{"id":1618511,"date":"2022-08-22T07:46:25","date_gmt":"2022-08-22T11:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1618511"},"modified":"2022-08-22T07:46:30","modified_gmt":"2022-08-22T11:46:30","slug":"mike-pence-is-wrong-doj-and-fbi-rot-spreads-way-deeper-than-garland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/mike-pence-is-wrong-doj-and-fbi-rot-spreads-way-deeper-than-garland\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Pence Is Wrong. DOJ And FBI Rot Spreads Way Deeper Than Garland"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fmike-pence-is-wrong-doj-and-fbi-rot-spreads-way-deeper-than-garland%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1618511&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>When it comes to the way the deep state regime is at war with Republicans, former Vice President Mike Pence\u2019s No. 1 priority is showing that his main concern is to keep playing the \u201cgood cop\u201d to the \u201cbad cop\u201d of former President Donald Trump.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.realclearpolitics.com\/video\/2022\/08\/17\/mike_pence_unprecedented_mar-a-lago_search_requires_unprecedented_transparency.html\">Speaking in New Hampshire<\/a> last week, Pence characteristically tried to have it both ways over this unprecedented attack on norms that the incident represented. After vaguely calling for transparency, Pence said: <\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>I also want to remind my fellow Republicans that we can hold the Attorney General accountable for the decision that he made without attacking the rank and file law enforcement personnel at the FBI. The Republican Party is the party of law and order. Our party stands with the men and women who serve on the thin blue line at the federal, state, and local levels. These attacks on the FBI must stop. Calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police. The truth of the matter is we need to get to the bottom of the matter and let the facts play out, but more than anything else, the American people need to be reassured of the integrity of our justice system.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Conservatives are justifiably venting outrage over the banana republic-style raid on Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago home by FBI agents acting on the orders of Attorney General Merrick Garland. But the soft-spoken Pence thinks the priority is to reassure the administrative state that Republicans won\u2019t be unreasonable in their pushback against attempts to delegitimize opposition to the Biden administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>With the help of a friendly judge who hates the former president so much <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/08\/13\/trump-lawyer-calls-out-judge-who-approved-mar-a-lago-search-warrant-for-clinton-case\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">he had to recuse himself<\/a> from a lawsuit between Trump and Hillary Clinton, FBI agents were allowed to go on what turned out to be an open-ended search for anything that might somehow be used by the Democrats to indict Trump on still unspecified bogus charges. This comes after the FBI\u2019s participation in a Russia-collusion hoax that was nothing short of a soft coup attempt against Trump.<\/p>\n<p>Since their Russia ploy flopped, little has changed. In the last year and a half, the bureau and the rest of the Department of Justice have also been all in on President Joe Biden and Garland\u2019s attempt to convince the country that the real threat to the homeland is \u201cdomestic terrorism\u201d from white supremacists. In practice, it seems to be more about politics than terrorism. The government\u2019s actions seem to indicate their belief that Trump supporters, especially those that push back against their outrageous politically-biased approach to law enforcement, as well as parents who oppose critical race theory indoctrination in schools, ought to be the principal focus of law enforcement.<\/p>\n<p>That means the proper response to the Mar-a-Lago raid can\u2019t be to sit back and wait patiently for the DOJ and the FBI to make their case, as so many did during the three years of a Russia investigation that was based on manipulation, lies, and misconduct from within the federal bureaucracy. As a stream of DOJ inspector general reports has shown, misconduct and even malfeasance (as was the case with the Russia hoax) are not rare. <\/p>\n<p>But the Mar-a-Lago raid takes the critique of the FBI to a different level. It is unprecedented not merely for the way it targets a former president and likely political opponent of the current administration. At best it\u2019s the criminalization of a dubious dispute about records. At worst, it\u2019s a fishing expedition whose only purpose may be to search for nonexistent proof of unspecified crimes relating to the Democrats\u2019 desire to criminalize skepticism about the 2020 election results and to falsely brand all Republicans as insurrectionists. That is what makes it the straw that broke the camel\u2019s back with respect to the FBI\u2019s credibility.<\/p>\n<p>Pence claims it is possible to hold Garland accountable for his politicization of justice without a more broad-based critique of the work of the FBI. The latter, he said, would be a betrayal of the GOP\u2019s belief in law and order and comparable to the left\u2019s calls for defunding the police. The two issues are completely different since \u201creimagining\u201d the FBI won\u2019t cause a crime wave but would, instead, allow the agency to return to fighting crime rather than Biden\u2019s enemies.<\/p>\n<p>As the Russia hoax illustrated, in recent decades, the FBI has morphed into as much of a domestic spy agency as it is the vaunted organization dedicated to investigating cases that local police don\u2019t have the resources or training to solve.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s part of the reason why left-wingers \u2014 who in past generations were quick to identify the agency with J. Edgar Hoover\u2019s abuses, including spying on a host of non-criminal domestic figures and dissident groups \u2014 now love it. The hypocrisy here is as absurd as it is transparent. Tim Weiner, a former New York Times national security correspondent and author of a critical history of the FBI, has been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/08\/19\/opinion\/trump-mar-a-lago-records.html?searchResultPosition=1\">gleeful <\/a>about the prospect of jailing Trump on a documents charge but also tried <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ThePlumLineGS\/status\/1560311968149278720\">to differentiate<\/a> between Hoover\u2019s wiretapping of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the agency\u2019s treating the former president like an organized crime figure who needs to be taken down by any means necessary. According to Weiner, Hoover\u2019s actions were \u201cwitch hunts,\u201d but agents browsing through Trump\u2019s records is an \u201cespionage investigation.\u201d Of course, the only real difference here is that Hoover spied on people the left liked while Garland\u2019s DOJ\u2019s lawless behavior is directed at the person they hate most.<\/p>\n<p>That supposedly serious people on the left actually still think Trump is a suspected foreign spy should signal to Republicans that what\u2019s going on here is a rerun of the Russian farce. We\u2019re seeing the same agency overreaches, leaks, and breathless reports in corporate media about the federal legal establishment finally getting the goods to lock Trump up.<\/p>\n<p>In the face of this partisan hijacking of the DOJ and the FBI, tame complaints about Garland aren\u2019t enough. Ultimately, no one in the bureau or DOJ was held accountable for the Russia hoax, something that undermined, perhaps fatally, confidence in the system. But for the same agencies to lead the country down the same kind of conspiratorial rabbit hole against the same political target is beyond the pale.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s created the kind of threat to the republic that requires Republicans to treat this as an emergency, rather than just another in a list of problematic actions by the Biden administration.<\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t about loyalty to Trump or whether Pence should have obeyed the president\u2019s unreasonable request about him overturning the Electoral College vote. Pence\u2019s compulsion to play the moderate conservative isn\u2019t new. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/mike-pence-caved-quin-hillyer\/\">His betrayal<\/a> of conservatives over the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act in 2015 while he was governor, in order to play to acceptable liberal opinion, shouldn\u2019t be forgotten.<\/p>\n<p>Defunding the FBI is an argument that will be easily misconstrued. But what conservatives need from those who aspire to lead them \u2014 and Pence is acting as if he wants to run for president in 2024 \u2014 is clarity and strength when it comes to confronting the administrative state. The Mar-a-Lago raid provided even more evidence that <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/08\/10\/trump-fbi-raid-more-proof-we-must-remake-a-politicized-bureaucracy\/\">Trump is right<\/a> to endorse a plan to fundamentally reform so-called \u201ccivil service\u201d because of its proven partisan corruption. That would call for making at least 50,000 employees with policy decision-making power to be appointed by the president rather than act as a permanent, unelected, and unaccountable state within the state that assists Democrats and hinders Republicans, especially those like Trump or anyone like him who want to actually drain the D.C. swamp.<\/p>\n<p>Pence joining the chorus of leftist pundits carping at conservative critiques of the FBI isn\u2019t a matter of him not kowtowing to Trump. Rather, it is a sign that he can\u2019t be trusted to effectively fight the left and the deep state that is determined to label all those who dissent against the Biden\/Garland war on dissenters. This is more proof that he\u2019s someone who, though not lacking in personal virtue, doesn\u2019t know what time it is. Someone who is that clueless about this crisis can\u2019t lead Republicans in a struggle not so much to save Trump as it is to rescue the republic from the leftist war on wrongthink.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Jonathan S. Tobin is a senior contributor to The Federalist, editor in chief of JNS.org, and a columnist for the New York Post. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-comments mt-30 mt-sm-60\">\n<div class=\"article-comments-container d-flex flex-column align-items-center py-30\">\n    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"110\" height=\"106\" src=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/fdrlst-mark.svg\" class=\"img-fluid mb-20\" alt=\"The Federalist logo eagle mark\" \/>    <\/p>\n<p>Unlock commenting by joining the Federalist Community.<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/plans\/pricing\/\" class=\"btn btn-on-white\">Subscribe<\/a>  <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When it comes to the way the deep state regime is at war with Republicans, former Vice President Mike Pence\u2019s No. 1 priority is showing that his main concern is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":559,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1618511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/559"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1618511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1618511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1618511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1618511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1618511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}