The FBI has lost all credibility. A whistleblower just revealed that the agency allegedly investigated parents worried about the teaching of critical race theory in their kids’ schools. In truth, since 2015, the FBI has been constantly in the news — mostly in a negative and constitutionally disturbing light.
Then-Director James Comey injected himself into the 2016 election by constantly editorializing on his ongoing investigation of candidate Hillary Clinton’s e-mail leaks.
In a bizarre twist, the public learned later that Comey allowed Clinton’s private computer contractor, CrowdStrike, to run the investigation of the hack and keep possession of hard drives central to it. CrowdStrike’s point man was Shawn Henry, a former high-ranking FBI employee.
During Robert Mueller’s special investigation, the FBI implausibly claimed it had no idea how requested information on FBI cellphones mysteriously disappeared.
It was also under Comey’s directorship that the FBI submitted inaccurate requests for warrants to a FISA court. FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith forged elements of an affidavit to surveil Trump supporter Carter Page; he 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 for prominent meetings with media outlets that later leaked lurid tales from the Steele dossier. He also met repeatedly with now-indicted Perkins Coe attorney Michael Sussmann.
Comey himself, through intermediaries, leaked to the media his confidential memos detailing private meetings with President Donald Trump.
In sworn testimony to Congress, Comey on some 245 occasions claimed he could not remember or had no knowledge of key elements of his own “Russia collusion” investigation. Comey’s replacement, 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. He’s now a paid CNN consultant who often offers misleading information on the Russia hoax he helped promulgate.
Former FBI Director and special counsel Robert Mueller conducted a 22-month, $40 million wild goose chase after the mythical plot. When called before Congress, he claimed he had little or no knowledge about Fusion GPS or the Steele Dossier — the sources that birthed the entire collusion hoax.
Mueller removed FBI lawyer Lisa Page from the investigation, along with her paramour FBI investigator Peter Strzok — but staggered and delayed explanations about their firings. Both misused FBI communications, revealing their pro-Clinton biases while hiding their unprofessional relationship.
When the FBI arrested pro-Trump activist Roger Stone, it did so with a huge quasi-swat team — with tipped-off CNN reporters lurking on the scene.
The FBI repeated such politicized performance art recently when it stormed the home of Project Veritas head 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 — did not disclose that it had possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop while the media were erroneously declaring The Post’s reporting of it inauthentic.
A crowd of FBI agents, wielding a battering ram, pushed O’Keefe out of his home in his underwear in the pre-morning hours. The time and location of the FBI raid, as in the Stone case, were leaked to the media. A federal judge recently stopped the FBI’s ongoing monitoring of O’Keefe’s communications.
Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins has 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 2001 anthrax attacks.One could add to such misadventures the mysterious leadership roles of at least 12 FBI informants in the harebrained scheme to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
There’s also 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 DC-based FBI should be given one last chance at redemption by moving to the nation’s heartland, far away from the political and media tentacles that have so deeply squeezed and corrupted it.
