A new book and round of widely covered media interviews by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe give an idea of the extent of the spy agency leadership’s functioning as a partisan political operation working to overturn the results of the 2016 presidential election.
McCabe’s musings have won universal praise from liberals and all other anti-Trumpers after publication of his “tell-all” book, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump.
The FBI has a long history of targeting, spying on and seeking to disrupt the labor movement; the Socialist Workers Party and other working-class political groups; Black rights fighters and opponents of Washington’s wars. But going after one of the candidates of the rulers’ two political parties is something new.
Behind their zeal to depose Trump by any means possible, McCabe and other liberals’ real concern is working people. They fear the millions of workers who voted for Trump looking for ways out of the effects of the rulers’ wars abroad and deteriorating conditions of life and work imposed on them by the crisis of capitalism today.
And, when workers don’t cast their ballots “the right way,” the FBI and its cohorts move to annul the vote by finding a “crime or misdemeanor” to pin on the president.
In one interview about the book, McCabe explains he and other FBI operatives and Justice Department officials wanted to recruit cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to oust Trump from office. That amendment says a president can be removed if he’s “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein offered to wear a wire to secretly record his meetings with the president, McCabe claims, to collect evidence to strengthen their efforts to recruit allies in their plot.
McCabe admits the FBI had been trying to block Trump from being elected for quite a while. Referring to ex-FBI Director James Comey’s earlier failed efforts to sway the election for Hillary Clinton, McCabe writes piously, “The FBI does everything possible not to influence elections,” but then admits, “In 2016, it seems we did.”
In this case McCabe and his co-conspirators moved rapidly against Trump after he fired Comey, who had been maneuvering to get rid of the president himself.
Mueller has produced no evidence
Mueller, yet another ex-FBI boss, has been plugging away as special counsel appointed by Rosenstein, supposedly probing for evidence of collusion between Trump and Moscow to sway the 2016 election. Up to now Mueller, like all prosecutors under capitalism, has gone after Trump’s associates, seeking to get something on them to pressure them to turn on the president.
While he has yet to produce any evidence of collusion, he has coerced convictions or guilty pleas from eight people associated with Trump on other matters. He is reportedly planning to submit his report to Attorney General Barr soon. The liberals hope they can use Mueller’s report to spawn further probes by Democratic-led congressional committees or friendly prosecutors in New York and elsewhere.
One result of Mueller’s operation has been to turn Michael Cohen, a former Trump lawyer, into a weapon against Trump. Cohen began public testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee Feb. 27. Mueller had prosecuted and convicted Cohen on charges of lying to Congress earlier.
The New York Times and other anti-Trump organs have reported Cohen will call Trump a liar, a racist and a conman — and say that he is “guilty” of overestimating his wealth and knew about hush money payments Cohen made to Stormy Daniels, as well as other charges. Other than providing talking points to those intent on bringing down the president, it isn’t clear if his testimony will have any other effect.
The Socialist Workers Party campaign of candidates running across the country explains they have no sympathy for Trump or any brand of capitalist politician. They all, including those Democrats who call themselves socialists, share the same goal — to bolster U.S. imperialist interests worldwide and defend the profit system on the backs of working people.
The SWP campaign explains that all efforts to use the rulers’ political police as a tool in politics are dangerous for the working class. The party campaigns for the working class and all those exploited and oppressed by capitalism to unite and break with the two-party system and chart a course to take political power into their own hands.