McCabe's goose is cooked. He is in big, BIG trouble:
The only person who should be more worried than staffers and journalists by the Wolfe charges is McCabe. He is already embroiled as the subject of a referral by the Justice Department inspector general for possible criminal prosecution. This referral by career Justice Department officials is based on their finding that McCabe knowingly lied to investigators about leaking information to the media. It was bad enough for McCabe that he was involved in the investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was charged with the same violation of 18 U.S.C. 1001 for lying to investigators. Now, Wolfe is charged under the same provision for a leak to the media. For McCabe not to be charged would lead to a torrent of criticism over the failure of the Justice Department to apply the same standards to its own lawyers.
If he is not now cooperating with authorities, he better start. He may be faced with spending many years in a Federal prison. As a former Deputy Director of the FBI, his life (even at a minimum security prison) will not be pleasant.
With the false statement situation...I don’t see how he avoids a court visit. If you made just one single statement and it was just one single line that a fraud...you might skate through the court business. In his case, you could be talking about a year in prison as a minimum. And this will trigger people to go and review other statements that he made....looking for other false stories. It just gets you deeper into a mess.
the Justice Department has been actively pursuing leaks out of Congress. Given the lack of prior action, members and staffers may have become emboldened over time, but it now appears the Trump administration has been quietly tracking down the source of some news articles.
...for a LONG time.
Got to suck to be McCabe. At least Wolfe got 3 years of very young tail out of it. I’m not sure McCabe got anything.
——the Justice Department has been actively-——
Hmmm.....How can that be? The truth is that FReeper Sessions bashers are just wrong and always have been.
There is going to be a whole loaf of toast after this incident, the first to squeal will be saved from hard time
This new story sort of puts the lie to “the leakers are patriots...”. This leaker just wanted some of what the female “journalist” was offering.
It couldn’t happen to a “nicer” guy.
Mark
My understanding is that the reporter gave sex for information. Why haven’t the reporter and the NYT been indicted for bribery?
Trump to Rudy: Tell McCabe his only hope is to spill everything on McCain and Hillary. No pretrial immunity deal. After he’s convicted, we’ll talk about him cooperating as a witness in their cases. Maybe he’ll get a reduced sentence out of it. Maybe he’ll end up getting married to the guy on the cellblock with most cigarettes. The choice is his.
McCabe needs to get his, but I’m also interested in the implications of all this for John McCain.
Ali Watkins worked for Buzzfeed before and after Buzzfeed published the Steele Dossier. Buzzfeed says they knew about her relationship with Wolfe. Then she had a meteoric rise when hired by the NYT. Great Big Questions that Need Answered:
Did Ali Watkins provide the Steele Dossier to Buzzfeed?
Did James A. Wolfe provide it to Ali?
Did John McCain provide it to Wolfe?
When was the Dossier “made available” to the SSCI and by what source?
If McCain was not involved, it was a big waste of coincidences.
HA! No one going to jail... It’s all hype. The fix is in and has been for generations. Two sets of rules...
“The Wolfe indictment shows the Justice Department has been actively pursuing leaks out of Congress... it now appears the Trump administration has been quietly tracking down the source of some news articles.”
DoJ (Sessions) has been working big time. He established a new counterintelligence unit within the FBI (announced last August) and those professional spyhunters have been tracking down the leakers in DC. Back then, he also said that he would address DoJ policies on surveilling media as part of the (27!) investigations into leaking.
The indictment of Wolfe makes it clear that he had been under surveillance before he was confronted in December 2017, and forced to resign. It also reveals that a senior Federal Prosecutor (US Attorney Jessie K. Liu) had a Grand Jury issue search warrants against at least one reporter (Ali Watkins, NY Times), which were executed February 2018, or earlier. The Prosecutor got ALL of her electronic communications, for the last several YEARS, including encrypted messaging applications they thought were secure.
The indictment specifically mentions FOUR reporters.
@TheLastRefuge on Twitter, identifies the reporters in the indictment as:
Reporter #1 Manu Raju at CNN
Reporter #2 Ali Watkins at NYT
Reporter #3 Marianna Sotomayor NBC
Reporter #4 Brian Ross ABC
It seems likely that those reporters, and by extension their organizations, have also been subjected to search and surveillance.
Wolfe was busted in December, and has obviously been under a gag order as part of a plea deal since then. By now, prosecutors should have collected a mountain of evidence, and have likely swept up a wide network of leakers - likely including legislators, like Adam Schiff. Wolfe’s indictment indicates that the broad investigation is complete, and they no longer have to conceal it.
There is a Storm Coming!
Who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee in 1987?
I seriously doubt the above. Note that Wolfe was immediately INDICTED. The DOJ is currently in a war with Congress, and Wolfe will be prosecuted to make a point (as he should be). It's also a shot across the bow of Congress and their staff that they are being watched and will be prosecuted if they cross DOJ. Meanwhile, McCabe's case is sitting on a shelf for months now, and it remains to be seen if he will ever be indicted. They play under different rules than the rest of us...