Federal Prosecutors Move Forward With Charges Against Andrew McCabe

After the Department of Justice’s Inspector General recommended that charges be brought against disgraced, fired former Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe, the man of the hour himself filed an appeal with the U.S. Attorney’s office in an attempt to get away scot-free. Sitting pretty with a lawsuit against the Trump administration and a nice little job at CNN as a paid correspondent, McCabe doesn’t need the inconvenience of a prison sentence messing with his private sector career. But this week, U.S. Attorney Jessie Jiu rejected McCabe’s appeal, recommending that prosecutors move forward with the charges against him.

“The Department rejected your appeal of the United States Attorney’s Office’s decision in this matter. Any further inquiries should be directed to the United States Attorney’s Office,” said the sharp missive delivered to McCabe’s lawyers.

The likelihood of imminent charges against McCabe has at least some on-air talent at CNN concerned about the network’s reputation.

“It’s hard to see the justification for hiring him initially since it was publicly documented he’s, best case, a liar. How will CNN handle it if he’s also soon indicted?” one anonymous on-air broadcaster told Fox News. “It erodes our journalistic credibility to have so many highly anti-Trump, former Obama DOJ/security officials without a semblance of balance.”

Well, we’d say it’s a mite late in the game for CNN to worry about eroding their “journalistic credibility,” but the person does have a point. It is certainly a bad look for a network that claims to be all about the truth to have on the books a guy who was fired for lying.

According to the IG’s report, McCabe leaked information to the Wall Street Journal in October 2016 for a story headlined: “FBI in Internal Feud Over Hillary Clinton Probe.” That story was all about the strife inside the Bureau over whether or not the FBI should have reopened the case into Hillary Clinton’s emails due to the discovery of a new cache hidden on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. McCabe’s part of the story actually concerned another aspect of the investigation – one into the Clinton Foundation. Senior Justice Department officials wanted to shut down that probe, but McCabe stood up for the agent pursuing it. McCabe went on to lie to FBI Director James Comey and the inspector general about his role in authorizing the leak.

What makes all of this doubly nonsensical? McCabe is claiming that he is being fired and brought up for prosecution as part of some political payback on the part of the president. But, as you can see from the story above, McCabe was actually trying to further an investigation into Clinton. Therefore, the idea that this is partisan revenge…well, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, even if McCabe is a well-documented enemy of Trump’s. This bit of wrongdoing, at least, was focused in the other direction. You don’t think this guy would have been fired and prosecuted under Hillary Clinton’s regime?