McCabe’s firing shows how Trump’s behavior corrodes faith in government.
By
Ezra Klein@ezraklein Mar 17, 2018, 12:17pm EDT
“When
the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption
becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the
dustbin of history.”
That’s
John Brennan, the former CIA director, slamming Donald Trump after his attorney
general fired former FBI Director Andrew McCabe. Those are not normal comments
from a former CIA director. But then, these are not normal times.
McCabe’s
firing shows how Trump has corroded the operations of the American government.
There are real questions about McCabe’s performance at the FBI. But there are
even deeper questions about Trump’s public vendetta against McCabe, and the role
Sessions played in his termination.
McCabe
is not innocent of wrongdoing. He made a questionable call (at best) about
allowing a leak to the press during the 2016 campaign and then he appears to
have lied about it, though he says it was an honest mistake. You can imagine a
normal administration, and a normal process, weighing McCabe’s actions carefully
and seriously.
But
none of this is why Trump wanted McCabe gone, and “carefully and seriously” is
not how the process was conducted. Trump wanted McCabe gone because of McCabe’s
involvement in the Justice Department investigation of Russian meddling in the
campaign. Trump thinks McCabe is a Comey-aligned Democrat who was biased against
him. Trump believes his political appointees should protect him. Trump has been
explicit in public about all of this. And he has spent months publicly
slandering McCabe and pressuring Sessions to fire him.
Trump’s
campaign had already worked. McCabe announced his retirement. The Trump
administration fired him on Friday not to remove him from government, but to
deny him the pension earned for over 20 years of government service. It was an
act of punishment, not of personnel management.
This,
then, is part of the cost of Trump’s daily venality: even when his
administration makes a decision that might be justifiable on its own terms, the
process by which that decision was made cannot be trusted, and may indeed be a
scandal in its own right.
Sen.
Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who serves on the Judiciary
Committee, called the McCabe firing “added evidence of obstruction of
justice.”
It’s
worth beginning with what McCabe is said to have done wrong. As my colleagues
explain:
Justice
Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that, in 2016, McCabe
inappropriately allowed two top officials to speak to reporters about his
decision to open a case into the Clinton Foundation. That incident was under
investigation as part of a broader look into how the FBI and Justice Department
handled themselves during the 2016 presidential election.
But
McCabe apparently lied about his authorization during an interview with the
months-long probe. That led the FBI to recommend firing McCabe — a
recommendation Sessions just accepted.
“The
FBI expects every employee to adhere to the highest standards of honesty,
integrity, and accountability. As the OPR proposal stated, ‘all FBI employees
know that lacking candor under oath results in dismissal and that our integrity
is our brand,’ Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement provided by
the Justice Department.
McCabe
disputes this interpretation. In his searing statement upon being fired, he
wrote:
The
OIG investigation has focused on information I chose to share with a reporter
through my public affairs officer and a legal counselor. As Deputy Director, I
was one of only a few people who had the authority to do that. It was not a
secret, it took place over several days, and others, including the Director,
were aware of the interaction with the reporter. It was the same type of
exchange with the media that the Deputy Director oversees several times per
week. In fact it was the same type of work that I continued to do under Director
Wray, at his request. The investigation subsequently focused on who I talked to,
when I talked to them, and so forth. During these inquiries, I answered
questions truthfully and as accurately as I could amidst the chaos that
surrounded me. And when I thought my answers were misunderstood, I contacted
investigators to correct them.
Sessions’
explanation of the firing boils down to this line: “Integrity is our brand.” The
Department of Justice cannot afford even the perception of malfeasance or
improper behavior.
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