‘Hatchet-Men Pursuing Political Agenda’: Why The FBI Is Due For Radical Reform

The once-revered FBI has fallen on hard times. One might pinpoint the decline beginning as far back as former Director J. Edgar Hoover’s partisan machinations during the McCarthyism years. Yet in the last several years, the bureau’s reputational hits have piled higher and higher. Every American with access to a television or the internet has heard about federal law enforcement’s participation in election-interference in the 2016 election of President Donald Trump. Not content to have pressed its thumb on the scale of that election and throughout President Trump’s tenure, the FBI also set its sights on journalists, members of Congress, and even soccer moms unhappy with the direction of their kids’ schools— all while turning a blind eye to brazen lawbreaking by political favorites. Some would say the agency is operating with no meaningful oversight or constraint, is increasingly erratic, and is willing to ignore the guardrails that once kept it above politics.
 
Last Monday’s raid on former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach County, Florida—ostensibly on behalf of the nation’s top librarians at the National Archives hunting for Presidential papers—marked a new nadir for an agency either woefully out of touch or willfully obtuse as to its own image, much less as to its proper role as a neutral observer and noncombatant in political tussles.

The Biden Justice Department appears to be drunk on power, given the audacious move to raid the former President’s home, foregoing the less drastic measure of a subpoena. This has even drawn the criticism of disgraced former Democrat New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who demanded that the DOJ explain the reasoning behind its raid or it, “will be viewed as a political tactic.” The DOJ appears to have responded by sending friendly talking heads and media flacks into damage control mode, without substantively addressing its extraordinary and unprecedented move, at least until Attorney General Merrick Garland’s two-minute nervous and scripted appearance Thursday afternoon attempting to justify the raid, which he admitted he authorized, while he criticized the former President for being outraged at the violation of his private home.
 
The trajectory is familiar; the first two years of Trump’s presidency were overshadowed by the fake Russia collusion conspiracy whose seeds were sown well before the 2016 election by the Clinton campaign working hand in hand with White House operatives and senior FBI brass. The spectacle of a sanctimonious James Comey, anointing himself as the savior of the Republic, distracted from the new administration’s efforts to govern. The resulting Mueller investigation further hobbled the administration’s agenda, with subpoenas of members of his 2016 campaign and presidential administration. The whole charade ended with a whimper, with no evidence that Trump or his campaign colluded with the Russians to elect him in 2016. But the damage had been done – with the full and enthusiastic participation of FBI leaders who lied to the FISA court to obtain surveillance on Carter Page and others, and doubtless many other transgressions that will remain hidden behind the blue wall.
 
And what about those sacred government documents? Hillary Clinton, as Obama’s Secretary of State, used a private email server located in her bathroom in Chappaqua for official communications, including 2,100 emails deemed classified. Many of these emails were ultimately hacked and released to the public. Clinton was deemed to have violated 18 U.S. Code § 1924, regarding the unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents and materials, yet despite other federal officers facing prison time for far less, Clinton got off with nothing more than public mockery.
 
This open double standard continued full speed into Hunter Biden’s questionable dealings with China, Ukraine, etc. From 2013 to 2020, the president’s son served as a member on the board of the Chinese-based private equity fund BHR Partners, where two of the China-based asset managers were the Bank of China and Harvest Fund Management, a Chinese asset management company that harvests funds for financial services. Hunter secured a $1.5 billion deal to form BHR in December 2013, when he joined his then-Vice President father and Secretary of State John Kerry on a diplomatic trip to China to discuss sensitive negotiations with the Chinese government over their expansionist activities in the South China Sea.
 
Hunter’s overseas dealings also saw him and a friend join the board of the Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, from 2014 to 2019, earning compensation of up to $50,000 per month. He joined amid numerous corruption probes in Ukraine related to the dealings of the company, as well as Vice President Biden’s public boasts about pushing for the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. Like Clinton, Hunter skated free, with no FBI investigation for corrupt foreign dealings while his father was running for President.

During the Biden administration, the FBI and DOJ have ramped up their brazen partisan approach, going after those they deem a threat to their order,

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases