February 19, 2019: The FBI Could Have Killed Trump's 2016 Campaign and Didn't

 

2/19/19: If you’re following the Russia investigation, and you happen to be an avid Trump fan, Tuesday was not a good day. 

Then again, if you are an avid Trump fan, you’re not following the investigation. Or, if you are, you get your facts through the filter of Fox News. On Fox News, if Trump were caught naked in bed with Sen. Lindsey Graham snuggling up on one side and Vladimir Putin snuggling up on the other, and piles of rubles scattered about, Sean Hannity would help you forget. He’d run another scary story about caravans of dark-skinned people storming our borders. Laura Ingraham would follow with a tall tale about how the Green New Deal was going to make it impossible to own flatulent cows. 

The problem with focusing on cow farts, however, is increasingly clear. Because real news intrudes.

 

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McCabe could have killed the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016. He didn’t. Neither did Comey.

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Start with Andrew McCabe, repeatedly labeled by Trump and his sycophants as a “liar,” and think logically. McCabe built a career in the F.B.I. He spent part of that career fighting the Russian mob. McCabe was a lifelong Republican. No one ever called him a liar until he crossed Trump, a man whose businesses model is lying. But here’s what McCabe’s now saying, since he was fired. 

Andrew McCabe.

Leave aside any errors of judgment he may have made and alleged lies about contacts with reporters. McCabe is trying to tell us that by the late spring of 2016, top officials at the F.B.I. were so concerned about suspicious contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russians, that an investigation had to be launched.

 

You can explain this a thousand times to Trump fans, but it never seems to cool their cult-like love. So, here we go again: McCabe could have killed the Trump campaign that summer had he revealed the existence of this investigation. He did not. Nor did F.B.I. Director James Comey. The alarming contacts involving Trump aides and Russians did not end once Trump won the presidency. General Flynn, his choice for National Security Advisor, was caught lying to the Vice President. The Department of Justice notified the White House. It took eighteen days to fire Flynn, much longer than it took to fire Sally Flynn, who delivered the warning. 

On February 14, 2017, Trump called in F.B.I. Director Comey for a talk. Comey says the president asked him to “go easy” on Flynn. Comey says he was alarmed enough by what sounded like a desire to obstruct justice, to start taking notes on his laptop on the ride back to headquarters. He testified before Congress that he kept notes on all talks with Mr. Trump afterwards. Trump later said he didn’t believe Comey took contemporaneous notes. Several other top F.B.I. officials backed Comey, saying he had shown them the notes at the time. Then Trump hinted that he, Trump, had tapes of their talks, to back up his version of events. Then he admitted he didn’t. Comey had testified under oath. Trump was just slinging the BS. 

 

“A double agent” helping “our most fearsome enemy.” 

At any rate, McCabe is now saying, including in his book, that upon the firing of Director Comey – which Trump said had to do with the Russia investigation – F.B.I. officials decided to open a counterintelligence investigation aimed at the president himself. Top law enforcement officers had to know “if the president committed obstruction of justice.” Evidence suggested, McCabe explained, that Trump “might” be working for a foreign power. McCabe didn’t say the president was. He did say that he and others had to consider the possibility that Trump was “a double agent” helping “our most fearsome enemy, the government of Russia.” 

Like anyone, McCabe has his axes to grind. But in interviews he comes across as thoughtful, sober, self-deprecating, and funny, not as a man prone to making wild claims. He says he too has contemporaneous notes that might be useful in court. Almost every time he shares a new anecdote with reporters, there are witnesses who, if need be, could verify his account. 

At one point he and F.B.I. intelligence experts met with President Trump. They were there to brief him on the situation with North Korea and warn that Kim Jong-un had missiles that could strike the USA. Trump said he didn’t believe the intelligence. He didn’t believe the North could hit us. “He said he knew this,” McCabe says, “because Vladimir Putin had told him so.” 

McCabe says he and all the experts were stunned, and again says he has witnesses.

 

On right-wing news the focus is not on this “holy shit” moment. No one on the right seems to care that top law enforcement officers had to ask if the president was a Russian asset. Instead, there is furious talk about a “palace coup” that McCabe and Comey and others were brewing. McCabe says, yes, he and other top officials were deeply alarmed. Today we know they had ample cause. In the last two years we have learned conclusively that Trump campaign officials and/or family members met with Russians in March, April, May, June, July, and August 2016. 

Over and over, they insisted they had not. Yet, on right-wing news, we’re supposed to believe McCabe is the liar.

 

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WE CAN ASSUME the president’s mood did not improve once he picked up his copy of The New York Times, or had the news explained, since he hates to read. In a scathing article, the Times tied together the threads of Trump’s two-year battle to thwart investigators. Naturally, you knew Trump would start tweeting about “Fake News” as soon as he caught wind. 

So, let’s start with sources. According to reporters for the Times, “Interviews with dozens of current and former government officials and others close to Mr. Trump, as well as a review of confidential White House documents, reveal numerous unreported episodes in a two-year drama.” 

That’s right. The Times has “confidential White House documents.” 

The Times has a reputation to uphold as the nation’s “newspaper of record.” And whether you like their editorial policies, or the articles they run, they have solid sources. Insiders at the Justice Department, for example, told them Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, now replaced, told other officials his job at DOJ was to “jump on a grenade” for the president. That’s bad enough – and helps us understand why a hack like Whitaker was given the post to begin.

Sources also tell the Times that Trump called Whitaker at least once to inquire about the investigation involving his former fixer and personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. Could Whitaker figure out a way to put Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. District Attorney for the Southern District of New York, back in charge? A Trump-appointee, Berman had rightly recused himself from having a role in that investigation. Trump wanted Whitaker to interfere. 

If that doesn’t sound like “obstruction of justice” to you, you need to grab a dictionary and puzzle out the words. 

 

Attacking the law enforcement apparatus of his own government. 

The Times article continues, with this update included later: 

On Tuesday, after The Times article published, Mr. Trump denied that he had asked Mr. Whitaker if Mr. Berman could be put in charge of the investigation. “No, I don’t know who gave you that, that’s more fake news,” Mr. Trump said. “There’s a lot of fake news out there. No, I didn’t.”

 

A Justice Department spokeswoman said Tuesday that the White House had not asked Mr. Whitaker to interfere in the investigations. “Under oath to the House Judiciary Committee, then-Acting Attorney General Whitaker stated that ‘at no time has the White House asked for nor have I provided any promises or commitments concerning the special counsel’s investigation or any other investigation,’” said the spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec. “Mr. Whitaker stands by his testimony.”

 

If your knee-jerk reaction is to believe the president and his defenders, remember who these people are. Trump is the guy who lied to all three wives about multiple affairs and attempted affairs. He surrounds himself with people who were, or now are, convicted felons. Whitaker was once a board member for World Patent Marketing. When customers began complaining about being scammed, Whitaker knew about the complaints but took no action. World Patent had to shut down after ripping off customers to the tune of $26 million. 

By contrast, the Times article notes that Trump’s many attacks on investigators, his public threats against witnesses, and hints at possible pardons are well known. “But fusing the strands reveals an extraordinary story of a president who has attacked the law enforcement apparatus of his own government like no other president in history, and who has turned the effort into an obsession.” 

For the first time, we learn that less than a month after taking office, on February 14, 2017, the president and his top advisers were already facing fallout regarding the campaign and contacts with Russians. All those contacts were being denied at that time – and dozens have been verified since. 

On that very day, Press Secretary Sean Spicer was preparing to go out and brief the press about the firing of General Flynn. A group of advisers had gathered in the Oval Office to discuss strategy. 

The Times explains: 

As the group in the Oval Office talked, one of Mr. Trump’s advisers mentioned in passing what Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, then the speaker of the House, had told reporters – that Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Flynn to resign.

 

It was unclear where Mr. Ryan had gotten that information, but Mr. Trump seized on Mr. Ryan’s words. “That sounds better,” the president said, according to people with knowledge of the discussions. Mr. Trump turned to the White House press secretary at the time, Sean Spicer, who was preparing to brief the news media.

 

“Say that,” Mr. Trump ordered.

 

But was that true? Mr. Spicer pressed.

 

“Say that I asked for his resignation,” Mr. Trump repeated.

 

Once Spicer stepped to the podium, lawyers for the White House Counsel’s Office began listening with interest as he outlined “what was a sensitive national security investigation” to reporters. “But when Mr. Spicer’s briefing began, the lawyers started hearing numerous misstatements – some bigger than others – and ended up compiling them all in a memo.” That memo is apparently now in reporters’ hands. Based on my knowledge of the case, this blogging fool would expect the man who placed it there was Don McGahn, former White House Chief Counsel. 

At any rate, by the summer of 2017, Trump and his top advisers seem to have been flirting dangerously with obstruction of justice. The president humiliated Attorney General Jeff Sessions, hoping he would quit, so a new man could be put in charge of the burgeoning investigation. 

 

The very essence of obstruction of justice. 

In a second damning revelation, the Times describes what, if proven, would be the very essence of obstruction of justice: 

One of Mr. Trump’s lawyers also reached out that summer to the lawyers for two of his former aides – Paul Manafort and Mr. Flynn – to discuss possible pardons. The discussions raised questions about whether the president was willing to offer pardons to influence their decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate in the Mueller investigation.

 

There were also those working in the White House who came to believe the president had perverse motives. The Times continues:

 

The president even tried to fire Mr. Mueller himself, a move that could have brought an end to the investigation. Just weeks after Mr. Mueller’s appointment, the president insisted that he ought to be fired because of perceived conflicts of interest. Mr. Trump’s White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, who would have been responsible for carrying out the order, refused and threatened to quit.

 

The president eventually backed off.

 

A good chunk of the rest of the story focuses on Republican lawmakers’ efforts to shield the president from investigators. 

Then there’s a change in strategy on the part of the White House. In April 2018, a new legal team takes over, including Rudy Giuliani. A public relations battle erupts. Rudy heads up a scorched-earth approach, attacking the investigators at every turn. 

Behind the scenes, Mr. Giuliani was getting help from a curious source: Kevin Downing, a lawyer for Mr. Manafort. Mr. Manafort, who had been Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, had agreed to cooperate with the special counsel after being convicted of financial crimes in an attempt to lessen a potentially lengthy prison sentence. Mr. Downing shared details about prosecutors’ lines of questioning, Mr. Giuliani admitted late last year.

 

It was a highly unusual arrangement – the lawyer for a cooperating witness providing valuable information to the president’s lawyer at a time when his client remained in the sights of the special counsel’s prosecutors. The arrangement angered Mr. Mueller’s investigators, who questioned what Mr. Manafort was trying to gain from the arrangement.

 

Cough. Cough. PARDON! 

Nevertheless, the president’s best efforts to contain the damage failed. Cohen was indicted and pled guilty. He agreed to testify. Trump switched from calling Cohen a man he “liked and respected” to labeling him, mafia-style, “a rat.” 

Rudy, who had said Cohen was “an honest man,” suddenly decided he was a “pathological liar.” 

When Trump hinted in a tweet that members of Mr. Cohen’s family might be in legal jeopardy, almost anyone with a basic understanding of how the courts work knew this was tantamount to witness intimidation. The president responded to criticism by saying of his former lawyer, “He’s only been threatened by the truth.” He didn’t deny that Cohen was being threatened.

 

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ALL DAY WEDNESDAY, McCabe kept appearing on cable news to add fresh detail to his story and continue to raise serious questions about the President of the United States. He told interviewers that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were so alarmed by the president’s behavior, particularly after he fired Director Comey in May 2017, that Mr. Rosenstein broached the subject of wearing a wire to the White House to gather evidence. McCabe says he approached the F.B.I. General Counsel about the idea. After the General Counsel “picked himself up off the floor” he told McCabe “we’re not there yet. That’s a bridge too far.” 

On Sean Hannity’s nightly program this was evidence of a “palace coup.” To a rational person, however, it sounds exactly like top law enforcement officials dealing with the shocking possibility that the new president was a witting or unwitting puppet of Vladimir Putin. 

Again, McCabe has made it clear in every interview. There are witnesses to all these discussions. Rosenstein, he says, brought up the XXV Amendment, which allows for removal of a president unfit to serve. Discussing that possibility, that it might be necessary to remove a Russian agent from the Oval Office, is not evidence of a “palace coup.” It shows how concerned Rosenstein, like McCabe a lifelong Republican, and others at the top of the F.B.I. must have been. 

There could be no “Deep State” coup to remove Trump, launched by McCabe and Comey. The vice president must initiate the process to put the XXV Amendment in action. The majority of cabinet members and top Congressional leaders, half Democrats, half Republicans, would have to concur. 

There could be no “coup.” 

 

“No one objected.” 

In addition, the concerns of top law enforcement officials were made crystal clear to leaders in Congress. This counterintelligence investigation wasn’t launched in the dark. McCabe sat down with “The Gang of Eight” – four top Democratic leaders in Congress, and four top Republicans. 

McCabe says he shared the F.B.I.’s fears and told them an investigation had been launched. “No one objected,” McCabe said during an interview on NBC. “Not on legal grounds, not on constitutional grounds and not based on the facts.” 

“Opening a case of this nature [is] not something that an F.B.I. director, not something that an acting F.B.I. director would do by yourself, right?” he asked his host, Samantha Guthrie, rhetorically. “This was a recommendation that came to me from my team. I reviewed it with our lawyers. I discussed it at length with the deputy attorney general, and I told Congress what we had done.” 

He wasn’t hiding anything. 

In a telling aside (if you want to consider who is most likely lying about these matters) McCabe told Guthrie that in a call with the president, Trump referred to McCabe’s wife as “a loser.” McCabe said it was hard to stifle his anger and the urge to defend his wife, but he didn’t have the luxury. He had to do his job.

 

Reporters asked the president about that claim Wednesday. He assured them that this was another lie being peddled by McCabe and insisted he would never call anyone’s wife “a loser.” 

The problem of course, if you want to defend Trump, is that it doesn’t take any effort at all to search his Twitter feed to bolster the foundation for McCabe’s claim. The president has tweeted about Mr. McCabe, Lyin’ James Comey, “Peter S. and his lover, agent Lisa Page & more” as “some of the losers that tried to do a number on your President.” On Twitter he has labeled Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Jeb Bush, writers Frank Bruni, Bill Kristol, and Michael Wolff and “the Phony Club for Growth” as “losers.” Rep. Trey Gowdy was “the Benghazi loser.” “Boring anti-Trump [debate] panelists, mostly losers in life” were a special category. 

And there’s this revealing use of the term “loser” in the second of three themed April 21, 2018, tweets. 

They appeared in rapid succession at 8:10 a.m. and distill the president’s way of thinking (lying) in 112 words: 

The New York Times and a third rate reporter named Maggie Haberman, known as a Crooked H flunkie who I don’t speak to and have nothing to do with, are going out of their way to destroy Michael Cohen and his relationship with me in the hope that he will “flip.” They use.... 

 

....non-existent “sources” and a drunk/drugged up loser who hates Michael, a fine person with a wonderful family. Michael is a businessman for his own account/lawyer who I have always liked & respected. Most people will flip if the Government lets them out of trouble, even if....

 

....it means lying or making up stories. Sorry, I don’t see Michael doing that despite the horrible Witch Hunt and the dishonest media!  

 

The true Trump, his words preserved like insects in amber. 

Here we have the true Trump, his words preserved like insects in amber. There are the juvenile insults: “Crooked H flunkie,” “drunk/drugged up loser.” You have the claim of “non-existence ‘sources’” and the heart-rending, oft-repeated howl about a diabolical “Witch Hunt.” 

As has often been the case, Trump was quickly proven wrong, and the free press was proven right. The Times had impeccable sources. Investigators used evidence found in a raid on Cohen’s home, office, and hotel room to charge the man the president had said he “always liked & respected” with multiple felonies. 

Cohen did flip. 

The real “loser” was Trump.

 

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IT IS ONLY FAIR TO ADD, that Mr. McCabe is not claiming Trump is a double agent for the Russians. He’s not saying definitively that the president obstructed justice or tried to derail a legitimate investigation. He’s saying that top law enforcement officials had reason to be concerned. 

The president’s defenders would like you to focus on mistakes of judgment McCabe made, on unflattering emails about Trump that various F.B.I. agents shared. They like to focus on the Steele dossier, and how it was a “Hillary Clinton hit job” (by the way, you should read it; because a number of allegations have been proven true). They would like you to think that several lifelong Republicans at the top of the F.B.I. were angry Democrats dressed in elephant hides. They would like you to believe that judges appointed by Democratic presidents can’t be trusted but judges appointed by Trump can. They would like you to ignore the 34 felony convictions racked up in the Russia/and Russia-related investigations. They would like you to believe that Trump and his team had nothing to hide, and that McCabe and top law enforcement officials did.