The former assistant director of the FBI tells Breitbart News that James Comey’s replacement should resign because of a conflict of interest over the Hillary Clinton emails investigation.
“He should not be the acting director of the FBI,” James Kallstrom explains to Breitbart News of Andrew McCabe. “He’s just not up for the job. He’s been soiled by this whole thing with Terry McAuliffe. He never disclosed it on the forms.”
Acting FBI Director McCabe failed to report donations from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe to his wife. McAuliffe recruited Dr. Jill McCabe, a political novice, to run for state senate in Virginia in 2015. She narrowly lost. McAuliffe, perhaps the closest political ally of the Clintons, donated $467,500 from his Common Good Virginia political action committee to McCabe’s state senate campaign. McAuliffe also helped steer several hundred thousand additional dollars to McCabe’s state senate run as well.
On January 12, 2017, the Justice Department’s inspector general announced an investigation into McCabe’s failure to recuse himself from an investigation that possibly involved a conflict of interest.
The scandal over Hillary Clinton using a private account to send and receive emails containing classified material while secretary of state exploded in early March of 2015. Days after the news hit, McAuliffe met with Andrew and Jill McCabe regarding a run for office. Andrew McCabe, then the number-three official at the bureau, subsequently received a promotion and helped oversee the investigation.
Trump allies indicate that the president might regret the indirect promotion he awarded to McCabe on Tuesday in firing FBI Director James Comey.
“By chain of command, the deputy director becomes FBI director today,” Kallstrom, who retired from the bureau in the late 1990s shortly after McCabe joined it, noted to Breitbart News late Tuesday evening. “That doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll remain as the FBI director tomorrow. I hope for the sake of the FBI that he doesn’t.”
The bureau disclosed in a statement released last year that McCabe’s wife’s political venture caused him to recuse himself regarding “all FBI investigative matters involving Virginia politics.” Critics wonder why the recusal did not extend to matters involving the close political allies of his wife’s patron and why McCabe waited, after receiving a 44-day extension, until three days after Comey’s July 5, 2016, news conference on the emails controversy to submit his disclosure forms.
McCabe’s supporters point out that although the financial disclosure forms include a space for detailing potential conflicts of interest involving a spouse, the law does not demand that one fill that part out regarding income. Furthermore, they insist, political donations do not belong on queries regarding income. And although a media firestorm over the emails began in March of 2015, the FBI did not officially begin an investigation until July of 2015.
Nevertheless, critics of Comey’s handling of the investigation see the man who assumed his job as guilty of far worse impropriety.
“He’s part of the problem,” Kallstrom opines of the acting director. “If you want to fix the morale of the FBI, you don’t leave someone like him.”
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