, she was replaced by Dana Boente who, at the time, was serving as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Boente served as Acting Attorney General until Jeff Sessions was sworn in on February 8, 2017. At that time Boente became the acting Deputy Attorney General until Rod Rosenstein was confirmed to that post on April 25, 2017.

During that time, Boente was anything but a mere placeholder. He signed off on one of the FISA warrants targeting Carter Page, a warrant that was known to be fraudulent by the FBI and we have to assume the same knowledge was available to Boente given the high potential of the Page surveillance to explode in a lot of faces. He, from meeting records, seems instrumental in convincing Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from investigating the Russia Hoax and appointing Special Fraudster Counsel Robert Mueller.

Boente became acting head of the Department of Justice’s National Security Division after Rosenstein took office and in January 2018 he became FBI General Counsel, FBI Director Christopher Wray’s chief adviser on the Russia Hoax investigation.

It has lately been revealed that Boente was one of the architects behind the FBI’s program of lies and deception to prevent Michael Flynn’s attorney from getting access to exculpatory documents that seem about to lead to charges against Flynn being dropped.

Mr. Jensen and officials in Mr. Shea’s office pushed to give Mr. Flynn’s lawyers copies of the notes and other documents they had recently found. Mr. Van Grack and Dana Boente, the F.B.I. general counsel, argued against disclosing them.

Eventually the F.B.I. agreed to release the documents because they contained no classified or sensitive material, even though they believed they were not required to share them with the defense, according to an email from lawyers in Mr. Boente’s office on April 23.

April 24: “FBI general counsel Dana Boente led the charge internally against DOJ’s disclosure of the new materials.” https://t.co/szL1NxodqO

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) May 30, 2020

Far from merely a decision to retire, Boente was, according to reports, asked for his resignation by the highest levels in Department of Justice.

After a 38-year career with the Justice Department, the FBI’s top lawyer Dana Boente was asked to resign on Friday. Two sources familiar with the decision to dismiss Boente said it came from high levels of the Justice Department rather than directly from FBI Director Christopher Wray.

His departure comes on the heels of recent criticism by Fox News for his role in the investigation of former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

A spokesman for the FBI confirmed to NBC News that Boente did in fact resign on Friday.

Fox News has recently criticized Boente’s role in the investigation of Flynn, whose criminal charge for lying to the FBI was recently dropped by the Justice Department based in part on the argument that his lies were not material to an underlying investigation.

Note that this entirely Fox New’s doing. No one else at Justice had a clue about this guy until Fox News mentioned him. This, of course, is arrant nonsense.

The key takeaway not mentioned in this is that Christopher Wray has lost control of the FBI and is undoubtedly on the way out. Should President Trump be reelected, I would expect Wray to resign before April 2021. He has been repeatedly rolled internally, by his IG Michael Horozwitz, and now by Bill Barr acting through

Boente was obviously part of the problem. I don’t know whether he was a #Resistance member (because he did aggressively defend the Trump ‘travel ban’) or just an institutionalist who placed protecting Justice and the FBI from scrutiny and the protection of the self-proclaimed prerogatives of those organizations above common sense, loyalty to the nation, and basic human decency. It is clear that the impulse everywhere Boente has served has been to protect bad actors from punishment and to protect institutions from criticism. But to quote a famous grifter, “at this point, what difference does it make?” If Boente was part of the #Resistance how would he have acted differently that Boente the Institutionalist. The truth about the Russia Hoax would be hidden from public view, Michael Flynn would be ruined, documents would be hidden, courts lied to.

For too long these clowns–Boente, Comey, Rosenstein, McCabe, et al— have treated the government of the United States as their own personal fiefdom where they made the rules and the rest of us proles danced to their tune. For too long they have worked to aggrandize power to themselves, not for the purpose of making America stronger or her citizens safer but purely for the sake of exercising that power. Their hubris reached the point where they conceived and nearly successfully executed a coup against a lawfully elected president.

I hope, I truly hope, this is the beginning of a massive settling of accounts