A “good friend” of former FBI Director James Comey says he expects criminal charges against former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe any day now.
Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare, wrote in a blog post that he was shocked by a New York Times report Monday that revealed McCabe’s lawyers met with top Justice Department officials in recent weeks.
“Such meetings generally take place when indictment is imminent; they happen when the government plans to bring charges,” Wittes said on Tuesday. “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.”
McCabe’s lawyers met with Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who will help make the call on whether to prosecute, and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jessie Liu in two separate meetings last week. This indicates federal prosecutors are close to making a final decision on whether to indict McCabe, who is accused of lying to federal agents.
Wittes, an author and senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, said the report was “shocking.” He argued that “as best as I can tell, the facts available on the public record simply don’t support such charges.” Wittes also suggested the White House may be a factor because of a “sustained campaign by President Trump demanding McCabe’s scalp.” Trump has repeatedly criticized McCabe, who authorized the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe in March 2018, less than two days before he was set to retire, prompted by a DOJ inspector general report that found he misled Comey and investigators about leaks to the media regarding the Hillary Clinton emails investigation and an inquiry into the Clinton Foundation which had not yet been made public.
Comey, whom Trump fired in May 2017, says he did not give McCabe permission to leak that information to the media. Comey has yet to comment on the latest developments in the McCabe investigation.
McCabe’s lawyers have called the inspector general’s report “deeply flawed,” and McCabe, who was hired by CNN last week, sued the Justice Department in August, accusing Trump of forcing his subordinates to participate in an “unconstitutional plan and scheme” to have him fired. He is demanding back pay, his full pension, and for his record to be expunged.
Wittes said if prosecutors bring criminal charges against McCabe, which he views as excessive, they will have to overcome “substantially mitigating factors,” such as McCabe correcting the record after he misled investigators and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page telling a grand jury that McCabe was authorized in his position as deputy director to give information to the media and had no motive to lie.
Wittes admitted there could be “evidence that is not public yet” against McCabe. He also predicted that McCabe’s defense will be that he was confused and under a lot of pressure, given the circumstances at the time.
Although Wittes said he will not rush to judgment, he expressed concern about assistant U.S. attorneys dropping off the case. He also said, “I would be lying if I said that, as I look at it now, it all seems on the level to me. I worry that what’s happening here is simple corruption of the Department of Justice in precisely the fashion I have been worrying about since before Donald Trump was even elected.”
