Immunity....For What?

Andrew McCarthy writes at National Review that there should be no immunity given to Andrew McCabe in return for his truthful testimony before Congress.

...As we discussed back in April, McCabe has been referred by the inspector general to the Justice Department and FBI for consideration of whether to prosecute him for making false statements to investigators. The false statements occurred during a probe of McCabe’s leaking of sensitive investigative information to the media. Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s 35-page report recounts that McCabe gave misleading answers on four occasions when questioned about the leak; falsely claimed that his boss, then-director James Comey, knew about and approved McCabe’s leak; and, to give himself cover, shamelessly chewed out the heads of the New York and Washington field offices over the leak that McCabe himself had orchestrated.

McCabe’s lawyer, Michael Bromwich, now maintains that, because of the criminal referral, McCabe needs immunity if he is to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Clinton-emails case.

...McCabe is trying to make himself non-prosecutable.

...Prosecutors do not like to grant immunity. It was liberally doled out in the Clinton-emails investigation that McCabe ran, but that was an aberration — a reflection of the fact that there was no intention of charging Mrs. Clinton or anyone else with a crime.

A more normal and effective way of proceeding is illustrated by Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation: If the prosecutor has a viable false-statements case against a witness, he makes the witness understand that he is prepared to indict the witness. The witness quickly realizes that his best option is to plead guilty and cooperate (as several witnesses have in Mueller’s probe). Once this is done, if the witness proves to be dishonest, the cooperation agreement is torn up and the prosecutor can bring more charges and push for a more severe sentence. The guilty-plea arrangement, much more effectively than an immunity grant, provides the witness with a powerful incentive to cooperate fully.

...Once McCabe realizes the Judiciary Committee will not give him immunity or otherwise interfere with the Justice Department’s ability to prosecute him, he is apt to become a much more forthcoming witness.

Read more here.