McCabe's Attorney Accidentally Confirmed Firing McCabe Was the Exact Right Thing To Do
Andrew McCabe’s whining like a spoilt child over his firing from the FBI — 26 hours before he could retire and collect a full pension — has been one of the more entertaining meltdowns in Washington in some time, not in the least because of the ridiculousness of McCabe’s arguments regarding why he shouldn’t have been fired.
And a recent statement by McCabe’s attorney wasn’t the least of it — even though he accidentally indicated that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had done exactly the right thing in firing his client.
McCabe, for those of you who have been consumed with the controversy and not the actual reasons the former deputy director of the FBI was fired, was terminated after a report from the Department of Justice’s inspector general found that “McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions” during a review of how the FBI conducted its probe into Hillary Clinton’s email server, according to a statement by Sessions.
Even though the firing was recommended by independent disciplinary officials who were not members of the administration, McCabe pitched a fit and claimed that it was really all Trump’s doing.
“This attack on my credibility is one part of a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals more generally,” McCabe said as part of his rant.
“It is part of this Administration’s ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation, which continue to this day. Their persistence in this campaign only highlights the importance of the Special Counsel’s work.”
And that wasn’t all. Fox News also reported Saturday that McCabe, like Comey before him, kept memos on his dealings with the president and had turned them over to Robert Mueller’s investigation. If they’re anything like Comey’s memos, that means we have another exciting anti-climactic session of Senate hearings to yawn through.
McCabe’s attorney was the next to wiggle his way into the spotlight, because why the heck not?
However, while McCabe’s actions made him look petty and childish, they didn’t accidentally make the case as to why he shouldn’t have been fired. McCabe’s attorney, Michael Bromwich, couldn’t even clear that low bar.
“I have never before seen the type of rush to judgment — and rush to summary punishment — that we have witnessed in this case,” Bromwich said in a Friday statement. “The result of this deplorable rush to judgment is to terminate Mr. McCabe before his long-anticipated retirement and deny him of the full pension and retirement benefits he would have otherwise earned through his 21 years of devoted service to the FBI and this country.”
“This concerted effort to accelerate the process in order to beat the ticking clock of his scheduled retirement violates any sense of decency and basic principles of fairness,” the statement continued. “It should make all federal government employees, who continue to work in an Administration that insults, debases, and abuses them, shudder in the knowledge that they could be next.” (Emphasis added.)
Uh, well, yes. Yes, it should.
Ignoring Bromwich’s language about the Trump administration “insulting, debasing and abusing” people who have done things wrong (this is, after all, McCabe’s lawyer — what did you think he was going to say?) Bromwich is essentially stating that allowing people who have committed fireable offenses to be fired instead of collecting lifelong pensions is intimidating to government employees who have committed fireable offenses, particularly if those offenses are politically tinged.
And the answer to that is, yes, of course it should be. That’s the whole point.
In both his statement and his lawyer’s statement, McCabe and Co. seem adamant that the fact that the inspector general’s investigation was accelerated in his case is prima facie evidence that it was biased. Yet, in their statements, they also prove why the investigation into McCabe was accelerated in the first place: McCabe and his associates admit that the former deputy director wanted to run out the clock, retire with a full pension and then smugly grouse about how unfair and horrible the Trump administration was while collecting taxpayer-funded paychecks.
Very little evidence is provided in all of these statements that McCabe did not provide a “lack of candor,” which is a serious (and fireable) offense in the FBI’s eyes. Very little evidence has been forthcoming that he didn’t make an unauthorized disclosure to the media. No mention was made of the fact that veteran disciplinary officials — not the administration — had made the recommendation to fire him.
Those first two things, if McCabe had wanted to exonerate himself, would have been what was foregrounded in his media messaging in the wake of the firing. Instead, everything from the McCabe camp seems to focus on the fact that he was fired for a fireable offense instead of just being allowed to retire with a full pension, and that this might somehow intimidate other government workers who commit or are accused of committing fireable offenses.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly why Andrew McCabe should have been fired. If the former deputy director of the FBI thinks he’s engendering sympathy through that line of thought, it’s yet more proof that McCabe has been so fully ensconced in the entitled mores of bureaucracyville that he can’t even realize when he’s making the best argument possible for his own termination.
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