DoJ’s non-prosecution of former deputy FBI director and serial liar Andrew McCabe is just the latest symptom of a much, much bigger problem: Washington DC is now an existential threat to the American Republic. Centralization of unbridled power in DC has become a cancer of corruption that is eating the heart out of the US Constitution. Let’s examine that premise, starting with some symptoms of the disease, and then detail some solutions that will address the “McCabe problem.”

McCabe was at the heart of a coup against the sitting president of the United States; he got the obstruction of justice investigation rolling that later transitioned into the main thrust of the Mueller investigation – the elaborate obstruction of justice trap detailed in Volume II of the Mueller report. He lied to Congress, lied to the IG, was referred for prosecution by the IG, and has now been let off the hook for those crimes. While he’s still facing legal jeopardy for having signed off on illegal FISA warrants (and possibly other offenses), he remains free as a bird while Roger Stone and Michael Flynn are facing serious jail-time for lesser offenses. And the insufferable SOB is now sanctimoniously braying his “exoneration” on CNN.

Just this past week, federal prosecutors recommended “up to 5 years” for former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh for conspiracy and tax evasion. The sentencing memo summarized her “seven-year scheme to defraud, multiple years of tax evasion, election fraud, and attempted cover-ups, including brazen lies to the public, [that] clearly establishes the deliberateness with which she pursued financial and political gain without a second thought about how it was harming the public’s trust.” Compare the sentencing for a willful multi-year fraud scheme to the 9 years recommended for Roger Stone for process crimes. Oh, yeah: Pugh is a Democrat.

The DoJ official who let McCabe off the hook is the same one who gave Imran Awan the sweetheart deal. There are no such things as coincidences.

Probably a complete coincidence the prosecutor who let #McCabe walk today is the same prosecutor involved in the dubious #Awan deal, right? https://t.co/vEm0aukxZk #FoxNews — Robert Barnes (@Barnes_Law) February 15, 2020

Not a single member of the coup conspiracy has been indicted – and this, after three years of drip, drip, drip exposure of their criminality thanks to open source reporting by independent investigative journalists. I mean, good grief! Bestselling books have been written by Greg Jarrett, Lee Smith, and others detailing the criminal conduct of the cabal, and yet nothing is done while Mueller’s goons were able to get quick convictions and pleas deals for Manafort, van der Zwaan, Cohen, Stone, and others. Talk about a two-tiered justice system!

Nobody in DoJ or the FBI has faced prosecution for falsely filing FISA warrant applications and defrauding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court despite the FBI’s acknowledgment that at least two of the FISA warrants against Carter Page were fraudulent.

Former FBI director James Comey was let off the hook after he leaked classified memos to the NY Times. He was determined to have “lacked candor” (legal-speak for lying, which would have gotten the average American a long jail sentence) but suffered no legal ramification of any kind.

Mueller’s prosecutors were all Democrat donors and activists. The deck was stacked against President Trump from the beginning. The original premise for the special counsel was “Russian collusion,” but Mueller knew there was no evidence of that within a month of assuming the job, yet the witch hunt continued for another two years.

It appears that the Roger Stone “squeeze” was nothing but a rigged pressure tactic from the very beginning. He was convicted of process crimes through an apparently rigged trial. An Obama judge failed to screen out biased jurors, and in a parting shot, the Mueller prosecutors recommended enhancements to Stone’s sentencing that were outrageous, precipitating another political crisis when DoJ corrected their sentencing memo.

A collection of State Department and National Security Council bureaucrats were orchestrated by House Democrats to create a false premise for impeaching the President primarily based on policy differences. That whole impeachment farce was a direct threat to the Constitution on multiple levels, not the least of which was trivializing the impeachment clause, due process, and separation of powers.

Adam Schiff has made a career of serial lying, including fabricating phone call transcripts, denials that he knew the Ukraine whistleblower, fabricating the minority memo FISA abuse in 2018, falsifying congressional delegation travel records for at least one trip to Ukraine, etc. Certainly, enough lies and conduct to warrant a criminal investigation, yet he’s is still walking around free as a bird (and continuing his lying).

The Ukraine hoax was just the latest attempt by official Washington to orchestrate a sufficient basis to remove President Trump from office. The Russia hoax – yet to be fully unraveled and made public – involved the Obama White House, the intelligence community, DoJ, the FBI, the State Dept, the DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, Democrat-run law firms and contractors, and foreign intelligence services and governments. In other words, a giant conspiracy for which not a single person has been held legally accountable.

Rudy Giuliani is doing yeoman’s work in exposing Biden family corruption in Ukraine, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg of the political class’s leveraging US foreign aid for kickbacks to family members and friends, some of which is detailed in Peter Schweizer’s new book, Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite. And that is just the merest glimpse into the bipartisan corruption that has been ongoing for decades.

The Awan brothers House IT scandal was swept under the rug despite overwhelming evidence of criminal conduct implicating many sitting congressmen. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz – and a lot of others! – belong in jail.

Anthony Weiner received a sweetheart sentence despite the allegedly highly-incriminating evidence discovered on his laptop. There has been no apparent follow-up investigation of the information on that laptop because other members of the political class were implicated.

Same thing for Jeffrey Epstein. What happened to all the videos and data files collected by the FBI when both his island and NY mansion were raided? Zip, zero, nada – in protection of others in the political class, e.g., the Clintons and Prince Andrew.

The Chinese spy who operated from within Dianne Feinstein’s staff for 20 years (!) was caught, and yet there was no expanded follow-up investigation, nor did Feinstein pay any legal or political price. It was all swept under the rug, and Dianne Feinstein still sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee! How ridiculous is that?

The Hillary Clinton email scandal was swept under the rug despite overwhelming evidence of criminal conduct, including obstruction of justice, for which average Americans would have been swiftly tried, convicted, and incarcerated. Yet, she escaped the hoosegow after the infamous tarmac meeting between Obama AG Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton. Once again, there are no such things as coincidences in politics!

I previously detailed the rampant corruption within Obama-era federal agencies in this article – for which there was no accountability.

And lastly, I previously detailed the rampant corruption in Congress over the years in this article – for which there was minimal accountability.

A few things should be finally dawning on Americans who pay attention. There is a two-tiered system of justice in this country, and the political class never faces penalties for their crimes – especially Democrats! All of the senior federal law enforcement people know each other and will never prosecute or indict each other. Their first loyalties are to their political masters, to their agencies, and to each other. I mean, Christopher Wray (FBI director) has publicly praised Andrew Weissmann, for heaven’s sake! When Wray was assistant AG, he appointed Weissmann to head the Enron task force which ended up destroying the lives of thousands. Americans have no earthly idea just how incestuous the DoJ and FBI really are. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. They all know each other. Check out all the connections detailed in this 2019 AP article.

A root cause for all of this corruption has been the rampant growth of the federal government since the Woodrow Wilson era of “progressive reform,” which launched the leviathan that has become the federal government. This led to a consolidation of federal power at the expense of the states. The 10th Amendment has been undermined for decades by the political class to the point that it is rarely argued in court as a means of curtailing federal power in America.

A companion culprit was the passage of the Congressional Budget Control and Impoundment Act of 1974, which led to an explosion in federal spending and debt. Did you know that the total accumulated federal debt in 1974 was just $475 billion? Today, total federal debt is over $23 TRILLION! Where did all that debt go over the years? A LOT of it was siphoned off into the pockets of the political class through graft and corruption.

Money is the root of all evil, and the centralization of political power in Washington DC has made it much easier for the political class to rob us blind – and pay for a Praetorian guard in the FBI and DoJ to firewall their crimes from public view. And that Valentines’ Day memo from DoJ apparatchik J. P. Cooney (ostensibly the Chief of the Fraud and Public Corruption Section) letting McCabe off the hook is just the latest example of the Praetorian guard and the legal double standard in play. I would wager that Cooney and the rest laughed themselves silly by releasing that memo on Valentines’ Day – their way of planting a collective kiss on McCabe’s butt.

NEW: DOJ won’t pursue criminal charges against former FBI Deputy Dir. Andrew McCabe: "Based on the totality of the circumstances and all of the information known to the Government at this time, we consider the matter closed.” https://t.co/97JW3IKhMW pic.twitter.com/ggXMQzFrhY — Dan Linden (@DanLinden) February 14, 2020

I am sick and tired of the rampant corruption, the double standards, and the laughing in my face by the crooks. What must be done to root out all of this ongoing corruption and criminality in the federal government and restore equal justice and the rule of law for all Americans? I have come to believe that the only real solution is a complete decentralization of federal agencies, relocating key functions and personnel throughout the country. Furthermore, that process of decentralization needs to be effectuated concurrently with a downsizing of federal responsibilities with an accompanying reduction in budgetary authority. We have the information technology available to make decentralization work in terms of inter-agency coordination, etc. Yes, it’s a grandiose concept that will be fought tooth and nail by the political class, but there is no other long-term solution to the problem. Decentralization is a REAL way to drain the swamp, particularly coupled with other measures such as the below that need to be implemented as soon as feasible:

Conduct an independent audit of all federal agencies since 2001 using best accounting practices

Legislate, implement, enhance, and strictly enforce new federal laws against corruption

Refocus a significant part of FBI resources on the enforcement of existing federal corruption laws, including federal campaign finance statutes precluding foreign campaign contributions to any/all US political candidates (including through non-profit organizations)

Strictly monitor and enforce the Hatch Act (prohibits the use of federal resources including people for political purposes)

Beef up whistle-blower laws to catch political actors embedded in the bureaucracy (both financial rewards and personal protections, including against agency retaliation)

Revise and strengthen statutes governing the inspectors general of the various federal agencies to ensure that they are independent and have full authority to investigate their agencies and to make criminal referrals for prosecution when warranted

Change federal civil service rules to prohibit the transition of political appointees into the federal bureaucracy

Use polygraphs and strict and frequent personnel review processes to keep DoJ and the FBI in particular clear of political corruption; includes implementation and enforcement of loyalty oaths

Except for staff counsel, remove the lawyers from senior levels of the FBI (no lawyers in any of the line billets whatsoever; only FBI personnel with field experience); return the agency to its investigative roots

Pass laws precluding federal lobbying by former federal bureaucrats, congressional staff, political appointees, and elected representatives and senators for 10 years after they leave the federal government

Maintain constituent pressure on members of Congress to accomplish these and other measures over time, as well as to insist on equal justice under the law for all Americans

Vote for constitutional conservatives who will in turn vote to return unconstitutional functions of the federal government (e.g., the “Department of Education”) to the states

Pass the 28 th Amendment which “would not allow Congress to make any laws that apply to American citizens that don’t apply equally to the members of Congress. And it would preclude them from making any laws that apply to themselves, but don’t apply to all U.S. citizens.”

Amendment which “would not allow Congress to make any laws that apply to American citizens that don’t apply equally to the members of Congress. And it would preclude them from making any laws that apply to themselves, but don’t apply to all U.S. citizens.” Pass a 29th Amendment on term limits. Over time, virtually all politicians become corrupted by the power, money, and addiction to fame (relatively speaking). Politicians have only two jobs: spend our money and get re-elected. EVERYTHING else is done in service of those two jobs – without accountability!

And while the above actions are being executed, develop and implement a plan for complete decentralization of the federal agencies located in Washington, DC. Among other side benefits, the hyper-politicization of the DC US attorney’s office and DC-area grand juries will not matter as much as they do now and will in fact be reduced over time (fewer rigged trials/judges/juries).

There is no time like the present to start the process of rooting out federal corruption while taking care of the “McCabe problem,” too. For too long we have allowed federal agencies (the very essence of the “Deep State”) to run rampant and unchecked. Thanks to President Trump, we have learned about incredible corruption in federal agencies, and “Drain the Swamp” has now become a clarion call across the land. We have a Republic for the time being, but can we keep it?

The end.

Stu Cvrk served 30 years in the US Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. An oceanographer and systems analyst through education and experience, Stu is a graduate of the US Naval Academy where he received a classical liberal education which serves as the key foundation for his political commentary. He threads daily on Twitter on a wide range of political, military, foreign policy, government, economics, and world affairs topics. Read more by Stu Cvrk