Andrew McCabe
Comey confidant Benjamin Wittes said in a Lawfare blog post on Tuesday that he expects former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to be indicted any day now.
Benjamin Wittes is a ‘resistance’ lawyer and James Comey’s friend who runs the Lawfare Group.
Wittes wrote in a blog post Tuesday that he was “shocked” to find out federal prosecutors were in the final stages of deciding whether to indict McCabe on charges he lied to federal investigators, referring to the New York Times bombshell released Monday.
The potential indictment of McCabe stems from the Inspector General’s findings that the FBI official lied to federal investigators.
McCabe was criminally referred to the US Attorneys office for prosecution in the Spring of 2018 and they are finally getting around to (maybe) indicting him.
The process has been dragged out because of internal deliberations and the case is taking so long that the term expired for the grand jury evidence. One of the lead prosecutors on the case has since left the DOJ out of frustration, according to the NYT.
The New York Times reported that McCabe’s lawyers met with DAG Jeffrey Rosen, who is involved in the decision whether to prosecute the former FBI official.
In two meetings last week, Mr. McCabe’s lawyers met with the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, who is expected to be involved in the decision about whether to prosecute, and for more than an hour with the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, Jessie K. Liu, according to a person familiar with the meetings. The person would not detail the discussions, but defense lawyers typically meet with top law enforcement officials to try to persuade them not to indict their client if they failed to get line prosecutors to drop the case.
Mr. Wittes says these meetings only take place when an indictment is imminent.
Via Benjamin Wittes:
Let me translate this paragraph for you: Such meetings generally take place when indictment is imminent; they happen when the government plans to bring charges. You should thus expect charges against McCabe to be forthcoming any day. And if such charges don’t happen, that doesn’t mean they weren’t planned but, rather, that some extrinsic event has intervened.
Mr. Wittes defended McCabe and said his conduct wasn’t ‘criminal’ but that the US Attorney’s office may have evidence against McCabe that is not yet available to the public.
Andrew McCabe, who was a part of the attempted coup to remove President Trump from the White House, was fired in March of 2018 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Shortly after McCabe was fired, Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a scathing report on the FBI official and accused him of ‘lacking candor’ (lying) to federal agents several times, including under oath.
McCabe lied about authorizing disclosure to a Wall Street Journal reporter in October of 2016 for a story about the investigation into the Clinton Foundation.
McCabe lying about authorizing disclosure to a Wall Street Journal reporter is nothing compared to the actions he took to prevent Trump from winning the 2016 election and his role in the attempted coup to remove Trump.
It is important to note that Andrew McCabe (along with Rosenstein) signed the June 2017 FISA warrant to spy on Carter Page.
McCabe was just hired by fake news CNN so if he does get indicted, his new employer will surely defend him and spin the narrative in his favor.
Some thoughts https://t.co/Bw1Zzl99va
— Benjamin Wittes (@benjaminwittes) August 27, 2019
