RUTHFULLY YOURS

He changed his story about the FBI and the Clinton Foundation, lying about his lies.

The Justice Department’s inspector general has referred Andrew McCabe to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., for a possible false-statements prosecution. It was big news this week. But the story of how the FBI’s former deputy director lied to investigators, repeatedly, is mainly of interest to him. It is the story of what he lied about that should be of interest to everyone else.

He lied about leaking a conversation in which the Obama Justice Department pressured the FBI to stand down on an investigation of the Clinton Foundation.

That’s not getting much attention. The referral by Inspector General Michael Horowitz focuses us, instead, on the prospect of McCabe’s prosecution. That’s understandable. McCabe has it coming, as the IG’s 35-page report powerfully illustrates.

The report concludes that the former deputy director “lacked candor,” the standard for internal discipline at the FBI, from which McCabe was fired. It is a charge similar to those spelled out in the federal penal code’s false-statements and perjury laws. Specifically, the report cites four instances of lack of candor; more comprehensively, McCabe is depicted as an insidious operator.

About two weeks before Election Day 2016, the then–deputy director was stung by a Wall Street Journal story that questioned his fitness to lead an investigation of Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ nominee. McCabe’s wife had received $675,000 in donations from a political action committee controlled by the Clintons’ notorious confidant, Virginia’s then–governor Terry McAuliffe — an eye-popping amount for a state senate campaign (which Mrs. McCabe lost). It was perfectly reasonable to question McCabe’s objectivity: The justice system’s integrity hinges on the perception, as well as the reality, of impartiality.

The utility of the Mueller investigation has not been the uncovering of collusion, or even in the badgering of an Administration perceived as loathsome. Rather, it has allowed American elites to avoid facing uncomfortable questions about the factors that put Trump in the White House.

I cannot contemplate the havoc of Russiagate without a shudder of horror not only for my country, but also for myself. How very different my life would have been over the past year or more if I had been one of those Trump volunteers assembled in early 2016 to give the campaign the pretense of having a foreign-policy team. For that matter, it would probably have been enough for me to have volunteered as a neighborhood canvasser to get out the Trump vote (what precious little of it there was) in my community in Fairfax County, Virginia.

Once the charge of collusion with the Kremlin had been leveled against Team Trump, my 40-year association with Russia, much of it as a diplomat, would have made me a prime suspect. A swarm of reporters would have descended on my quiet suburban street, observing my comings and goings and pumping the neighbors for information and pithy sound bites (“He seemed like a quiet, unassuming guy; I would never have thought him capable of such a thing.”).

The fact that I am a nonentity would not have spared me, any more than it has spared Carter Page or George Papadopoulos. Certainly, all my personal and business contacts had been with ordinary, working-level Russians, not the ruling elites. Nevertheless, a few of the Russian diplomats I knew 20 years ago have by now risen through the ranks, and no doubt some of them have presumed intelligence links that could have been used to cast aspersions on my patriotism. And although I knew no one at, say, Rosneft or Gazprom, I’m sure I must have known someone who knows someone in those organizations. A veritable cottage industry could therefore have arisen to contrive a daisy chain of connections, however tenuous and improbable, linking me with the inner sanctum of the Kremlin—the conduit along which cash and information presumably flowed in the supposed collusion that many people deem the only plausible explanation for Trump’s electoral victory.

Perhaps some creative journalist would even have fingered me as the American who explained to the Russians what a purple state is.

My sudden notoriety would have come as a most unwelcome embarrassment to my employer, who might well have felt obliged, however reluctantly, to let me go. Combining unemployment with the imperative to “lawyer up,” I would have been staring bankruptcy in the face and contemplating the disheartening prospect of having to crowdfund my children’s college education, and perhaps even my own retirement.

Uncle Sam’s top tech team choked on game day.

The NFL has Super Bowl Sunday. Horses have the Kentucky Derby. The IRS has Tax Day. But not even 1,500 highly compensated tech employees at the IRS could keep the website running on the most important day of the year.

Although tax season is busy throughout March and April, it all comes down to one day. And this year, on April 17, when millions of taxpayers tried to file their 2017 tax returns on IRS.gov, they were halted by a system-wide computer failure, receiving the following notice:

“Planned outage: April 17, 2018 – December 31, 9999… We apologize for any inconvenience. Note that your tax payment is due although IRS Direct Pay may not be available.”

IRS Chief Information Officer Silvana Garza and her two deputy chief information officers, Karen Freeman and Marla Somerville, each made $185,100 in 2017. Additionally, Somerville received a $24,746 bonus, while disclosures show that Freeman received two bonuses totaling $61,766.

At the top of the list is the Director of Online Engagement, Operations Media. James Hammond held the position for five years before retiring to the private sector in 2017. As the senior executive in charge of the IRS website, Hammond made $240,100 – the highest base salary at the entire agency. Michele Causey was promoted to fill the spot. Ms. Causey left her executive officer position where she made $161,900 last year plus a $4,809 bonus.

The IRS handles plenty of confidential and sensitive information, and agency officials claim cybersecurity is a top priority. Rightly so, the cybersecurity employees at the IRS are highly compensated.