Will Sessions let other ‘McCabes’ off the hook or restore faith in justice?

Most people are not aware of the fact that the anodyne-sounding Office of Professional Responsibility at the Justice Department acts as a supercharged internal affairs division for the FBI. As such, when this office recently concluded that former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe should not be allowed to vest into his full government pension — because he lied to federal investigators and leaked information to the media — that was not a political decision emanating from the White House, but a very serious determination of crimes committed by as senior a federal law enforcement professional as one can imagine.

In fact, my colleague, Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett, has already made the case that McCabe can clearly be charged under 18 U.S.C. 1001 with lying to the Justice Department’s inspector general, as well as with perjury under 18 U.S.C. 1621. As a consequence, McCabe may want to take legal counsel as swiftly as possible and spend less time on social media posting inflammatory statements that may be used against him very shortly in a court of law.

If it is true that McCabe gave false and misleading statements to the IG, he should be charged criminally under 18 USC 1001. If he was under oath, as the AG statement alleges, he should be charged with perjury under 18 USC 1621. Losing his job is the least of McCabe’s concerns.

— Gregg Jarrett (@GreggJarrett) March 18, 2018

{mosads}But the real news — and the real test for our nation and its system of justice — has little to do with one government employee’s pension. Firstly, we have the question of what will Attorney General Jeff Sessions do now? Of all the Cabinet members put in place by President Trump, Sessions has been the greatest disappointment to the “America First” base. Just read the comments section on any conservative website under an article about the attorney general, if you can stomach it.

Millions clearly see his recusal from the Russia investigation as a serious mistake, and his inaction with regard to Obama and Clinton-era alleged crimes — especially the “pay to play” of Uranium One, Hillary Clinton’s “ServerGate,” and the infamous 2016 Phoenix airport tarmac meeting between then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton — as an indictment of his tenure.

Not to mention the lack of any cases being brought since Jan. 20, 2017, in relation to the more than 150 leaks of national security import that many suspect have originated with Obama-era holdovers wishing to derail the Trump White House’s policies. All of these allegations and concrete crimes must be investigated if we are to have faith that our federal institutions cannot be systematically used as political weapons by any administration.

To that end, the actions taken with the deputy director of the FBI must act as a catalyst. Why are so many others, such as Peter Strzok, the FBI’s onetime deputy assistant director of counterintelligence, who have been implicated in politically motivated perversions of administrative power — or worse — still in place, let alone anywhere near the tools of the intelligence community?

Sessions can act to begin to restore faith in the Justice Department and FBI. It will take years for Americans to fully trust these incredibly powerful institutions once more. But Sessions must act now. In the meantime there is another, just as pressing issue: What have all of the Obama-era scandals done to undermine the national security of our great nation?

For more than a year now, we have had to sit through the unfounded allegations of Russian “collusion” with the Trump campaign, with nothing to show for it except the findings of the House Intelligence Committee and brave investigative journalists such as Sara Carter, which show ample collusion between the Democratic National Committee, Russian propagandists and a former British spy with exceptional ties to Moscow.

Nevertheless, the newly reelected Russian president, Vladimir Putin, must be very happy with the havoc that McCabe, Strzok, fired FBI director James Comey, former CIA director John Brennan and others have wreaked upon the idea that we are a republic built on the principle of rule of law. Even just the impression that having a “special” last name such as Clinton gets you preferential treatment, by the most famous law enforcement agency in the world no less, is music to the ears of the Kremlin.

For almost a century, the Soviet Union and now Russia have been telling the world that democracy is a charade, and America’s democracy in particular is an illusion. We cannot allow a handful of people, drunk on their former power, to make the accusations of a former KGB colonel and his cronies appear to be true. Now is the time for Sessions to restore our faith in what America is, and to prove it to the world.

Sebastian Gorka, Ph.D., is a national security strategist with Fox News and former deputy assistant and strategist to President Trump. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War.” You can follow him on Twitter @SebGorka.