YOU TRY CARRYING WATER FOR DONALD AND SEE HOW MUCH SENSE YOU MAKE!:

McCarthy's accusation is pretty simple. Mueller didn't do that with Gates, and therefore he broke the rule. Straightforward, right?

The problem is that there's an exception to the rule that McCarthy ignores. It appears in the next paragraph:

The requirement that a defendant plead to a charge, that is consistent with the nature and extent of his/her criminal conduct is not inflexible. Although cooperation is usually acknowledged through a Sentencing Guideline § 5K1.1 filing, there may be situations involving cooperating defendants in which considerations such as those discussed in USAM 9-27.600, take precedence. 

What's USAM 9-27.600, you wonder? That's the section on entering into non-prosecution agreements in exchange for cooperation. The idea is that in some cases, the only way to get a defendant to cooperate quickly may be to make a deal: Cooperation in exchange for no prosecution at all. The Manual says that is an option if "the person's timely cooperation appears to be necessary to the public interest and other means of obtaining the desired cooperation are unavailable or would not be effective." But the Manual then explains that such an extreme approach should be undertaken only after considering and rejecting less extreme alternatives:

[N]on-prosecution agreements are only one of several methods by which the prosecutor can obtain the cooperation of a person whose criminal involvement makes him/her a potential subject of prosecution. Other methods - such as seeking cooperation after trial and conviction, bargaining for cooperation as part of a plea agreement, and compelling cooperation under a "use immunity" order - involve prosecuting the person or at least leaving open the possibility of prosecuting him/her on the basis of independently obtained evidence. Since these outcomes are clearly preferable to permitting an offender to avoid any liability for his/her conduct, the possible use of an alternative to a non-prosecution agreement should be given serious consideration in the first instance. 

Let's put the pieces together. 

In the ordinary case--the only kind of case McCarthy focuses on--a defendant must "plead to a charge that is consistent with the nature and extent of his/her criminal conduct."  But that ordinary approach is "not inflexible," and the need to get cooperation from a defendant may "take precedence" over the rule. In particular, prosecutors can "bargain[] for cooperation as part of a plea agreement," and the need for cooperation can "take precedence" over the usual requirement when "timely cooperation appears to be necessary to the public interest."   

In plain English, if a sweet plea deal is needed to get an important witness to flip and cooperate quickly, a sweet plea deal can be reached. Prosecutors should do so cautiously for a range of reasons. But accepting the plea to only a small part of the charge in exchange for cooperation, as happened in the Gates case, isn't "bizarre." It doesn't "shred" policy. And it doesn't "flout" the rules. The practice is expressly provided for in the rules. It's just in a paragraph that McCarthy for some reason ignores.

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