Now we know: it was (and remains) an attempted coup

February 17, 2019
Now we know: it was (and remains) an attempted coup
By Peter Barry Chowka
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https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/now_we_know_it_was_and_remains_an_attempted_coup_.html

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s 60 Minutes interview, airing in full on CBS tonight, is a disaster for the Deep State. His admission during his interview that he and other top FBI and Justice Department officials seriously considered taking steps including invoking the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office in the spring of 2017 is a blockbuster. Thanks to his candor,

we can finally use without reservation the “C” word – for an attempted coup d’état –in describing what McCabe and other Deep State players were cooking up in secret two years ago.

Excerpts of McCabe’s damning interview were released by CBS News on Thursday. Almost immediately, a range of experts – including a few Democrats – began using the “C” word.

Thursday evening, Alan Dershowitz, emeritus professor of law at Harvard Law School and a Democrat, appeared on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight and said about what McCabe revealed to 60 Minutes, “If true, it is clearly an attempt at a coup d’état.” The following night, during an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Dershowitz went even farther in analyzing what McCabe said about Rod Rosenstein:

Let’s talk about Rod Rosenstein. He is the Deputy Attorney General of the United States. He was the acting attorney general for this case. And he is suggesting using the 25th Amendment that was written to take care of a problem of Woodrow Wilson having a stroke or President Reagan being shot and being on the operating table. These guys [McCabe, Rosenstein, at al] are watching House of Cards instead of reading the Constitution. The Constitution is as clear as can be. The 25th Amendment is applicable only if you’re incapacitated. It’s not a substitute for impeachment; it’s not a substitute for an election. And if Rod Rosenstein actually thought about and suggested wiring the president, [and] invoking the 25th Amendment he should be fired before he has an opportunity to resign. He should be disgraced. The Inspector General of the Justice Department should be looking into it.

This is as close as this country has ever come to the consideration of a coup d’état – a constitutionally unlawfaul coup d’état [emphasis added.] – against the duly elected president, whether you like him or not, whether you voted against him as I did or not. The Constitution has to prevail. The 25th Amendment has to mean what it says. And when you have a deputy attorney general thinking about circumventing the 25th Amendment, that is close to a Constitutional crisis.

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A variety of observers and analysts, writing in The Federalist, Fox News online, American Thinker, Conservative Review, and scores of other publications, have now used the word “coup” in headlines or in the body of their articles on the subject.

Appearing on Saturday’s Journal Editorial Report on the Fox News channel, Kimberley Strassel, Wall Street Journal reporter and editorial board member, advanced the analysis further:

It’s crazy to have to go here – but I’m going to go there. Essentially what they were doing is engaging [in], or at least contemplating, a coup. [emphasis added.] Because, look, this is not the FBI’s job. . . The FBI’s job is to investigate, is to recommend prosecution, or if it really believes what it believed is happening here, that this president was somehow unfit to serve in office or colluding with the Russians, its job is to inform senior leaders of Congress who can then go down the road of impeachment or to inform other senior members of the cabinet who could look at the 25th Amendment. The FBI has no role here. And the idea that they thought this was appropriate just says everything about Jim Comey, Andy McCabe, and their sense of their own importance and no rules about what they needed to follow in order to – in their jobs.

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After CBS News let the cat out of the bag on Thursday with the excerpts of the McCabe interview, McCabe attempted to walk back his quotes that had led to the widespread description of his and his colleagues’ machinations in 2017 as a potential coup. Monica Showalter explored this questionable effort in her blog “Andrew McCabe scrambles to deny 'coup plotting'” at American Thinker yesterday. Her conclusion reflected what most other thoughtful analysts who have been following the developments were also saying: “Sorry, big boy, it's time to face the music.”

The fact that a coup d’état against President Trump was under serious consideration is no longer speculation proposed by fringe “conspiracy theorists.” The words “coup” or “attempted coup” can now be used without qualification or apology in describing the history of the attempts to take down President Trump that went on at some of the highest levels of the federal government in 2017.

Only by using the correct names for matters can an appropriate response be formulated. This is ancient wisdom propounded by Confucius:

"If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant;
if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone;
if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate;
if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion.
Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said.
This matters above everything."

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Peter Barry Chowka writes about politics, media, popular culture, and health care for American Thinker and other publications. Follow him on Twitter at @pchowka.

February 16, 2019
Andrew McCabe scrambles to deny 'coup plotting'
By Monica Showalter
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https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/andrew_mccabe_scrambles_to_deny_any_coup_plotting.html

After a slew of headlines from former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe finally admitting that he and his Justice Department cronies were plotting a de facto coup against a democratically elected president in what CBS News billed as a "bombshell interview," McCabe now says his remarks were "taken out of context and misrepresented."

As if he wouldn't know about the Washington leak games up close. But this is a big bid to backtrack.

According to The Hill:

A spokeswoman for former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe said Friday that comments he made regarding a potential use of the 25th Amendment to oust President Trump have been "taken out of context and misrepresented."

"At no time did Mr. McCabe participate in any extended discussions about the use of the 25th Amendment, nor is he aware of any such discussions," spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz said in a statement. "Mr. McCabe has merely confirmed a discussion that was initially reported elsewhere."

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Actually, it sounds high-schoolish. He's not exactly denying a coup plot, which was firmly established after his 60 Minutes interview to be aired Sunday. He's actually just trying to extricate himself from responsibility for it — saying he's now repeating stories he heard from others, and the whole thing was former Justice Department official Rod Rosenstein's idea.

Not me. Rosenstein did it.

Obviously, this is a big blunder — the admission of a full-blown coup plot against a democratically elected president, which is something the Boston Herald says stands in stark contrast to the huge police show to arrest Trump ally Roger Stone and ought to be good for some jail time.

It should be — the Boston Herald's harsh editorial discusses the implications of those revelations:

According to CBS' Scott Pelley, the reporter who interviewed McCabe, after President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, McCabe jumped into action with other members of the Justice Department. McCabe was alarmed that Trump "might have won the White House with the aid of the government of Russia." The next day, he brought the investigators together for a meeting.

"There were meetings at the Justice Department at which it was discussed whether the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet could be brought together to remove the president of the United States under the 25th Amendment," Pelley said.

"I was speaking to the man who had just run for the presidency and just won the election for the presidency," McCabe told CBS. "And who might have done so with the aid of the government of Russia, our most formidable adversary on the world stage, and that was something that troubled me greatly."

The arrogance is astounding.

According to Pelley, McCabe noted that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein offered to wear a wire in order to record conversations with President Trump and the idea was discussed on several occasions. It was "so serious that he took it to the lawyers at the FBI to discuss it," Pelley explained on "CBS This Morning."

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McCabe managed to get a special counsel appointed, who to date has dogged President Trump with his own Inspector Javert and resulted in several of his aides thrown in jail for process crimes, as well as drawn amazing abuses of power, such as the surveillance of hapless Carter Page. McCabe's self-satisfiedly called that appointment the culmination of his life work, his own mission accomplished. "If I got nothing else done as acting director, I had done the one thing I needed to do," he wrote.

Overthrowing an elected president? A president who has been hell on Russia with sanctions, and in the confrontations over Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, and Venezuela? A president who refused to meet with President Putin at a big summit?

I had no problem with the FBI being suspicious of Trump's Russia ties at the beginning — Trump, after all, had done business with the Russians, and based on his ownership of the Miss Universe Organization seemed to have a weakness for the Russian and Slavic beauties. But fact after fact has since come out about Russians not being able to get anywhere with Trump. The famous Trump Tower meeting with Don Trump, Jr. was a Democratic Party setup, and nothing good for Russia came of it. The Russian press grumbled about not being able to reach anyone in the Trump camp during the campaign, and they probably still do.

But even as these facts came out, McCabe refused to drop his thesis. Did the FBI not have informants' reports delivering the truth? One wonders. Or was McCabe just emotionally addicted to phony, Russian-generated opposition research via the Steele dossier instead? It's astonishing how wedded he was to pinning some kind of Russia charges on Trump. At what point would McCabe ever drop his thesis that Trump colluded with the Russians to steal the election from Hillary Clinton? He argues he was on solid ground. Now that the special counsel is preparing to close up shop with nothing, he clings to his insistence that he was on "solid ground."

Yet as the shell of that government abuse is about all that's left of the FBI and special counsel probes, now he's trying to extricate himself and say other guys did it.

This is the reaction of a baby. Sorry, big boy, it's time to face the music.

After Omertà: Why Andrew McCabe’s New Book Might Be The Start Of Something Beautiful
Posted at 7:03 am on February 17, 2019 by Elizabeth Vaughn

https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-...bes-new-book-might-start-something-beautiful/

Omertà. That time honored code of silence among thieves.

Ah, but what happens when soldiers put self-preservation before omertà as they sometimes will?

Fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s new book has not even hit the shelves yet and already people are talking. So is he. And so is DOJ Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein albeit through the statement of a DOJ spokesperson.

Frequently, when two individuals describe the same incident, two different stories are told. Each person has a unique set of interests to protect which almost guarantees there will be some variation between the two versions.

Consider the case of Andrew McCabe vs. Rod Rosenstein. There’s a bit of a conflict in their stories about what was said during their May 16, 2017 meeting. Actually, let’s make that a pretty major conflict.

And the beautiful thing about it is, it offers a great opportunity for the Trump team to exploit.

As we all know, the two had been discussing what they claim was President Trump’s increasingly disturbing behavior and the possibility of invoking the 25th amendment to remove him from office. Rod Rosenstein suggested he wear a wire to record his conversations with Trump.

When the New York Times reported news of Rosenstein’s remarks last September, he denied them at first. Finally, he admitted to making the remark, but said that he had been sarcastic.

McCabe, during a “60 Minutes” interview with CBS’s Scott Pelley about his soon to be released book, contradicted Rosenstein’s claim of sarcasm, telling Pelley that he had been serious.

We learned something entirely new about the May 16th conversation from McCabe which I mentioned in a post last week.

McCabe claimed Rosenstein told the group he had looked into the criteria required to invoke the 25th amendment and learned that 8 out of the President’s 15 cabinet members must be willing to declare that he was unfit for office. According to McCabe, “Mr. Rosenstein suggested that he might have supporters in the Attorney General and secretary of Homeland Security.” It’s worth noting that Trump’s mistrust and disappointment in former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, for which he has been widely criticized, may have been justified. Also, the current secretary of Homeland Security at that time was General John F. Kelly. Kirstjen Nielsen succeeded him in December 2017 when Kelly took over his duties as White House Chief of Staff.

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Consider Andrew McCabe. This is a man who was fired from the FBI for his lack of candor. The DOJ Inspector General’s report claims that McCabe lied to investigators on four occasions and recommended that the DOJ open a criminal investigation. Specifically, he lied to cover up a leak he had originated about the Clinton Foundation shortly before the 2016 election. A grand jury was convened in September to determine if McCabe should face false statement charges.

Kevin R. Brock, former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, offers his take on McCabe:

McCabe, like his equally duplicitous mentor and fellow book peddler Comey, apparently hopes to portray himself as a solitary moral bulwark against a corrupt, compromised president. He hopes further that we avert our eyes from his family ties to opposition party politics and big money, his abuse of FBI policies, attorney general guidelines and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, and his choice to lie to internal FBI investigators to protect himself.

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Now, consider Rod Rosenstein. A spokesperson from the DOJ issued the following statement following McCabe’s “60 minutes” interview.

As to the specific portions of this interview provided to the Department of Justice by ’60 Minutes’ in advance, the Deputy Attorney General again rejects Mr. McCabe’s recitation of events as inaccurate and factually incorrect. The Deputy Attorney General never authorized any recording that Mr. McCabe references. As the Deputy Attorney General previously has stated, based on his personal dealings with the President, there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment, nor was the DAG in a position to consider invoking the 25th Amendment.

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The National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, who is a former federal prosecutor, offered some expert analysis of this statement which he calls “deceptive and disingenuous.” First, he describes the context in which this conversation took place.

No one was in a joking mood when these discussions took place. McCabe was in the midst of formally opening a criminal investigation of the president, and Rosenstein was handwringing over the possible appointment of a special counsel.

McCabe and the FBI’s leadership had been trying to make a criminal case against Trump for months, and McCabe thought – wrongly – that the firing of Comey might be a sound legal basis for an obstruction prosecution.

Rosenstein, meanwhile, was reeling. He had foolishly thought the memo he wrote justifying Comey’s dismissal would win broad bipartisan praise.

Instead, Democrats strategically framed the dismissal as an attempt to obstruct the Russia investigation, and they lashed out at Rosenstein for his part in it.

The deputy attorney general became despondent: convinced that Trump had made him the fall-guy; desperate to get back into the good graces of the anti-Trump Washington establishment, with which Rosenstein had heretofore enjoyed good relations.

…

Right after he fired Comey, Trump intensified the controversy by rebuking the former director in a White House meeting with Russian diplomats.

Rosenstein and McCabe both concluded that the president was either unhinged or had possibly removed Comey in order to derail the Russia investigation (notwithstanding McCabe’s Senate testimony, right after Comey’s firing, that “There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date”).

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First, McCarthy points out that since Rosenstein “can’t credibly deny McCabe’s admission that the two of them talked about recording the president, Rosenstein resorts to the shopworn tactic of distorting the allegation.” The statement says Rosenstein denies “authorizing any recording.” Of course he didn’t and no one has accused him of this. He is being criticized for proposing the idea in a serious manner in the first place.

Second, the statement says “there is no basis to invoke the 25th Amendment, nor was the DAG in a position to consider invoking the 25th Amendment.” McCarthy replies “no kidding! The 25th Amendment does not permit the deputy attorney general to trigger the process for removing an incapacitated president.” But in order to avoid admitting that he seriously considered recording the president to the point of speculation about which cabinet members would or would not support such a move, he answers to charges no one has made.

Here we have one former insider and one likely soon-to-be former insider. The men once played for the same team, but must now look out for their own interests. Their futures and possibly their freedom are at stake. For the first time, omertà is forgotten.

This is the stuff of prosecutor’s dreams. Obviously, one of them is lying. It shouldn’t be too hard to learn the truth. Several other DOJ and FBI officials attended this meeting.

Attorney General William Barr will hopefully appoint a team to further investigate the wrongdoing that has already been uncovered by Congressional committees. Because it would be difficult for DOJ officials to investigate their own colleagues, the appointment of a special counsel might be necessary.

Each government official involved must be questioned under oath and any conflicts or contradictions must be identified. Their answers will provide new opportunities for investigators to turn former co-conspirators against each other.

Investigators can then charge these officials with making false statements and turn their lives into living hells just as they once did to Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos and others. Investigators must continue until the full truth is revealed and those responsible are held accountable.

We need only look at the long list of top-level FBI officials who have either been fired or have resigned in the past year to know that something extraordinary occurred. Long-time FBI officials don’t get fired or retire early over nothing.

Omerta will quickly fly out the window. Officials will abandon each other like rats deserting a sinking ship.

Politics has always been dirty, but the coordinated effort to delegitimize the presidency of Donald Trump is unprecedented. If this conspiracy is not exposed in it’s entirety, then Reagan’s vision of the shining city on the hill will be erased forever.

For over two years now, the left has been trying to find a crime on which to pin the accused,,,; Our President. At what point do we stop tolerating the crimes being committed in their effort?

Now that we have a new FBI director, I hope that time is now!

I have no proof, of course. But......truth be told, 90% at least of the Republicans in Congress would have participated in the coup if they thought for one second they could get away with it.

Given all that has transpired over the last 25 months, it is a wonder our beloved POTUS is still alive. It really is.

If I had known what I know now back on Jan. 20, 2017 I would not be optimistic on his life expectancy. That is how much I trust these lying, crooked asshole Republicans. As for the DumpsterCrats, well, they deserve a special place in hell.