VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Can The FBI Be Salvaged?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The Washington, D.C.-based Federal Bureau of Investigation has lost all credibility as a disinterested investigatory agency. Now we learn from a whistleblower that the agency was allegedly investigating moms and dads worried about the teaching of critical race theory in their kids’ schools.
In truth, since 2015, the FBI has been constantly in the news – and mostly in a negative and constitutionally disturbing light.
The fired former Director James Comey injected himself into the 2016 political race by constantly editorializing on his ongoing investigation of candidate Hillary Clinton’s email leaks.
In a bizarre twist, the public learned later that Comey had allowed Hillary Clinton’s own private computer contractor – CrowdStrike – to run the investigation of the hack. The private firm was allowed to keep possession of pertinent hard drives central to the investigation. How odd that CrowdStrike’s point man was Shawn Henry, a former high-ranking FBI employee.
During the Robert Mueller special investigation, the FBI implausibly claimed it had no idea how requested information on FBI cell phones had mysteriously disappeared.
It was also under Comey’s directorship that the FBI submitted inaccurate requests for warrants to a FISA court. Elements of one affidavit to surveil Trump supporter Carter Page were forged by FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who later pleaded guilty to a felony.
The FBI hired the disreputable ex-British spy Christopher Steele as a contractor, while he was peddling his fantasy – the Clinton-bought dossier – to Obama government officials and the media.
Former FBI general counsel James Baker was reportedly the subject of a federal investigation. He allegedly conducted prominent meetings both with media outlets that later leaked lurid tales from the Steele dossier. He also met repeatedly with the now-indicted Perkins Coe attorney Michael Sussman.
Comey himself, through third-party intermediaries, leaked to the media his own confidential memos detailing private meetings with President Trump. His assurances both to Congress and to Trump that the president was not the current subject of FBI investigations were either misleading or outright lies.
In sworn testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, Comey on some 245 occasions claimed he could not remember or had no knowledge of key elements of his own “Russian Collusion” investigation.
Comey’s replacement, acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, was fired for leaking sensitive information to the media. He then lied on at least three occasions about his role to federal attorneys and his own FBI investigators.
McCabe is now a paid CNN consultant who often has offered misleading information on the Russian collusion hoax that he helped promulgate.
Former FBI director and special counsel Robert Mueller conducted a 22-month, $40 million wild goose chase after some mythical “Russian Collusion” plot. When called before Congress, Mueller claimed he had little or no knowledge about Fusion GPS or the Steele Dossier – the twin sources that birthed the entire collusion hoax.
FBI lawyer Lisa Page was removed from Mueller’s investigation, along with her paramour FBI investigator Peter Strzok. Both misused FBI communications, revealing their pro-Clinton biases during their investigations of “Russian collusion,” while hiding their own unprofessional relationship.
Mueller himself staggered their firings and delayed explanations about why they were let go from his investigation team.
When the FBI arrested pro-Trump activist Roger Stone, it did so with a huge quasi-swat team – to the tipped-off and lurking CNN reporters.
The FBI repeated such politicized performance art recently when they stormed the home of Project Veritas director James O’Keefe. The agency confiscated his electronic devices on the grounds that he had knowledge of the contents of the allegedly lurid missing diary of Joe Biden’s daughter. The FBI – an apparent retrieval service of lost Biden family embarrassments – also did not disclose that it had possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop at a time when the media was erroneously declaring the computer inauthentic.
O’Keefe was accosted in the pre-morning hours by a crowd of FBI agents, wielding a battering ram, who pushed him out of his home in his underwear.
The time and location of the FBI raid, as in the Stone case, were leaked to the media that cheered the raid shortly after it was conducted. A federal judge recently stopped the FBI’s ongoing monitoring of O’Keefe’s communications.
Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins recently detailed other FBI lapses such as downplaying evidence that former Olympic gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar was a known and chronic molester of teenage gymnasts.
The agency also extended its witch hunt against the innocent researcher wrongly accused of involvement in the anthrax attacks of 2001.
One could add to such misadventures the mysterious leadership roles of at least 12 FBI informants in the harebrained kidnapping scheme of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
We can also cite the agency’s inability to follow up on clear information about the dangers posed by criminals as diverse as the Tsarnaev brothers, the Boston Marathon bombers, and the sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
For its own moral and practical survival, the FBI should be given one last chance at redemption by moving to the nation’s heartland – perhaps Kansas – far away from the political and media tentacles that have so deeply squeezed and corrupted it.
Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author of “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won,” from Basic Books.
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It's all part of the history of this terrible decade
Is the FBI supposed to look the other way for the gop?
Where have you been for the past 5 years?
No, they are supposed to do their damn jobs impartially; and not be a tool for the Democratic Party!
You mean like they did for the Democrats?
Has anyone suggested such a stupid thing? Even hinted at it??
It's been looking the other way at left wing crimes for years.
Sadly for progressives, they are going be caught up in the slowly turning wheels of impartial justice eventually.
It's really sad to see the DOJ and FBI simply act as the Democratic Party's personal police force. Trampling on the freedom of press to get a stolen diary? That's the job of Mayberry RPD, not the DOJ. Just because it contains an entry complaining about the President taking taking inappropriate showers with his daughter, it's not a federal issue.
I am glad that even some non conservatives are starting to see how destructive the FBI has been. When a NYT columnist recognizes that firing Comey might have been the best thing Trump did, you know reality is starting to seep in among the elites. It might take years for your average progressive partisan hack to recognize reality, but it's a start.
FBI is and always has been Corrupt from the top to the bottom. Everything you every hear about them and the DOJ is only the Tip of the Iceberg and you only hear about it when the people their actions effect have a bully pulpit, for the rest there is no justice. If you want to know what the Real FBI is like picture Hundreds of Whitey Bulger like informants they protect in every major city in the USA. The Agents themselves resemble the Crooked Cops from the Movie "Training Day" not the typical Hollywood FBI Agent Myth.
That's what you get when you elect a political sycophant to high office... they bring their favorite sycophants along with them and give them very powerful positions.....
Need an example? Hillary Clinton, when she became first lady the first thing she did was fire most of the Whitehouse staff and replaced them with "Her" people..
When she became Secretary of State, she did the exact same thing got rid of anyone that didn't go along with her...or wasn't a political sycophant...
We also have Barack Obama, who used the IRS led by his sycophants who targeted his political enemies...
It is now readily apparent, that part of getting a high government position is passing a "Litmus" test of your true beliefs... (especially in the FBI)
How far away have we gotten from any real leadership, it's been a long road from the beliefs of FDR....
I have no idea why this seed was locked.