In all of the discussion of the firing of Andrew McCabe, various news outlets focused his “loss” of his pension as opposed to the fact that career officials called for his firing for serious misconduct. It now appears that what was lost will soon be found for McCabe. The firing denied McCabe early pension recovery at age 50 of roughly $60,000 a year. However, that only means that he will receive the pension like other federal officials when he reaches the federal retirement age. If Democratic members have their way, it could be even shorter than that.
The FERS (Federal Employees Retirement System) benefits are vested at five years and thus were not lost with the decision. He is entitled to recover at the standard period between 57 and age 62.
The OPM manual states the following:
The early retirement benefit is avail-able in certain involuntary separation cases and in cases of voluntary separations during a major reorganization or reduction in force. To be eligible, you must meet the following requirements: [Age 50 and 20 years of service]
There is a special formula for law enforcement and other special classes:
Firefighters, Law Enforcement Officers, and Air Traffic Controllers These groups of employees receive an unreduced benefit at age 50 with 20 years of service, or at any age with 25 years of service. If you are in one of these employee groups, you contribute an additional .5% of pay to the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS). Your annual annuity is: 1.7% of your high-3 average pay times 20 years of service plus 1.0% of your high-3 average pay times years of service exceeding 20. You also receive a Special Retirement Supplement until age 62 that approximates the Social Security benefit earned in Federal service. After you reach the Minimum Retirement Age (MRA), if you have earnings from wages or self-employment that exceed the Social Security annual exempt amount, your supplement will be reduced or stopped. In addition, you are entitled to an annual Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA), regardless of your age.
McCabe did lose his pension on a temporary basis since he could have benefitted under the early pension rules. However, some Democratic members are offering him a job to allow him to finish the required period on the congressional payroll. However, Forbes is reporting that that could be a problem.
Indeed, when you look at 5 U.S.§ 8412, it expressly exempts personal terminated “for cause”:
(d) An employee who is separated from the service, except by removal for cause on charges of misconduct or delinquency— (1) after completing 25 years of service as a law enforcement officer, member of the Capitol Police or Supreme Court Police, firefighter, nuclear materials courier, or customs and border protection officer, or any combination of such service totaling at least 25 years, or (2) after becoming 50 years of age and completing 20 years of service as a law enforcement officer, member of the Capitol Police or Supreme Court Police, firefighter, nuclear materials courier, or customs and border protection officer, or any combination of such service totaling at least 20 years.
McCabe was clearly removed “for cause on charges of misconduct.”
One last cautionary note for those members seeking to fill this gap in pension coverage. We have yet to see the IG report and the specific of the underlying allegations. All we know is that the allegations were reportedly serious enough for FBI Director Andrew Wray to push McCabe into terminal leave; OPR career staff to issue the rare recommendation of termination for a Deputy Director, and the Attorney General to fire him a day before his retirement. If any of these jobs require a clearance, those details may prove relevant.
Finally, as I discuss today in a column, there is still the danger of a criminal referral from the IG. That again will depend on the details.
As for the value of McCabe pension, it is estimated to be around $1.8 million given his relatively young age. He joined the FBI in 1996 and finished at an ES Level 4 pay scale. The Federal Employees Retirement System allows for law enforcement officers to receive 1.7 percent of their average highest salary over a period of three consecutive years per year in the agent’s first 20 years of service. They then receive 1 percent of the highest average salary for each year exceeding 20 years of service, which in McCabe’s case would be for a single year. His highest salary was $160,300 in 2016 and , after James Comey appointed him deputy director. In 2017, remaining in an ES Level 4 position, he receive $161,900 in 2017
He will is also be eligible for cost of living adjustment above his base pension.
Vladimir Lenin, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro, Bill and Hillary Clinton…none of them ever felt remorse for any wrong they ever did as poiticial leaders.
Americans have got to wake up and see how the Left want their guns, their freedoms and our marching to their orders.
Venezuela is happening right here in the USA. Concentration Camps ala Josef Stalin are next
Had them in WWII. Of course that was under a Progressive Socialist President which is much the same as National or Interenational Socialist.
And The Donald has never been sorry a day in his life, or taken any responsibility for any of his actions, ever.
Professor Turley notes that McCabe was making $160,000 in his role Deputy Director of the FBI. That income sounds substantial to Walmart employees. However the cost of living in Washington DC is one the nation’s highest. A family of four really needs about $250,000 per year to maintain a solidly middle class lifestyle in The District’s region.
And $160,000 per year would be a modest salary compared to executives in corporate security positions. Vice Presidents of Loss Prevention, at a major corporations, are paid considerably more than $160,000 per year. Why then would bright, motivated managers work for the government instead? The pensions, of course.
While they make less money year-to-year, government employees have more security in old age. What’s more those pensions are designed to keep government workers honest. Hopefully they won’t risk termination for accepting bribes and kickbacks.
Interestingly Professor Turley notes that McCabe’s precise infraction has yet to be revealed in sufficient detail. McCabe allegedly allowed two employees to speak off-record with The New York Times. But that whole matter remains quite vague at the moment. Therefore it difficult to judge whether McCabe’s termination was truly justified. Or if Justice Department officials were really bowing to pressure from Trump.
“I never had sex with that woman” – Bill Clinton
We Americans are not drinking your koolaid, Comrade Peter / Pyotr (Пётр) Hill.
New sock puppet, welcome. Are you Michael’s friend or perhaps )’s?
He also lied to his superiors and covered up information keeping it from his superiors. which were the two main offesnes. you seem to have forgotten to mention.
Which lies? Which information?
He sat on tens of thousands of Hillary’s emails that were found by NYPD on Weiner’s laptop for almost a month when Comey found out and went public with them. And he’s also been accused of altering 702s (the written statements from interviews by agents) I think in Michael Flynn’s case. Not sure if he did it or Strzok (who worked directly under him), but regardless, I’m sure we’ll learn about plenty of felonies he’s committed.
But even if he’d only committed the one felony of lying to Horowitz (IG), that was enough for them to charge Michael Flynn, and Flynn had committed no underlying crime, while McCabe was lying about a crime (leaks to the media).
Oops, meant 302s, not 702s,
The Justice Department had, and still has, a policy of staying out of elections. That became a factor in 2016 for both candidates. Had the FBI called for Hilliary’s indictment, during the election year, that would have certainly tilted the election. But at the same time, the FBI was relatively silent on Russian meddling because they didn’t want to be accused of tilting the election against Trump. Nevertheless the case against Hillary has never been made in court. And A.G. Sessions seems reluctant to pursue such a case even though Trump is pressuring him almost daily.
No justice no peace. Ask any member of the military if they think Hillary should be locked up in Leavenworth for what she did with her private unsecured server and mishandling of classified documents. The answer is hell yes.
And where is this pole? Just more BS from a RWNJ, you must be an INFOwars junkie.
…. poll.
Hope Hicks supposedly had her e-mail accounts “hacked” and they have vanished. Not a word from either side.
Peter Hill,
– IMO, that’s exactly why you do NOT want to see an FBI Director putting himself front and center in deciding and announcing decisions made about whether to prosecute.
When I was watching Comey’s appearances and activities during the last half of 2016, I was thinking about what would happen if the Chief of Police of a major city completed a high-profile investigation, then either supplanted or substituted for the DA’s office role in deciding and announcing the call on whether to prosecute.
About a month before Comey was fired, when he was ( then) equally reviled by Democrats and the GOP, there was an article noting that one of Comey’s ingrained, long-term characteristics is that he sees himself as THE “moral arbitrator” of major issues.
I don’t things had to play out the way that they did for the FBI, and I’d put Comey at the top of the list for damaging that agency’s reputation.
Absolutely, Comey made himself investigator, grand jury and prosecutor – all in one freakishly tall sanctimonious, compromised political hack, with a net worth of something like $10 million – before he ever wrote a book. He’s been around Washington a long time and he’s certainly cashed in. Saw he recently joined the board of the drug cartel money-laundering bank HSBC. Comey was not well-liked or respected by rank and file FBI. Neither was McCabe.
TBob,…
The rank and file FBI agents are probably reluctant to speak on the record, or even off the record, about their opinions of Comey, McCabe, Strzok, etc.
Buy at least according to Comey and McCabe😉😊, they were both highly thought of.
“but at least”
Jayne,…
– It seems clear from the email chains that McCabe, Stzrok, and Comey all knew about the Huma/ Weiner/ Carlos Danger laptop issue by late Sept. 2016.
A yet-unanswered question, at least as far as I know, is why was the decision to reopen the email investigation announced in late October, about 12 days before the election.
Timing is everything. Rudy Guliani and the New York Office of the FBI decided when to reopen the Clinton email investigation. Had Comey refused to cooperate with Guliani and the New York Office of the FBI’s decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation, the belly-aching about the rigged system from the very same people who actually rigged the system would have been even more off-the-charts than it actually was at the time.
Rudy Guliani and the New York Office of the FBI also planted the false story in the Wall Street Journal that McCabe’s authorized leak to WSJ corrected. The Inspector General’s report will probably have more to say on both counts. Rudy Guliani and the New York Office of the FBI most definitely interfered in the 2016 election against Clinton and in favor of Trump. Now there’s your partisan, political witch hunt, for you.
Peter “Leftist Propaganda” Hill says: “What’s more those pensions are designed to keep government workers honest.”
Nonsense. Giving money in any way shape or form has no bearing on government employees’ participation in fraud. All that is necessary to create the incentive for fraud is the opportunity to commit fraud, a reasonable expectation of not getting caught, and the motivation to commit the fraud. All those things were present for McCabe and others of his ilk. Moreover, most government agencies don’t even have a program in place to monitor and investigate fraud occurring with government agencies.
There are Inspector Generals for every department of the Federal government. And if you think outsourcing the government to private contractors would breed more honest government, then you don’t know private business. The Republicans forced the IRS to outsource collections to private debt collectors. That program has been a total bust! Private debt collectors have actually collect far less than IRS employees used to collect.
– FBI Hillary investigation began.
– McCabe’s wife received $6.75K.
– McCabe promoted to FBI No. 3 position.
_____
New York Post
“Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton confidant, helped steer $675,000 to the election campaign of the wife of an FBI official who went on to lead the probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email system, according to a report.
The political action committee of McAuliffe, the Clinton loyalist, gave $467,500 to the state Senate campaign of the wife of Andrew McCabe, who is now deputy director of the FBI, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The report states Jill McCabe received an additional $207,788 from the Virginia Democratic Party, which is heavily influenced by McAuliffe.
The money directed by McAuliffe began flowing two months after the FBI investigation into Clinton began in July 2015. Around that time, the candidate’s husband was promoted from running the Washington field office for the FBI to the No. 3 position at the bureau.”
Crazy brigade has arrived, George says what!
From the Wikipedia article on The Conjunction Fallacy:
However, the probability of two events occurring together (in “conjunction”) is always less than or equal to the probability of either one occurring alone—formally, for two events A and B this inequality could be written as Pr ( A ∧ B ) ≤ Pr ( A ) and Pr ( A ∧ B ) ≤ Pr ( B ).
Tversky and Kahneman argue that most people get this problem wrong because they use a heuristic (an easily calculated) procedure called representativeness to make this kind of judgment. In other demonstrations, they argued that a specific scenario seemed more likely because of representativeness, but each added detail would actually make the scenario less and less likely.
George said,
– FBI Hillary investigation began.
– McCabe’s wife received $6.75K.
– McCabe promoted to FBI No. 3 position.
George appears to be arguing that the conjunction of the three events that George listed presupposes a conspiracy to cause those three events to occur in conjunction, because the probability of those three events occurring separately from one another without any conspiracy to cause each of those events to occur separately from one another is greater than the probability of those three events occurring in conjunction.
George uses the heuristic representations “Hillary” and “deep state” to make the conspiratorial conjunction of those three events appear to be more specific than a non-causal occurence of those same events. Moreover, because the conspiratorial conjunction of those three events appears to be more specific than a non-causal occurence of those same events, therefore the conspiratorial conjunction of those three events is further held to be more “representative” of the “Hillary” and the “deep state” conspiracy theories.
Of course, given that George is already on the record as repeatedly stating that “All roads lead to Obama,” it remains doubtful that a probabilistic analysis of George’s argument would dissuade George.
P. S. For those who may also be confused, change the phrase “non-causal occurrence” in the post above to the phrase “non-conspiratorial occurrence” and see if it makes more sense that way.
Thanks, I was being rhetorical, I could care less what George said – he is either an idiot or a paid dupe.
Republican is RepubliCon. Con men. Con women. Convicts when due course comes around.
They are all sailing downwind and do not know about the Nor Easter about to hit them.
NATIONAL REVIEW
“Strzok and Page Plotted Covert Meeting with Presiding Judge in Michael Flynn Case”
_____
Agent Strzok refers to Judge Contreras as “Rudi” when considering invitations to cocktail parties.
Did McCabe alter 302’s?
__________________________________
“Huge scoop. Like my other big stories (Susan Rice, security clearances, Conyers) will take media a long time to confirm.
You know how Peter Strzok’s system didn’t back up.
You know why?
McCabe altered his 302 of the Flynn interview, and deleted all history of revisions.”
– Mike Cernovich
Radio report: McCabe’s net worth is $11 million.
JT – this would have been important information for you to have researched before you make your talk show circuit rounds. The info was readily available within hours of his firing. Do better.
Sadly, there is a lot of this going around. I remember when people were discussing that amnesty-ing illegal aliens would fill the coffers of the country with taxes. No it wouldn’t. The aver illegal with a kid would get more back in Earned Income Credits than what the Self Employment taxes would be.
Same with, “we need illegal workers to provide taxable wages to save Social Security!” Bah. Do the math. Illegal makes $18,000 per year, and assume a 16% FICA contribution from him and his employer. That’s $2,880 per year, which pays about 2 months of average social security benefits, It would take 6 illegals at low wages to support one retiree. That’s if all of them worked.
But, they don’t. Then you have the other costs associated with the whole class, which means more food stamps, more Medicaid, more housing vouchers, more prisons. Not to mention, the Ponzi effect is multiplied.
Whereas, if non-working Americans were hired, they would demand higher wages, thus increasing the amount of social security input, AND decreasing the welfare outflows.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Given the very long list of Trump screw-ups, this will go down as the tipping point for the con-man in chief.
Pension at age 50 is an irresponsible idea. You’re still relatively young and vigorous at that age. The public should not be supporting you when you are in your prime. Stop giving away benefits that break the backs of taxpayers.
I personally believe that pensions should go extinct, and be replaced with 401Ks or IRAs. The money is yours. If your former employer goes bankrupt, then the money has been in your own control all along. How many cities in CA have to go bankrupt because of unsustainable pensions and benefits before they figure this out? Taxpayers are not a magic money tree, that you just have to shake a little more to make it rain funds.
Also, replacing pensions with 401Ks would help alleviate the gross injustice of pensioning off pedophile teachers. It takes over $100,000 and years in court to fire a teacher, even if he’s raped children, thanks to the union. Pedophile teachers merely retire, and then live on their pension. It is abhorrent for taxpayers to keep making payments to predators.
However, if the school system used the 401K that the rest of us in the private sector use, then he would have already received his matching funds along the way, and contributed his own. The money would already be in his account, and we taxpayers would not be forced to write him a check every month years after he’s been convicted for, as a real life example, feeding semen-topped cookies to little children. Plus, then parents could sue the tar out of them.
T rump goes bankrupt stiffs his workers. Service in the government was a place a middle class person could earn a decent living with a pension. Crooked Trump kleptocrats want all the money for themselves. Resist Trump and his kleptocracy.
Look at you defending a dirty cop who clearly abused his power. Shame on the Trump-haters and their warm embrace of non-elected bureaucrats so arrogant they thought they could/should determine the outcome of an election.
This is why nobody in their right mind has taken the left seriously with all of their whining about “muh Russia interfering in the election”. You don’t care when criminals in the FBI do it, nor when hundreds of thousands of illegals do it. What a joke.
Jayne’s one of the disgusting group of people who target the middle class for impoverishment. She’s got nothing to say about the richest 0.1%, like the 6 heirs to the Walton fortune who have wealth equivalent to 40% of American combined. She likes the U.S. oligarchy which Princeton Prof. Martin Gilens documented. She wants to eat the bread for which others toil ( Lincoln warned against usurpers of the Republic like Jayne).
She knows that labor receiving the lowest share of national income in U.S. recorded history will cause destabilization, and that it will be used to justify a repressive government like Putin’s.
She’s Koch through and through.
Pension at 50 only covers jobs that require the kind of physical fitness most people over 50 don’t have. It’s similar to the pension deals municipal police and firefighters get–except the city employees can get it in their early 40’s if they have their 20 years in
If he broke the law, his pension is revoked, as it is for most Feds.
Wouldn’t they have to try and convict him? If all they do is fire him, and refuse to apply the same standard of law that we peasants are held to, then they couldn’t revoke his pension, could they? Or am I wrong?
There was a time when many had job protection through da civil service and unions. The oligarchs have taken most benefits from da middle class.
He’d have to be criminally convicted before something like that could happen.
60 thou k is outrageous and a factor of the overspending by the U S.
And this crap that he has these notes . Oh yeah ? Written on G time and G stationary (maybe a G computer too ) ! To me that’s G property. . A creep and reported adulterer.
Thanks for the smear but where is my bagel?
The Fourth Branch of government never goes away, regardless of whoever the voters think they’ve placed in charge at the top.
The Fourth Branch is full of cockroaches and flies – when one is eradicated, two or three others immediately reappear in its place, ready suck off the giant funnel of taxpayer cash forever hovering over Washington, DC.
It’s unofficial welfare, ready to provide steady employment for the sick, lame, weak, and otherwise unemployable as well as providing a bureaucratic ocean for savvy sharks to swim through, camouflaged and mostly undetected for upwards of 30 years, collecting six figure salaries, all while producing absolutely nothing but the illusion of a democratic republic.
“….various news outlets focused his “loss” of his pension as opposed to the fact that career officials called for his firing for serious misconduct.”
We often discuss at home how the Left has historically fought to demean, denigrate and overturn religious principles and people of Faith, e.g. right from wrong. They did this to our once great country and now it is their turn to suffer the consequences.
Chief Justice Earl Warren started the slippery slope of defining down deviancy (nod to Sen Daniel Moynihan) by creating the fictious “church and state” paradigm. Thus Earl Warren, who as AG of California supported Japanese internment camps, upheld by SCOTUS, would be proud that FBI officials can lie, cheat, obfuscate and flaunt any type of legal misdeed just because there are no absolute rights and wrongs. Its all relative.
Hillary and Comey should be shaking in their boots
Friends of friends of friends.
Bless your heart. Now the deep state has publishers???
The impact is still unclear. Does McCabe lose the $60,000 per year that he would have earned between ages 50 and 57, or does the 7 years x $60 = $420,000 accrue in his retirement account, and he draws a larger amount at age 57?
TIN, may I just say for the record, who cares???
I have no more F’s to give about these people.
See, the Deep State ALWAYS takes care of their own. Plus, McCabe is in the process of negotiating a $4 million book deal through one of the Deep State’s publishers, so McCabe’s lies, deceptions, prevarications, canards, and frauds will continue.
You T rumpers ever heard of Pension Law?
Ralph, it worked for Bill and Hillary. Why would McCabe and Saint James Comey think otherwise?
Just look at Harry Reid, a former Chairman for the Nevada Gaming Commission in 1970s, then 35 years in US Congress and today a net worth of $10 Million. Being a US Politician is now the American Dream – screw Americans and become rich and famous. This is the new nirmal
Disgusting
Also reminds me of Sen. Bob Menendez’s (D-NJ) recent corruption trial that the media had little interest in covering because he is a Democrat, so we never saw the news splashing across the headlines that a sitting senator was on trial for corruption. Menendez’s defense called it “benefits of friendship” which is different from “bribery” and “corruption.” And even though federal corruption charges were dropped due to a hung jury, Menendez is about to be reelected to the Senate. God Bless America.