CNN has added disgraced former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe to its already-bloated roster of contributors drawn from the intelligence community.
The announcement comes not even a week after CNN dedicated significant airtime to protesting that former White House press secretaries Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders are allowed to seek professional employment.
The McCabe hire was reported Friday morning on social media by CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy:
Some news: CNN announces Andrew McCabe has been signed as a contributor.
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) August 23, 2019
McCabe alleges he was sacked from the FBI in March 2018 because he was not politically loyal to President Trump. A Justice Department inspector general report released last year tells another story. It found McCabe leaked sensitive information about the Clinton email investigation to members of the press. The report found McCabe lied to then-FBI Director James Comey. The report also found that he lied to members of the FBI’s Inspection Division, sometimes under oath. The report alleged that McCabe even lied to agents for the Office of the Inspector General.
What the report found was so damning, in fact, that its authors referred its findings to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia for potential criminal charges.
McCabe, who is currently the target of a federal criminal investigation, will join at least one other disgraced former intelligence official at CNN: Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who was also caught lying under oath.
What is nuts about CNN taking on McCabe — aside from everything I have just listed in the above — is that the announcement comes mere hours after the network raised a stink about Spicer landing a gig on ABC’s Dancing with the Stars (of all things) and Sanders getting signed as a contributor with Fox News.
“Anderson Cooper ridicules Sean Spicer’s dance debut,” reads the title to one CNN news segment that aired this week.
A separate report that aired during prime-time hours was headlined, “Host slams ‘Dancing With The Stars‘ after casting Spicer.”
CNN editor-at-large Chris Cillizza, the Andy Borowitz of political commentary, authored an article titled, “Sean Spicer’s celebrity is proof we are doing it wrong.”
“Sean Spicer on ‘Dancing with the Stars?’ ABC staffers say ‘it’s a slap in the face,’” read the headline to yet another article.
Later, after news broke that Sanders would join Fox News as a contributor, CNN’s coverage maintained the same indignant tone.
“The Trump White House has a record of misleading the public. All administrations spin. This administration lies consistently, whether it’s Sanders, or Spicer, or other White House aides. And it’s all led from the top by a president who lies even about the weather and the time of day. That, I think, is why this deserves outrage and backlash,” said CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter.
He added, “It should still be surprising that somebody who misled the public and defended a man who calls the press ‘the enemy’ would land these types of jobs.”
“[I wrote] this about Spicer and ABC last night, now it applies to Sanders and Fox too,” Stelter said elsewhere in a tweet. “How should ex-White House officials be treated when they spend months misleading the public, then seek positions of fame and privilege?”
Good question. Let’s ask ABC News chief anchor George “Bimbo Eruptions” Stephanopoulos.
Better yet, let’s ask CNN contributors and perjurers James Clapper and Andrew McCabe what they think about known liars seeking “positions of fame and privilege.”
