Andy McCabe

[wacojoe]

I’m conflicted about this guy. He has a lot to answer for and about, but the odd thing is that the thing he is hung up on was a leak with which I agree. Apparently he was in charge of an investigation of the Clinton Foundation (CF) in election year 2016. The Wall Street Journal got wind that he was ordering that investigation shut down. He says he was ordered by the DOJ’s unnamed Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General (PADAG), likely Matthew Axelrod, to shut it down and had a “very dramatic” confrontation when he balked. To protect himself, McCabe then had Lisa Page leak his version to the WSJ. After that he repeatedly lied (sometimes under oath) about authorizing the leak even though he probably had the authority to leak.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...fromobama.html

The crux of the matter, which gets little mention, is that the Obama apparatus ordered an investigation of the Clinton Crime Family operation shut down in the middle of a Clinton campaign and McCabe resisted, if what McCabe contends is true.

[TxMusky]

Who can you trust if our nation's premier law enforcement organization is like this? Not to mention that the POTUS at the time and his party was partaking in corruption and conspiracy s well.

Why leak anyway, just go out and make what you want known public, via twitter or any one of a hundred other ways to get a story out that you want told. Look how well Trump gets his opinions out, you might not like them and you may hate the methods used, but he does not hide behind a leak or having someone else tell so and so what he wants the public to know, he just tells it like it is.

[Billy_Rightwing]

Hillary is not in jail so leaks helped her I guess.

[mgrist]

Who's left at this point to pick it back up? Sounds like McCabe was begging for permission to do his job but didn't get it. And now that the whole thing is more out in the open who's going to push it. Obama could care less, he was the first black president, he's untouchable. For the same reason nobody will institute anything against him. The Clintons apparently have dossiers on everybody alive and can't be touched.

[Honda]

It's fairly obvious that Obama politicized the justice department. I don't think there's anything much else to say about it.

[Kevin]

Could you cite a specific example of what you mean when you state that Obama politicized the Justice Department?

I think that many times, a decision someone does not agree with gets conflated with what someone sees as motivations. For example, the Obama administration was concerned with civil rights. Obama ran on the issue and got elected so it can be expected that they will prioritize the issue. The position they would have on many civil rights issues is different than what Trump would take. That's a normal part of any change of administration and built in by design so that government is responsive to the people.

As a specific example, consider voting rights. Eric Holder believed that the big issue here is removing barriers to people voting and opposed voter ID laws. Republicans by and large see voter fraud as a bigger issue and concentrate on voter ID laws. In either case, there is no "unbiased approach". It is all about one's viewpoint about what is important, which gets translated into voting for people that share that viewpoint and is by definition politics.

So blaming Obama for what is built into the system by design is not a valid critique.

[Kevin]

With respect to the specific article you cite, waco:

Before I get too excited about a call from the Justice Department to the FBI about the course of an investigation, I'd like to know if that is something that happens commonly or even occasionally. Limbaugh is making the insinuation that such a call is completely inappropriate. I'd need to know a lot more before jumping to that conclusion. Haul everyone involved in front of Congress and ask them under oath.

Second, it is a leap to go from a call from Sally Yates to it being the result of an order from Obama. Nothing has been shown that indicates Obama was personally involved with anything concerning the course of an investigation, so the headline is more about raising smoke than providing light.

Further, nothing happens in a vacuum. I recall the Nixon years very well when a President overtly used the departments of government to punish foes and help allies. I know from my service in federal government that there were a great many steps taken to insulate the Justice Department from direct meddling. I'd like to see if this instance was an end-run around those protocols or not. Limbaugh doesn't know and neither does the author and neither is taking the time to find out before raising a stink about it.

It is just as likely that the call was made to avoid the very problem that occurred when J. Edgar ran the FBI, when the FBI was being used to go after political opponents. But that would mean ascribing honorable motivations to one's political opponents and I think that Limbaugh would rather eat glass before he did that.

[wacojoe]

^^^
According to the IG report on McCabe, McCabe characterized the order to shut down his investigation into the Clinton Foundation as of the unprecedented variety —

“According to McCabe, he pushed back, asking ‘are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?’ McCabe told us that the conversation was ‘very dramatic’ and he never had a similar confrontation like the PADAG call with a high level Department official in his entire FBI career.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...#ixzz5DPnxsKLS

I agree that McCabe and whomever the PADAG was at the time should be subpoenaed to give testimony why the CF investigation was shut down. Incidentally, news reports (more leaks?) have it that the Sessions DOJ has reopened that investigation into the CF and that IG Horowitz is making that episode part of his highly anticipated larger report due out in May.

Kevins unerring belief in the goodness of bureaucrats and their motivations is charming, btw. I wish he had been on the board when Lois Lerner was up for discussion.

[Kevin]

I'd have lowered the boom on her. She broke trust.

[Honda]

McCabe is nothing more than a pawn in Obama's scheme to politicize the Department of Justice. It seems like just in the game chess The pawns fall first. Or as Bernie taupin once wrote he was nothing more than a pauper to a pawn.

[mgrist]

McCabe is nothing more than a pawn in Obama's scheme to politicize the Department of Justice. It seems like just in the game chess The pawns fall first. Or as Bernie taupin once wrote he was nothing more than a pauper to a pawn.

But you can't let them all fall, the pawns are usually an integral part of one's strategy.

[Kevin]

"Politicization" of the Justice Department is a matter of perspective. Many liberals consider what is happening now under Trump to be politicization.

[TxMusky]

Politicization either way is wrong, the justice dept especially needs to be blind and extremely equal. If you think the law applies more to one side or the other, one race or another, you do not need to be in that job.

[Kevin]

Politicization either way is wrong, the justice dept especially needs to be blind and extremely equal. If you think the law applies more to one side or the other, one race or another, you do not need to be in that job.

The problem is, there is no definition of what constitutes "politicization". What you see as politicization, others see as justice. It is entirely subjective.

The Justice Department is not just a law enforcement agency - that's what a political appointee leads it. It implements the President's agenda. It is political by design.

It has functions, though, that include law enforcement and THOSE should not be politically-motivated.

[Truckman]

It has functions, though, that include law enforcement and THOSE should not be politically-motivated.

I see that as an impossible achievement because it would not only have to be performed by flawed human beings, but their actions also judged by flawed human beings, each with their own viewpoint...We'll only have a perfectly harmonious society when we're down to the last one left standing......Ben