{"id":1625223,"date":"2022-08-29T08:03:05","date_gmt":"2022-08-29T12:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1625223"},"modified":"2022-08-29T08:04:05","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T12:04:05","slug":"the-short-life-and-amazingly-fast-death-of-the-fbis-mar-a-lago-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-short-life-and-amazingly-fast-death-of-the-fbis-mar-a-lago-play\/","title":{"rendered":"The Short Life (And Amazingly Fast Death) Of The FBI\u2019s Mar-A-Lago Play"},"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\">24<\/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%2Fthe-short-life-and-amazingly-fast-death-of-the-fbis-mar-a-lago-play%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=1625223&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>The FBI\u2019s news cycle just ain\u2019t the same as it once was.<\/p>\n<p>Mere moments after the Department of Justice and FBI released the near-completely redacted affidavit they used to justify raiding former President Donald Trump\u2019s home, their super-dooper-secrecy was the subject of widespread ridicule.<\/p>\n<p>They didn\u2019t even catch a full minute\u2019s peace. No Republican senators rushed to their defense (though a few were notably quiet). There was no \u201clet\u2019s wait and see\u201d from the usual deep state apologists.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, both Republican politicians and center-right media were quick to hit back against what they correctly viewed as a middle finger to both the court that ordered the affidavit\u2019s release, and the American people who expect transparency when the state raids its political opponents.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s good to see. It\u2019s strong and healthy that not all Americans nod along when the FBI targets former presidents, murmuring that he must have done something wrong. This wasn\u2019t always the case, though.<\/p>\n<p>Just a few short years ago, the Department of Justice would enjoy the benefit of the doubt, from voters and politicians alike. Seven short years ago, we would have wondered what Trump had done that was so bad the straight-shooters at the DOJ couldn\u2019t even tell us.<\/p>\n<p>Today, a plurality of independent voters, a strong majority of Republican voters, and 20 percent of Democrats believe the DOJ and FBI \u201care too political, corrupt, and not to be trusted,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/08\/24\/exclusive-plurality-of-independents-dont-trust-doj-or-fbi\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">according to<\/a> Trafalgar Group polling.<\/p>\n<p>The impact of this shift \u2014 and the boost it brings to the republic\u2019s health \u2014 is measurable in the speed of the news cycles covering the latest twists and turns. When the attacks on then-candidate Trump began, with articles <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/media\/fbi-yahoo-mother-jones\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">the FBI placed<\/a> in Mother Jones and Yahoo! News (before using those articles to \u201ccorroborate\u201d and justify an FBI investigation), Republicans squirmed and called for more time; center-right reporters and pundits cringed and wondered; and the American people worried that Trump might have a dangerous relationship with the Kremlin.<\/p>\n<p>As the years wore on and the Trump administration came into office, the scandal expanded. General and National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigned under a cloud of FBI-induced suspicion. A year later, he was framed for allegedly lying to now-disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok. (It would take two years before transcripts were made public that showed Special Investigator Robert Mueller\u2019s team <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2020\/06\/01\/new-flynn-transcripts-confirm-mueller-team-lied-to-the-court-and-the-country\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">had lied to the public<\/a> about the very basis of the FBI\u2019s investigation into the general.)<\/p>\n<p>Weeks after Flynn resigned, the FBI-, Democrat- and media-driven Russian narrative took another head, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the case. Sessions was \u201ca good Republican.\u201d He trusted the FBI and the reporting he\u2019d read in the media. He even wondered if he\u2019d fallen afoul of the law by speaking to the Russian ambassador in a D.C. handshake line.<\/p>\n<p>The following month, Sessions\u2019 deputy appointed Special Counsel Mueller to lead the investigation of just how treasonous President Donald J. Trump really was.<\/p>\n<p>His investigation would eventually come to naught (because there was no Russian collusion to be found). But while it went on \u2014 while the Steele dossier was exposed as a laughable hoax, while FBI informant Stefan Halper\u2019s lies fell apart, while media report by media report were proven false \u2014 the majority of \u201cgood Republicans\u201d (and a good number of center-right reporters and pundits) remained silent.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet the investigation run its course!\u201d they said, because they believed the investigators. A decent number among them who hated their new president even hoped the investigators were right.<\/p>\n<p>The shadow of Mueller hung over the president for two full years before the big day, when the man America had trusted to expose all the evil doings of the president was exposed on national television as a clueless man with no evidence for the charges (and early symptoms of dementia).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet the investigation run its course!\u201d the Republicans (and a good number of center-right reporters and pundits) had said again because they had believed the investigators \u2014 and the decent number among them who\u2019d hated their new president had even hoped the investigators were right.<\/p>\n<p>Neither the Democrats nor their media friends were done, however; and less than two months after the final collapse of the Mueller probe, they launched a new round of investigations, this time into the president\u2019s dealings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.<\/p>\n<p>For months, the investigations dragged on, while leakers and Democrat politicians rotated through the media dropping false accusations and making terrible predictions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet the investigation run its course!\u201d a smaller-but-still-prominent number of Republicans and center-right pundits said because once again they believed the investigators. Once again, those among them who hated the president even hoped the investigators were right.<\/p>\n<p>But five years in, the spell was breaking. In the end, it came down to a vote, where Nancy Pelosi\u2019s Democratic House impeached the president on partisan lines and the Republican Senate acquitted him, with only Republican Mitt Romney joining the Democrats in their guilty votes. Ever-loyal Mitt was still a \u201cgood Republican.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Along the way, lie after lie and hoax after hoax was thrown Republicans\u2019 way. Justice Brett Kavanaugh was a gang rapist; Trump was ignoring Russian murder bounties on American soldiers; and on and on. Each time, fewer and fewer Republicans and center-right pundits went along.<\/p>\n<p>Each time, the \u201cgood Republicans\u201d made more of a mockery of themselves and their much-cited \u201cprinciples.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Each time, the movie was a little shorter. The years the Democrats and the FBI had once had to peddle their lies had turned to mere months.<\/p>\n<p>The suspicion didn\u2019t stop the lies, of course, but when the FBI finally raided the president\u2019s home, they found those months had turned to mere hours. While Republican leaders who hated Trump, like Sen. Mitch McConnell, were still willing to give the feds a few days, within hours of the raid Republicans as mainstream as Sen. Marco Rubio and as pro-FBI as Sen. Lindsey Graham were denouncing the FBI.<\/p>\n<p>In this new atmosphere, the movie played in fast-forward. When the DOJ\u2019s accusations of misplaced records met broad scrutiny, they became accusations of nuclear danger. When even those met broad skepticism, they morphed into accusations of active Russian treason. No one was buying a ticket this time, though, and by the time a judge forced the FBI to release the affidavit they\u2019d used to justify the raid, expectations were low.<\/p>\n<p>When the FBI finally released its joke-of-an-affidavit, its antics had become a full-blown <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/memejority\/status\/1563256322052595712?s=21&amp;t=WaumNsa1oXCKwiT9izBdzA\">internet meme<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s generally a dangerous thing for a public to distrust its institutions, but in this case, it\u2019s just the opposite. The reality is while the FBI has indeed accomplished a thing or two in the near-century it\u2019s existed in its modern form, it\u2019s always been highly politicized.<\/p>\n<p>More than 70 years ago, then-Congressman Richard Nixon <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/book\/224738254\/Six-Crises\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">didn\u2019t<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/law2.umkc.edu\/faculty\/projects\/ftrials\/hiss\/nixononhisscase.html\">trust them<\/a> with the damning evidence he\u2019d gathered to indict top State Department official Alger Hiss as a Communist spy, because he knew they\u2019d bury the embarrassing facts to protect the administration.<\/p>\n<p>More than 50 years ago, the FBI bugged Sen. Barry Goldwater\u2019s campaign phones and placed a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/the-fbi-spied-for-lbjs-campaign-1527201701\">spy on the team<\/a> he\u2019d built to defeat President Lyndon Johnson. That same year, they <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/11\/16\/magazine\/what-an-uncensored-letter-to-mlk-reveals.html\">sent a letter<\/a> to Dr. Martin Luther King and his wife, seemingly implying he should commit suicide within 34 days \u2014 and threatening to expose tape-recordings of his multiple sexual affairs if he did not.<\/p>\n<p>By 1975, the FBI had become so politicized, and its use of power so abusive, the Senate launched the bipartisan Church Committee to investigate it and other American intelligence community abuses. Among the FBI\u2019s investigators: Goldwater, and fellow conservative icon Sen. John Tower.<\/p>\n<p>In the years that followed, a chastised FBI would shift its focus to law enforcement over intelligence gathering \u2014 a transformation that was rapidly reversed after the 9\/11 attacks. The FBI of today carries the institutional distortion this change brought down on the institution.<\/p>\n<p>Politicians such as former Vice President Mike Pence might still believe the public\u2019s skepticism of long-politicized law enforcement is a threat to our country, but neither history nor more recent facts bear them out.<\/p>\n<p>Republican midwits can cite law and order to justify their servility and their ambitions all they like. In a healthy country, the people are deeply skeptical of opaque power \u2014 especially when it\u2019s repeatedly used to lie and persecute political opponents. We\u2019re far from healthy today, but a collective laugh at the FBI\u2019s joke of an affidavit is a long-needed step in the right direction.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Christopher Bedford is a senior editor at The Federalist, vice chairman of Young Americans for Freedom, a board member at The Daily Caller News Foundation and National Journalism Center, and the author of &#8220;The Art of the Donald.&#8221; His work has been featured in The American Mind, National Review, the New York Post and the Daily Caller, where he led the Daily Caller News Foundation and spent eight years. A frequent guest on Fox News and Fox Business, he was raised in Massachusetts and lives across the river from D.C. Follow him on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CBedfordDC\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/div>\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>The FBI\u2019s news cycle just ain\u2019t the same as it once was. Mere moments after the Department of Justice and FBI released the near-completely redacted affidavit they used to justify<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":574,"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-1625223","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\/1625223","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\/574"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1625223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625223\/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=1625223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1625223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1625223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}