Waiting until two days before his pension vests seems vindictive. ?
I am not there on that view yet.
Both Sessions and Trump did not walk into a trap that was set for them. The left would have loved to have Trump or Sessions flat out fire McCabe and they crucify them for doing a politically motivated firing. Instead, Sessions said that he would not make a decision until the OPR had completed its review and they went all the way up until Thursday on it and even gave McCabe a chance to come back in and respond and argue against. It's frustrating because I don't like Sessions and I don't like McCabe either but they followed the process in a way that removed the political firing argument that the lefties and media want to make - or at least they struggle now with how to square the fact that the independent IG recommended it. I don't have any reason to believe that Sessions would not have fired McCabe a month ago if the IG and the OPR completed their review a month ago.
It's the same thing with the appointment of an independent counsel. The lefties are gunning for a chance to accuse Sessions of being political in appointing a special counsel but now he has seen major elements of the IG's report and Congress is also beginning to line with appointing one. That will leave the lefties having to deal with the fact that the need for an independent prosecutor arises out of allegations from the independent inspector general and demand from Congress rather than Sessions trying to save his job. Yup. I hate it too. But Sessions avoided walking into the trap- admittedly because he does nothing anyway- and now the timing is better for an independent counsel.
I don't see McCabe or the timing of it being vindictive at all. McCabe is the one who knew that he was under negative review from the IG and that it would lead to an OPR review so he suddenly moved up his resignation and departure date to outmaneuver them knowing that it would be difficult to do the full review given the notice, hearing, review period allowed under statute and departmental regulations. Sorry if that went down to the wire and he lost. Fuck him. OPR completed their review and re-hearing of McCabe's argument on Thursday, and Sessions fired him late on Friday and his actions were approved/allowed by the OPR.
Even though it is an agonizingly longer and frustrating strategy to follow, if congress appoints the independent counsel rather than the AG, it is exponentially better. Because that means that if/when the republicans lose the house in November that the independent counsel will still be sniffing around even though the dems control the House Intel Committee and are able to kill any further investigation there.
An argument could be made that if the dems wanted an even more independent review of the McCabe scenario rather than having it in the hands of the IG and Sessions, then they could have supported an independent counsel long ago. But they didn't. So screw them too.
Yes, to the grand jury appearances for both Comey and McCabe. Either Comey or McCabe have publicly committed perjury. McCabe defended against the attempt to fire him by arguing that he had approval to speak to and release information to the press. But Comey directly testified to Congress under direct questioning that he never authorized anyone to speak or leak information to the press or outside sources. Grand jury can sort that out, and really they do not need to sort anything out. They just need to agree that there is a basis to go forward with prosecution.
