Washington, DC – FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe (center) listens while Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch speaks during a press conference at the Department Of Justice on the Volkswagen Emissions Investigation. January 11, 2017. Photographer: Donna Burton
Jason Beale (a pseudonym), a retired U.S. Army interrogator and strategic debriefer with 30 years experience in military and intelligence interrogation and human intelligence collection operations, deconstructs in detail the assertions of Former Deputy Director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe. Beale hammers the “casual incompetence and dysfunction within FBI leadership that requires further investigation.” He writes (abridged):
If you only believe half of what you’ve read in this article concerning the demonstrable falsity of each of the predicates McCabe described as central to his assessment that Trump was a national security risk worthy of opening a full-blown FBI counterintelligence investigation, then you’d still have to agree that the actions McCabe took, with the approval of Rosenstein and the DOJ, constitute perhaps the most egregious, misinformed, and vindictive abuse of power in the modern history of the FBI (with the possible exception of the Carter Page FISA scandal).
This speaks to a level of casual incompetence and dysfunction within FBI leadership that requires further investigation.
McCabe repeatedly described the FBI’s standard bar for opening such an investigation as a collection of articulable facts which led them to believe that a crime had been committed or a national security threat exists. The assertions he cites in support of his actions, if actually true, would still fail to meet that bar. The fact that each of them is demonstrably false or misinterpreted speaks to a level of casual incompetence and dysfunction within FBI leadership that requires further investigation.
In a different time, the media would be out in front of such an investigation and following up on the glaring inconsistencies and alarming assertions McCabe provided in his interviews.
That’s not the world we live in. Everything of interest we learned regarding the initiation of the investigation went unchallenged and left to linger in the air, perhaps in hopes or belief that just asking the question is good enough.
It’s not. Someone needs to challenge McCabe on the predicates he lists as material to his decision. Until then, those of us unconvinced that our president is an agent of a foreign power will continue to await evidence—articulable facts—that will change our minds.
Read more here.
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