Documents show that McCabe did eventually recuse himself from the Clinton probe just days after the Wall Street Journal disclosed the flagrant conflict of interest—the same conflict of interest that may have allowed Clinton to escape prosecution. Only then, when the FBI was under siege by the public disclosure, did McCabe reluctantly disqualify himself, reportedly at Comey’s urging, a mere one week before the presidential election on November 1, 2016.10 At this point, of course, it was too late. His belated recusal was patently absurd since McCabe and Comey had already cleared Clinton and ended their investigation of her four months earlier.
McCabe’s recusal came at a point when Comey briefly reopened the Clinton investigation on October 28, 2016, when new emails were discovered, only to shut it down again ten days later. Why would Comey and McCabe decide that the assistant director should disqualify himself then, but not before? Nothing had changed, except that his hidden conflict of interest had been exposed. Stepping aside in the eleventh hour was an implicit admission that McCabe should never have had any role in the case to begin with. His prior involvement was not only improper and unethical, but seemingly corrupt. Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, which obtained many of the McCabe documents through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, said, “These new documents show that the FBI leadership was politicized and compromised in its handling of the Clinton email investigation.”11
The Justice Department’s inspector general opened an investigation into McCabe’s failure to recuse himself and whether he violated DOJ regulations in neglecting to properly disclose payments made to his wife.12 The IG, as well as the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Office of U.S. Special Counsel, also began examining whether McCabe violated the Hatch Act which prohibits certain government officials from campaigning in partisan races. Photographs and other documents suggest he did.13
Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was unsparing in his criticism of McCabe in a scathing letter to Director Comey on March 28, 2017:
You have publicly stated that the people at the FBI “don’t give a rip about politics.” However, the fact is that the Deputy Director (McCabe) met with Mr. McAuliffe about his wife’s run for elected office and she subsequently accepted campaign funding from him. The fact is that the Deputy Director participated in the controversial, high-profile Clinton email investigation even though his wife took money from Mr. McAuliffe. These circumstances undermine public confidence in the FBI’s impartiality, and this is one of the reasons that many believe the FBI pulled its punches in the Clinton matter. FBI’s senior leadership should never have allowed that appearance of a conflict to undermine the Bureau’s important work.14
As McCabe’s conflict of interest came into sharper focus, Congress demanded answers. He reportedly played a direct hand in altering Comey’s statement that originally determined Clinton committed crimes.15 In so doing, he appears to have been one of three people who helped persuade the director and others to absolve Clinton of any wrongdoing.
After months of resistance and under threat of a contempt of Congress resolution, McCabe finally acquiesced to pressure by agreeing to testify before Congress in December 2017. He came under withering scrutiny during two closed hearings before the House Intelligence Committee and a joint investigation by the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees.16 His testimony behind closed doors lasted more than sixteen hours. Many members expressed unhappiness with the responses he provided when grilled about whether he allowed his own bias to intrude on the decision to clear Clinton.17 CNN reported, “The panel’s Republicans forced McCabe to answer questions about internal emails they believe showed Comey mishandled the investigation, according to multiple sources. Two Republicans emerged from the Thursday hearing saying McCabe’s testimony did not change their belief that Clinton got favorable treatment by the FBI when it decided not to pursue criminal charges last year over the handling of her private email server.”18 What evidence the emails contained was not made public.
Shortly before McCabe’s appearances on Capitol Hill, Congressman Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, seemed contemptuous of the deputy FBI director’s conduct and perceived Clinton bias. He told Fox News, “I’d be a little bit surprised if (McCabe’s) still an employee of the FBI this time next week.”19 Grassley was even more outspoken, venturing the opinion that “he ought to be replaced. And I’ve said that before and I’ve said it to people who can do it,”20 a reference to Christopher Wray, who had taken over from Comey when he was fired by President Trump in May 2017.
In a manner, both Gowdy and Grassley were prescient. Two days after McCabe’s second acrimonious appearance before Congress, the news broke that he planned to retire within three months when he would become pension eligible.21 His anticipated exit removed pressure on Wray to demote or fire him for suspected misconduct. A month later, McCabe’s name surfaced in a House Intelligence Committee memo as someone suspected of committing government surveillance abuses during the wiretapping of Trump campaign associates. At the same time, the Justice Department’s inspector general had accumulated evidence of wrongdoing by McCabe. Shortly thereafter, Christopher Wray removed him from his post as deputy director.22 McCabe was placed on what was described as “terminal leave” until his planned retirement took effect.
Two days before his planned retirement, McCabe was fired for “just cause.” His dismissal was approved by both the FBI and the Justice Department, and endorsed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions after what he described as “an extensive and fair investigation” by the FBI’s Office of Responsibility (OPR) and the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG).23 Both the OPR and OIG concluded that “McCabe had made unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor—including under oath—on multiple occasions.”24 In other words, McCabe did not tell investigators the truth, more than once, about leaks to the media.
It turns out that the inspector general reportedly determined that McCabe was untruthful four times, twice under oath. According to Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a member of the House Oversight Committee who obtained copies of the IG report, “It wasn’t once, twice, it wasn’t even three times. Four times he lied about leaking information to the Wall Street Journal about the FBI.”25 The IG subsequently sent to the Justice Department a criminal referral for potential charges against McCabe.
If the findings of the inspector general are true, this would be sufficient justification to bring criminal charges against McCabe for perjury or false statements.26 McCabe immediately issued a public statement denying he misled investigators and portraying himself as an innocent victim. But at the same time, he implicated Comey in his leak to the media, which could also result in similar charges against the former director. McCabe admitted he shared information with a reporter, but stated the following:
As deputy director, I was one of only a few people who had the authority to do that. It was not a secret, it took place over several days, and others, including the director (Comey), were aware of the interaction with the reporter.27
This seems to stand in stark contradiction to what Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 3, 2017, when he was questioned at the outset by Chairman Charles Grassley about FBI leaks. Comey denied ever being an anonymous source to the media about the Trump or Clinton investigations. But then he was asked the following:
GRASSLEY: Question two, relatively related, have you ever authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports about the Trump investigation or the Clinton investigation?
COMEY: No.28
In his statement, McCabe admits he shared information anonymously with a reporter about the Clinton investigation and also contends that Comey knew about it, which means the then-director may have either expressly or implicitly approved the leak. Was McCabe telling the truth or was Comey? It cannot be both.
James Kallstrom, who worked for the FBI for twenty-seven years and became assistant director, said of McCabe, “I think nothi
ng that he said was truthful from my understanding of his role at the FBI. What kind of an investigator was he? What kind of a supervisor? He was lacking in so many ways.”29 Former Assistant deputy director Buck Revell, who knows McCabe, agreed, “I frankly thought he was weak. He didn’t have the experience or the backbone to carry out that job. I was not at all satisfied with his abilities to give guidance to the Director or to hold the fort on issues that the senior career person in the bureau should be doing.”30
In addition to McCabe’s conflict of interest involving his wife, there is evidence that, as deputy FBI director, he was instrumental in manipulating the facts and contorting the law to let Hillary Clinton off the hook, notwithstanding compelling evidence she committed a myriad of crimes. It appears he helped sanitize the infamous Clinton exoneration statement read by Comey.31 At first, it found evidence that she committed crimes, but then the wording was altered to clear her. It is believed that McCabe also signed off on warrant applications to spy on a Trump campaign associate—applications that obscured evidence and potentially deceived the court. This will be examined in forthcoming chapters.
Did McCabe conspire with Comey and others to undermine the Clinton investigation and subvert justice? At the very least, did he allow a personal or political bias to influence the course of a case that should have gone the other way?
If so, there were likely other individuals at the FBI who were involved.
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page
One of McCabe’s senior advisers was an FBI lawyer named Lisa Page. She reportedly carried on a romantic affair with Peter Strzok, who served as the FBI Counterespionage Section chief under McCabe. Both Page and Strzok were married to other people, but they worked closely together on the Clinton email investigation as key players involved in much of the decision-making.
It was first estimated that they exchanged some 10,000 text messages during and after the probe, although the figure later ballooned to more than 50,000 messages.32 Initially, only a small portion of the texts, roughly 375 messages, were turned over to Congress, in December 2017. Immediately, the content of the Strzok-Page communications cast serious doubt on their objectivity and neutrality in assessing whether Clinton committed crimes. The politically charged texts showed a stunning hostility toward Donald Trump, denigrating him as an “idiot” and “loathsome.”33 At the same time, the texts were replete with adoring compliments of Clinton, lauding her nomination and stating: “She just has to win now.”34
Strzok played a pivotal role in Comey’s announcement that he would recommend that no criminal charges be filed by the Justice Department against Clinton. As the lead investigator in the Clinton case, Strzok is believed to have changed the critical wording in Comey’s description of Clinton’s handling of classified material, substituting the words “extremely careless” for “grossly negligent.” According to CNN, citing several sources, electronic records prove it.35
Another part of Comey’s statement was also changed. Initially, he concluded that the enormous volume of classified documents on Clinton’s servers supported the “inference” that she was grossly negligent. This would be sufficient for a finding of criminality. Yet this was also edited out of the final version made public during Comey’s announcement on July 5, 2016.36 Was it Strzok who engineered the edit to exonerate Clinton? Since he made the first edit, it is quite likely he made the second one.
These alterations of key words were integral to the case and had enormous consequences, because they allowed Clinton to evade prosecution under 18 USC 793(f) of the Espionage Act. The changes effectively removed the only legal impediment to her election as president, assuming voters would go along.
The incendiary texts of Strzok and Page were discovered by the Justice Department’s inspector general during an internal investigation into Comey’s disputed decision to clear Clinton.37 Impropriety and corruption were being examined.
Here is a sample of several of the vehemently pro-Hillary and anti-Trump conversations contained therein.38
PAGE: God Trump is a loathsome human.
STRZOK: Yet he may win.
STRZOK: Good for Hillary.
PAGE: It is.
STRZOK: Would he be a worse president than Cruz?
PAGE: Trump? Yes, I think so
STRZOK: Omg he’s an idiot.
PAGE: He’s awful.
——————.
STRZOK: God Hillary should win. 100,000,000—0
PAGE: I know
——————.
STRZOK: Turn it on (GOP convention)! The Douchebags are about to come out.
PAGE: And wow, Donald Trump is an enormous do*che.
——————.
STRZOK: Hi. How was Trump, other than a do*che.
PAGE: Trump barely spoke, but the first thing out of his mouth was ‘we’re going to win sooo big.’ The whole thing is like living in a bad dream.
STRZOK: Jesus
——————.
STRZOK: And hey. Congrats on a woman nominated for President in a major party! About damn time! Many, many more returns of the day!!
PAGE: That’s cute. Thanks.
——————.
PAGE: She just has to win now. I’m not going to lie, I got a flash of nervousness yesterday about Trump.
——————.
PAGE: Jesus. You should read this (story). Trump should go f himself.
STRZOK: God that’s a great article. Thanks for sharing. And F Trump.
——————.
PAGE: God she’s (Clinton) an incredibly impressive woman. The Obamas in general, really. While he has certainly made mistakes, I’m proud to have him as my president.
PAGE: We do not want this election stolen from us.
——————.
STRZOK: Trump is a F***ing idiot.
Members of Congress were outraged over the text messages and demanded that more of them be turned over for examination. On January 22, 2018, a second set of 384 pages of texts were made public.39 One message revealed something stunning: Strzok and Page knew that charges would never be filed against Clinton before she was ever interviewed by FBI agents, including Strzok. The text dated July 1, 2016, one day before the Clinton interview, made a reference to Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s decision to accept whatever conclusion was reached by the FBI:
STRZOK: Timing looks like hell. Will appear to be choreographed. All major news networks literally leading with “AG to accept FBI D’s recommendation.”
PAGE: Yeah, that is awful timing. Nothing we can do about it.
PAGE: And yes, I think we had some warning of it. I know they sent some statement to Rybicki, because he called Andy.
PAGE: And yeah, it’s a real profile in courage, since she knows no charges will be brought.40
How is it possible that, in advance of Clinton’s interview, a top FBI agent, a key FBI lawyer, and the attorney general would all know that the target of their investigation would not be charged? The answer seems clear. The exoneration of Clinton was predetermined. The investigation was a sham.
How would Lynch know that Clinton would be cleared? On the day he absolved Clinton, July 7, 2016, Comey made a point of saying, “I have not coordinated or reviewed this statement in any way with the Department of Justice or any other part of the government. They do not know what I am about to say.”41
This statement by Comey appears to have been untrue. According to Page, Lynch knew all about it. Perhaps it was because the attorney general had been personally involved in seeing to it that Clinton was protected. Maybe she had only pretended to exclude herself from deliberations following the public outcry over her infamous tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton days earlier.
A close look at Lynch’s recusal shows that it was never a recusal at all. During a televised conversation at the Aspen Ideas Festival on July 1, she announced she would accept the FBI’s recommendations.42 But then, she offered a carefully worded explanation of how her actions were not, technically
, a recusal. “A recusal would mean that I wouldn’t even be briefed,” she said. “While I don’t have a role in those findings or coming up with those findings . . . I will be briefed on it and I will be accepting their recommendations.”43
The question remains: how would Lynch, Strzok, and Page already know that Clinton would skate on criminal charges? Comey claims he didn’t decide until after Clinton was interviewed on July 2. Here is what he told the House Judiciary Committee on September 28, 2016:
All I can do is tell you again—the decision was made after that because I didn’t know what was going to happen in that interview.44
And yet, Page’s text message indicates that the decision not to recommend prosecution was made before Clinton sat down to speak with the FBI, including agent Strzok, and that the attorney general knew all about it. But there is more evidence that Comey made his decision well before Clinton was interviewed.
In a story published by The Hill, multiple sources who examined the early draft by Comey said the language of his statement was changed with red line edits to exonerate Clinton on or around June 10, 2016.45 If true, then Comey appears to have deceived or misled Congress, which is a crime. And the text messages between Strzok and Page serve as corroboration.
With every new text message revealed, the evidence became incontrovertible that the FBI did not conduct a real investigation of Clinton and that her innocence had been predetermined. In a February 25, 2016, message, Page warned Strzok that he should go easy on Clinton because she was likely to win the presidency:
PAGE: She might be our next president. The last thing you need (is) going in there loaded for bear. You think she’s going to remember or care that it was more DOJ than FBI?46
Additional text messages came to light in early February 2018. In one exchange, dated September 2, 2016, Strzok and Page discussed the preparation of talking points for Comey to give to President Obama, “because POTUS wants to know everything we are doing.”47 At this point in time, the FBI’s investigation of Trump-Russian “collusion” was well under way. The messages seemed to put a lie to what Obama had said months earlier when he told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, “I do not talk to FBI directors about pending investigations—we have a strict line, and always have maintained it, I guarantee it.”48
The Russia Hoax Page 6