If anyone else did what disgraced former FBI Director Andrew McCabe did, he or she would be charged with lying to federal investigators.
But McCabe is a made federal man, so there will be no legal consequences for his actions, the Justice Department announced Friday in a statement saying it will not bring criminal charges against the former official.
“We write to inform you that, after careful consideration, the government has decided not to pursue criminal charges against your client,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C., told McCabe’s attorneys. “Based on the totality of the circumstances and all of the information known to the government at this time, we consider the matter closed.”
With Friday’s announcement, McCabe joins an exclusive club of disgraced former bureaucrats, including perjurers such as former CIA Director John Brennan and disgraced former National Intelligence Director James Clapper, to whom the law apparently does not apply.
In 2016, McCabe, who is now a paid CNN contributor, leaked sensitive details of the bureau’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation to the press. He then misled members of the FBI’s Inspection Division when they interviewed him about the leaks, according to a February 2018 Justice Department inspector general report. McCabe provided investigators with four misleading statements, three of which were while he was under oath.
Giving false statements to federal investigators is a crime. In fact, it is the same crime for which the Justice Department went after President Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. He should have worked for the FBI.
The CNN contributor’s legal team maintained that their client’s “story changed” because “he was surprised by and unprepared for the question during his May 2017 interview and was preoccupied with other major events,” the Washington Examiner’s Caitlin Yilek and Jerry Dunleavy report. The inspector general found this explanation “wholly unpersuasive.”
“It seems highly implausible that McCabe forgot in May what he recalled in detail during his November inspector general testimony,” said DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz. “In our view, the evidence is substantial that it was done knowingly and intentionally.”
The inspector general report alleges that McCabe also misled agents of the Office of the Inspector General as well as then-FBI Director James Comey.
Moreover, Horowitz added, his actions were “designed to advance his personal interests at the expense of Department leadership [and] violated the FBI’s and the Department’s media policy and constituted misconduct.”
On Friday, McCabe’s attorneys took a victory lap.
“That means that no charges will be brought against him based on the facts underlying the Office of the Inspector General’s April 2018 report,” Michael Bromwich and David Schertler said in a statement. “At long last, justice has been done in this matter. We said at the outset of the criminal investigation almost two years ago that if the facts and the law determined the result, no charges would be brought.”
It adds, “We are pleased that Andrew McCabe and his family can go on with their lives without this cloud hanging over them.”
You just love to see it.
The next time you hear someone say “no one is above the law,” make sure you mention Andrew McCabe — because he is.
