Last Call For It's Mueller Time, Con't

So a bit of good news on the "Justice Department" front, the investigation into former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has been dropped.

The Justice Department has decided to abandon its efforts to seek criminal charges against former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, according to a letter sent to his attorneys.

McCabe's lawyers were told last September that he should expect to be indicted on charges stemming from inaccurate statements he made to FBI investigators about his actions around the time of the 2016 election. However, no indictment was ever returned, leading to speculation that the Washington-based grand jury probing the matter took the rare step of rejecting charges.

Prosecutors had been cagey since that time about the status of the investigation into McCabe, who has been a frequent subject of public attacks from President Donald Trump. In theory, they could have presented the case to another grand jury, but on Friday, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington informed McCabe's attorneys that it was giving up its quest to charge the FBI veteran.

"We write to inform you that, after careful consideration, the Government has decided not to pursue criminal charges against your client, Andrew G. McCabe," prosecutors J.P. Cooney and Molly Gaston wrote on behalf of the new U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Tim Shea. "Based on the totality of the circumstances and all of the information known to the Government at this time, we consider the matter closed."

McCabe expressed great relief at the decision, but sounded bitter about the probe hanging over him and his family for years.

"I have to say that as glad as I am that the Justice Department and the D.C. U.S. Attorney's office finally decided to do the right thing today, it is an absolute disgrace that they took two years and put my family through this experience for two years before they finally drew the obvious conclusion and one they could have drawn a long, long time ago," he said on CNN, where he serves as a paid commentator.

They couldn't even get a grand jury to indict.  For now, they're still playing by that rule.  But it wasn't the only reason why McCabe was spared.

The timing of Friday's letter to McCabe's lawyers may have been driven by a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by a non-profit watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics Washington. U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton, who is handling the FOIA case, had publicly pressed prosecutors to make a final decision about the McCabe prosecution and had set a deadline Friday for them to disclose previously-secret records related to the FOIA litigation.

The newly-disclosed files showed that in private, Walton was even more stern with prosecutors, warning them that Trump's complaints about McCabe would taint any decision they made.

"The public is listening to what's going on, and I don't think people like the fact that you got somebody at the top basically trying to dictate whether somebody should be prosecuted ... I just think it's a banana republic when we go down that road," Walton told government lawyers behind closed doors in September. "I think there are a lot of people on the outside who perceive that there is undo inappropriate pressure being brought to bear ... It's just, it's very disturbing that we're in the mess that we're in in that regard.

"I just think the integrity of the process is being unduly undermined by inappropriate comments and actions on the part of people at the top of our government," added Walton, an appointee of President George W. Bush. "I think it's very unfortunate. And I think as a government and as a society we're going to pay a price at some point for this."

Closing the case today also spares the Trump regime from having to answer the FOIA request.  That was what motivated the timing more than anything, I think.

It doesn't mean that the regime is done with McCabe however. The Trump vengeance plan now being executed across the country as Senate Judiciary chair Lindsey Graham is apparently making good on his threats to drag everyone involved in the creation of Mueller probe before the kangaroo court of Trumpworld, including, you guessed it, Andrew McCabe.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is requesting interviews with a slew of current and former Justice Department and FBI officials as part of his panel's probe into the department's handling of the investigation into Russia's election interference and the Trump campaign.

Graham sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr on Friday asking that he make 17 officials, many of whom are identified only by title, available for interviews.

"As you are aware, the committee is continuing to investigate matters related to the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's handling of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, including the application for, and renewals of, a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA] warrant on Carter Page," Graham wrote in the letter, according to a copy obtained by CBS News.

Graham notes in his letter that the committee will "additionally be directly contacting former Department officials to schedule transcribed interviews."

Graham has said he plans to call former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to testify as part of his investigation.

Graham, a top ally of Trump's, has vowed he will use his gavel to look into the origins of the Russia investigation and the decision to surveil Page, a former campaign aide.

"I'm going to get to the bottom of the FISA work process because it was an abuse of power of the Department of Justice, the FBI," Graham told CBS News on Sunday.

Graham added he would be doing "oversight of the FISA warrant system that failed."

Whether or not these testimonies will be televised is another thing, but getting interviews under oath would be the next step, much like House Democrats did in their impeachment investigation.  Expect months of testimony, leaks, and eventually televised hearings would be my guess.

The real witch hunt is happening before our eyes.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

The Mueller probe is closing in on Trump, with multiple interviews of Trump regime staffers in the White House over the last several months.  The focus of those interviews, according to NBC News at least, is on the two-and-a-half weeks between when the FBI informed Trump that his national security adviser Michael Flynn was a massive security risk to the nation, and when Flynn was actually fired.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is trying to piece together what happened inside the White House over a critical 18-day period that began when senior officials were told that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was susceptible to blackmail by Russia, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. 

The questions about what happened between Jan. 26 and Flynn's firing on Feb. 13 appear to relate to possible obstruction of justice by President Donald Trump, say two people familiar with Mueller's investigation into Russia's election meddling and potential collusion with the Trump campaign. 

Multiple sources say that during interviews, Mueller's investigators have asked witnesses, including White House Counsel Don McGahn and others who have worked in the West Wing, to go through each day that Flynn remained as national security adviser and describe in detail what they knew was happening inside the White House as it related to Flynn. 

Some of those interviewed by Mueller's team believe the goal is in part to determine if there was a deliberate effort by President Trump or top officials in the West Wing to cover up the information about Flynn that Sally Yates, then the acting attorney general, conveyed to McGahn on Jan. 26. In addition to Flynn, McGahn is also expected to be critical to federal investigators trying to piece together a timeline of those 18 days. 

Neither McGahn's lawyer nor the White House responded to requests for comment. A spokesman for the Special Counsel's office declined to comment.

It ain't the crime, as they say, but the cover-up.  The key to this is Sally Yates.

The obstruction of justice question could hinge on when Trump knew about the content of Flynn's conversations with Russia's ambassador to the U.S. during the transition, which were at the crux of Yates's warning, and when the president learned Flynn had lied about those conversations to the FBI, according to two people familiar with the Mueller probe. 

Flynn pleaded guilty earlier this month to lying to the FBI on Jan. 24, an interview that took place the day after he was sworn in as national security adviser. 

Yates has testified to Congress that she informed McGahn on Jan. 26 that Flynn had not been truthful in statements to senior members of the Trump team, including Vice President Mike Pence, when he said he did not discuss U.S. sanctions with Russia's ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. Yates said Flynn was susceptible to blackmail by the Russians because he had lied about the contents of a phone call with Kislyak.

Yates was later fired by Trump.

Justice Department officials who spoke to NBC News on the condition of anonymity said they had expected the White House to fire Flynn on Jan. 26 upon learning that he had lied to the vice president. 

Instead, Trump fired Yates on Jan. 30, citing her refusal to enforce his executive order banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries from travelling to the U.S. Before she left, however, she made available, at McGahn's request, evidence she had that Flynn had not been truthful about his conversations with Kislyak, according to her congressional testimony.

Again, if the Trump regime knew Flynn was a national security threat and it took almost three weeks to fire him because Trump was actively trying to cover up that assessment, then that's your obstruction charge right there.  Ball game.

And that's just the tip of this iceberg of toxic waste.  It also points the finger at what Mike Pence knew, meaning he too could go up on obstruction charges.  And speaking of toxic waste, it looks like it's Steve Bannon's turn on the carousel.

Bannon was a key bystander when Trump decided to fire national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty earlier this month to lying to federal investigators about his contacts with foreign officials. He was among those Trump consulted before firing FBI Director James Comey, whose dismissal prompted Mueller’s appointment — a decision Bannon subsequently described to "60 Minutes" as the biggest mistake “in modern political history.” 

And during the campaign, Bannon was the one who offered the introduction to data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica, whose CEO has since acknowledged trying to coordinate with WikiLeaks on the release of emails from Hillary Clinton’s time as secretary of state. 

Yet Bannon hasn’t faced anywhere near the degree of public scrutiny in connection to the probe as others in Trump’s inner circle, including son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner — who was recently interviewed by Mueller’s team — or Donald Trump Jr., who was interviewed on Capitol Hill last week about his own Russian connections. 

People close to Bannon, who left the White House in August and returned to his former perch as head of Breitbart News, say he’s told them he doesn’t have a lawyer and isn’t worried about potential exposure. But others say it’s inevitable he’ll be called in as a witness in the ongoing investigations. He has not been publicly accused of any wrongdoing or named as a target of the investigations.

Stay tuned.  The Trumpies are getting scared, so scared in fact that they are desperately trying to discredit Mueller and to goad Trump into firing him.  Trump's ham-fisted attempt to do so is coming very soon.

Fox News’ Judge Jeanine Pirro called for the “cleansing” of law enforcement officials who are investigating the president on her show Saturday night. She said the FBI and Justice Department have too many "political hacks" embedded and called on a whole bunch of federal law enforcement officials to be arrested.

"There have been times in our history where corruption and lawlessness were so pervasive that examples had to be made. This is one of those times," she said. "I for one am tired of investigations, politicians posturing. Something more has to be done."

Pirro singled out Special Counsel Robert Mueller, former FBI Director James Comey, Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and FBI official Peter Strzok. Fox News opinion hosts have been using the discovery of “anti-Trump text messages” from Strzok as an excuse to undermine the entire Mueller investigation as corrupt.

“The stench coming out of the Justice Department and the FBI is like that of a third-world country where money and bullies and clubs decide election,” she said. “It all started with cardinal [James] Comey destroyed our FBI with political hacks to set events in motion to destroy the republic because they did not like the man we chose to be our president.”

Pirro called Comey a “political whore” during her show last week.

She continued on Saturday: “There is a cleansing needed in our FBI and Department of Justice — it needs to be cleansed of individuals who should not just be fired, but who need to be taken out in cuffs!”

"Handcuffs for Andrew McCabe, deputy director of the FBI. The man at the hub, protecting Hillary and attempting to destroy Trump."

Trump regime state TV calling for a mass purge of the FBI, but let's keep pretending that we're not headed for a near-guaranteed constitutional crisis and very possibly a bloody and violent one.  But that's what they want, of course.

And the Mueller probe rolls on.

The Great Yates Debates, Con't

Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates lit into the GOP yesterday as she confirmed under oath widely-reported information about fired Trump National Security Adviser Mike Flynn: that Flynn was absolutely compromised by the Russians, and that Yates made it very clear to the White House that this was an imminent threat to America's national security.

Making her first public statements about the issue, Yates said she feared Moscow could try to blackmail Flynn because it also knew he had not been truthful about conversations he had with Ambassador Sergei Kislyak about U.S. sanctions on Russia.

Flynn, a retired general once seen as a potential Trump vice president, has emerged as a central figure in the Russian probes. Russia has repeatedly denied any meddling in the election and the Trump administration denies allegations of collusion with Russia.

Yates told the hearing she had been concerned that "the national security adviser essentially could be blackmailed by the Russians."

"Logic would tell you that you don't want the national security adviser to be in a position where the Russians have leverage over him," she said.

Trump, who continued to praise Flynn, waited 18 days after Yates' warning before Flynn's forced resignation for failing to disclose the content of his talks with Kislyak and then misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations.

Several Democratic senators questioned Trump's delay. Yates said that in her meetings, McGahn "demonstrated that he understood this was serious. .. If nothing was done, certainly that would be concerning." 

The news also broke yesterday by NBC that President Obama personally warned Donald Trump not to hire Mike Flynn, which Trump regime spokesman Sean Spicer later dismissed as perfectly normal because they thought the warning was "in jest" and then because Flynn was "an outspoken critic" of the former president.

Former President Obama warned President Donald Trump against hiring Mike Flynn as his national security adviser, three former Obama administration officials tell NBC News.

The warning, which has not been previously reported, came less than 48 hours after the November election when the two sat down for a 90-minute conversation in the Oval Office.

A senior Trump administration official acknowledged Monday that Obama raised the issue of Flynn, saying the former president made clear he was "not a fan of Michael Flynn." Another official said Obama's remark seemed like it was made in jest.

According to all three former officials, Obama warned Trump against hiring Flynn. The Obama administration fired Flynn in 2014 from his position as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, largely because of mismanagement and temperament issues.

Obama's warning pre-dated the concerns inside the government about Flynn's contacts with the Russian ambassador, one of the officials said. Obama passed along a general caution that he believed Flynn was not suitable for such a high level post, the official added.

Of course the notion that Obama's November warning "pre-dated" Flynn being compromised by the Russians is not true, as John Schindler made it clear that Flynn was in bed with Moscow back in July, when Flynn was in the running for Trump's possible VP.

It seems that Flynn remains furious at Obama for firing him, and that anger may be the driving force behind his cozy relationship with the Kremlin. General Flynn has frequently appeared on RT (formerly Russia Today), the Russian government’s news channel aimed at the outside world. RT is unadulterated Kremlin propaganda—not a normal news network—as evidenced by its showcasing avowed neo-Nazis and having its own Illuminati correspondent.

Since Flynn is a Cold War veteran and a career spy, he knows exactly what RT is—he has no excuses. Yet this has not deterred him from appearing there regularly. To top it off, last December he attended RT’s 10th anniversary gala in Moscow, including a photo op with President Vladimir Putin.

It’s safe to say Putin would have a word for any top retired Russian intelligence general who regularly appeared on official U.S. television and did a photo op with President Obama. It’s not a nice word, and that general would be well advised to avoid drinking tea.

To make matters worse, neither General Flynn nor RT were willing to comment if he is a paid contributor to the network. If a possible vice president is an actual paid employee of Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, that seems like something the American people should know.

Those concerns about a top US intelligence official with a suspiciously cozy relationship with Moscow as veep still applies as National Security Adviser.  It's silly to think that by November, President Obama wouldn't have had a pretty clear picture about who Flynn was really working for.

The Great Yates Debates

Former acting Attorney General Sally Yates was canned by the Trump regime less than two weeks into the new "administration" presumably over her refusal to support the clearly unconstitutional Muslim immigration and refugee ban program, but the real reason may have been what she found out about fired Trump National Security Adviser Mike Flynn when she took over in January.  Now Yates will testify to the Senate today about what she found out about Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak in those key first days.

Lawmakers want to question Yates about her conversation in January with White House counsel Donald McGahn regarding former national security adviser Michael Flynn. People familiar with that conversation say she went to the White House days after the inauguration to tell officials that statements made by Vice President Pence and others about Flynn’s discussions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were wrong, and to warn them that those contradictions could expose Flynn or others to potential manipulation by the Russians.

Yates’s testimony Monday is expected to contradict public statements made by White House press secretary Sean Spicer and White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, who described the Yates-McGahn meeting as less of a warning and more of a “heads up’’ about an issue involving Flynn.

In February, Spicer told reporters that Yates had “informed the White House counsel that they wanted to give a heads up to us on some comments that may have seemed in conflict. . . . The White House counsel informed the president immediately. The president asked him to conduct a review of whether there was a legal situation there. That was immediately determined that there wasn’t.’’

The same month, Priebus described the Yates conversation in similar terms, telling CBS’s “Face the Nation’’ that “our legal counsel got a heads up from Sally Yates that something wasn’t adding up with his story. And then so our legal department went into a review of the situation. . . . The legal department came back and said they didn’t see anything wrong with what was actually said.’’

People familiar with the matter say both statements understate the seriousness of what Yates told McGahn — that she went to the White House to warn them that Flynn could be compromised — or blackmailed — by the Russians at some point if they threatened to reveal the true nature of his conversations with the ambassador.

Those people said that although Yates’s testimony may contradict Spicer and Priebus, her appearance Monday is unlikely to reveal new details about the FBI’s investigation into whether any Trump associates coordinated with Russian officials to meddle with last year’s presidential election, in part because many of the details of that probe remain classified. Former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. is also scheduled to testify at Monday’s hearing. Lawmakers had invited another Obama administration official, Susan E. Rice, to testify but she declined.

In other words, as acting AG, Yates immediately took a look at the situation with the ongoing investigation into Mike Flynn and his relationship with the Russians and immediately notified Trump's White House counsel that Flynn was compromised, and that keeping him around as National Security Adviser was a direct threat to the country.

The Trump regime is terrified of this, to the point of looking to sacrifice Flynn to the Gods of Political Expediency as soon as Yates testifies, according to the gang at Politico 2.0.

On Monday, Sally Yates, the deputy attorney general under President Obama, is expected to tell a Senate panel how she warned top White House officials that Gen. Flynn misled the Vice President and others about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. It should be an uncomfortable morning for the West Wing.

The White House's strategy to push back:

1. Brand Yates as a Democratic operative who was out to get Trump from the beginning and willing to torque the facts to advance her agenda;
2. Put as much distance as possible between Flynn and the man whose side he rarely left during the campaign (which could be a tall order.)
3. Portray Flynn, and no one else, as responsible for this mess.

Here's the case against Flynn that administration officials — including Flynn's former allies — have been making anonymously to reporters:

• Flynn's only priority was getting the president on board with his agenda.
• The White House and the national security process is infinitely more synchronized and functional without him. He isn't missed.
• Flynn pushed his own points of view — selectively presenting information to Trump in ways favorable to his own positions — rather than serving as an honest broker as national security advisors should.
• His lawyer's statement that Flynn "certainly has a story to tell" and that he'd only tell it if granted immunity, looked "desperate," according to a senior administration official. (Harvard Law professor Alex Whiting made the same case back in March in a post on the site Just Security that's well worth a read.)

Our thought bubble: It's worth noting that the one person in the White House who remains reluctant to undermine Flynn is the man who fired him. President Trump says Flynn is the victim of a Democrat/media-fuelled "witch hunt," and has publicly endorsed Flynn's request for immunity.

Get ready for a nasty week in Washington, even by this regime's standards.