The FBI was once the beau ideal of a law enforcement agency. Even though the Mob referred to them as “boy scouts” and “F***ing Bunch of Idiots,” the FBI racked up an impressive record fighting Prohibition gangsters, the Mafia, and communist spies. Over the last few years, the image of the FBI has been tarnished. For reasons known only to FBI Director James Comey, the FBI became embroiled in a scheme to torpedo the campaign of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump. When he became president-elect, the campaign accelerated. The FBI repackaged allegations they knew to be false to enable the creation of a “special counsel” in the person of the sclerotic and zombie-like Robert Mueller. At least one FBI attorney falsified evidence to justify a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant targeting former Trump advisor Carter Page. And there was always the clown show put on by the FBI’s “counterterrorism” goons who ran a grift of gulling the mentally challenged into improbable conspiracies (The FBI’s Latest Homegrown Terrorist Plot Is an Obvious Joke but What Is Going to Happen to the People Involved Is Not), like kidnapping Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Unfortunately, there was a string of high-visibility terrorist acts, like the Fort Hood massacre, the San Bernardino rampage (San Bernardino Shooter Planned A Previous Attack And Was Under Investigation), the attempted massacre at the “Draw Muhammad” festival in Garland, TX (Did FBI Director James Comey Lie to the Nation About the Garland Terror Attack? (VIDEO), among others, where the FBI was well aware of the plotting by the participants but declined to pursue the cases in favor of entrapping some overweight Social Security recipients.
The Trump presidency also saw the transition of the FBI from a law enforcement agency into the armed wing of the Democrat party. The FBI concocted the Logan Act bullsh** to use against Michael Flynn. The FBI colluded with CNN to ensure that the pre-dawn raid on Roger Stone by an FBI SWAT team — an unnecessary act given that Stone’s attorney could’ve arranged for him to surrender himself — was broadcast live.
In particular, since January 6, the FBI has ceased all pretense of being anything other than a partisan hit squad. In just the past few weeks, we’ve seen these stories of FBI brutality and dishonesty: FBI Caught in Another Major Corruption Scandal After Misleading a Judge; FBI Whistleblower, Others Were Listed on Arrest Warrants of January 6 Defendants They ‘Never Investigated’; FBI Agents Raid Home of Pro-Life Author With Guns Drawn in Front of His Screaming Kids; Seething Commences After FBI Investigation of Matt Gaetz Implodes; Scandalous: Biden Reportedly Pressuring FBI Agents to ‘Find’ Cases That Push ‘Domestic Extremism’ Talking Points; Durham Drops a Stunning Revelation Regarding Igor Danchenko and FBI Corruption, and FBI Turns Up on Doorstep of Trump Supporter Who Wasn’t Even at the US Capitol on January 6…the list isn’t exhaustive, I’m just exhausted.
In short, the FBI has become a clear and present danger to our system of government. It meddles in political campaigns, it targets public figures with whom it politically disagrees, it will manufacture evidence to accuse people of crimes, and it actively intimidates people who may be inclined to protest the status quo publicly…unless you are BLM rioters or Antifa goobers in Seattle, Portland, Milwaukee, and elsewhere.
With the control of the House and perhaps the Senate sure to change party control in November, Politico reports that the GOP has plans for revenge.
GOP lawmakers are preparing a buffet of investigations aimed at touching every aspect of the agency’s decision-making, even floating a select committee to probe how the bureau handled the recovery of classified documents kept at Donald Trump’s Florida estate. That’s on top of talk of likely doomed-to-fail efforts by conservatives to dramatically curb the FBI’s reach and funding while other baked-in fights, like renewing the bureau’s surveillance permissions, wait in the wings.
The entire affair is likely to spotlight divisions between more traditional national security hawks and House Republicans who skew more libertarian-minded or Trump-centric.
“I think the FBI has gotten heavily, severely off track since 9/11. And we ought to do a deep dive into ensuring that the FBI is focused on organized crime, combating crime, and not witch-hunting Americans,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a member of the Judiciary Committee that will take the lead in FBI oversight, said in a brief interview.
The burgeoning one-sided feud is the latest sign of decay in a long-fraught relationship between the FBI and congressional Republicans, despite their claimed mantle of backing law enforcement and continued efforts to broadly paint Democrats as anti-police. Trump and his allies already spent years using the FBI and the Justice Department as go-to villains, with the August search of Mar-a-Lago and subsequent leaks only deepening distrust of the bureau among conservative lawmakers and their base voters.
Don’t believe this crap for a minute. There might be enough members in the House GOP to cause trouble for the FBI, but I doubt it. You have members…I was going to say “clowns,” but that would be wrong, like Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick:
“The FBI is composed of amazing human beings. The issues that have occurred in the past have been on the 7th floor,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a former FBI agent and a member of the Intelligence Committee, referring to where senior bureau leaders sit.
You have to be wearing blinders to think that the actions we’ve seen from the FBI are a management problem. They aren’t. They are a cultural problem. They spring from an environment where lawlessness is a way of life. What we’ve seen in operation in the past few years is a logical extension of Ruby Ridge, where an FBI sniper murdered a woman holding a baby, and the federal government pulled out all the stops to protect the killer.
Even if the House could arouse itself to hold hearings, any legislative reform is a non-starter. It would require 60 votes in the Senate to break a filibuster, and two-thirds of both chambers override Joe Biden’s veto.
This story of a riled-up GOP holding the FBI accountable is patent nonsense. We’ll read about it in fundraising emails and when guys like Kevin McCarthy give interviews, but nothing will happen because they have all been warned what will happen if they make too much noise.