In what kind of democracy does the DOJ hold a press conference about an armed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and not include the FBI director or acting attorney general?
January 12, 2021

Former deputy director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, said on CNN that the press briefing left him with questions “kind of screaming out to me.” The first and foremost was the absence of FBI Director Christopher Wray and acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.

“It’s been six days since our Capitol was attacked by a violent mob and this is the first time we've heard from someone,” McCabe said. Wray and Rosen “should have been standing on that stage."

You have to wonder why not.

And then there’s the lack of hard information. Host Brooke Baldwin pointed out that with all the evidence, there was no answer to the question, “How the hell they did not stop this sooner?”

“We heard a lot but we understand very little,” McCabe agreed, “and I think that’s the sum total of what I take away from this.”

McCabe continued by blasting the lack of transparency, the lack of accountability and, by implication, the lack of competence:

There's no rational explanation as to why we've seen such a lack of senior leadership engaged in informing the public. I can't remember an incident where, in recent past, where it's been handled this way and that's really pretty shocking. There was the slightest touch on the intelligence issue that we've been discussing all afternoon, the FBI report purportedly from the Norfolk field office to the Washington field office to the very specific plans for the violent attack that were picked up by the FBI in likely social media monitoring, and I felt like the -- the explanation was just, well, this is the way we handle it.
[…]
When you get a piece of intelligence that's of such monumental importance, you don't just hope that the right person will see it, you complete an effective hand-to-hand handoff. You confirm that the right people have what they need to know. …

What we heard from the acting U.S. attorney was almost more of an argument to convince us that the investigation is going well rather than telling us actually what's happening. There were a bunch of references to, "I'm going to clear up misperceptions and what the public should know is X." Well, the fact is that people are having misperceptions and don't know things because we haven't been told anything until this moment. So I feel like we have a long way to go with the public side of this investigation.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon