VDH authored this article, What Will the FBI Not Do?--Who watches the watchers?
The FBI did not merely engage in “correspondence” with Twitter to protect the company and its “customers.” Instead, it effectively hired Twitter to suppress the free expression of some of its users, as well as news stories deemed unhelpful to the Biden campaign and administration—to the degree that the bureau’s requests sometimes even exceeded those of Twitter’s own left-wing censors.
The FBI did not wish to help Twitter “to protect themselves [sic],” given the bureau’s Twitter liaisons were often surprised at the FBI’s bold requests to suppress the expression of those who had not violated Twitter’s own admittedly biased “terms of service” and “community standards.”
The FBI and its helpers on the Left now reboot the same boilerplate about “conspiracy theorists” and “misinformation” smears used against anyone who rejected the FBI-fed Russian collusion hoax and the bureau’s peddling of the “Russian disinformation” lie to suppress accurate pre-election news about the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The FBI is now, tragically, in freefall. The public is at the point, first, of asking what improper or illegal behavior will the bureau not pursue, and what, if anything, must be done to reform or save a once great but now discredited agency.
Consider the last four directors, the public faces of the FBI for the last 22 years. Ex-director Robert Mueller testified before Congress that he simply would not or could not talk about the fraudulent Steele dossier. He claimed that it was not the catalyst for his special counsel investigation of Donald Trump’s alleged ties with the Russians when, of course, it was.
Mueller also testified that he was “not familiar” with Fusion GPS, although Glenn Simpson’s opposition research firm subsidized the dossier through various cutouts that led back to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. And the skullduggery in the FBI-subsidized dossier helped force the appointment of Mueller himself.
While under congressional oath, Mueller’s successor James Comey on some 245 occasions claimed that he “could not remember,” “could not recall,” or “did not know” when asked simple questions fundamental to his own involvement with the Russian collusion hoax.
Comey, remember, memorialized a confidential conversation with President Trump on an FBI device and then used a third party to leak it to the New York Times. In his own words, the purpose was to force a special counsel appointment. The gambit worked, and his friend and predecessor Robert Mueller got the job. Twenty months and $40 million later, Mueller’s investigation tore the country apart but could find no evidence that Trump, as Steele alleged, colluded with the Russians to throw the 2016 election.
What are the people to do about a federal law enforcement agency whose directors either repeatedly lie under oath, or mislead, or do not cooperate with congressional overseers? What should we do with a bureau that alters court documents, deceives the court with information the FBI had good reason to know was false and leaks records of confidential presidential conversations to the media to prompt the appointment of a special prosecutor? What should be done with a government agency that pays social media corporations to warp the dissemination of the news and suppress free expression and communications? Or an agency that hires a foreign national to gather dirt on a presidential candidate and plots to ensure that there is “no way” a presidential candidate “gets elected” and destroys subpoenaed evidence?
What, if anything, should the people do about a once-respected law enforcement agency that repeatedly smears its critics, most recently as “conspiracy theorists”?
The current FBI leadership under Christopher Wray, in the tradition of recent FBI directors, has stonewalled congressional overseers about FBI activity during the Trump and Biden administrations. In “Après moi, le déluge” fashion, the bureau acts as if it assumes the next Republican administration in office will remove the current hierarchy. And thus, it assumes for now, not cooperating with Republican investigations while Democrats hold control of the Senate and White House for a brief while longer ensures exemption.
The three reforms most commonly suggested include: 1) simply dissolve the FBI in the belief that its concentration of power in Washington has become uncontrollable and is increasingly put to partisan service, including but not limited to the warping of U.S. presidential elections; 2) move the FBI headquarters out of the Washington D.C. nexus, preferably in the age of Zoom to a more convenient and central location in the United States, perhaps an urban site such as Salt Lake City, Denver, Kansas City, or Oklahoma City; or 3) break-up and decentralize the FBI and redistribute its various divisions to different departments to ensure that the power of its $11 billion budget and 35,000 employees are no longer aggregated and put in service of particular political agendas.
The next two years are dangerous times for the FBI—and the country. The House will soon likely begin investigations of the agency’s improper behavior. Yet, simultaneously, the Biden Justice Department will escalate its use of the bureau as a partisan investigative service for political purposes.
The FBI’s former embattled, high-ranking administrators who have been fired or forced to leave the agency—Andrew McCabe, James Comey, Peter Strzok, James Baker, Lisa Page, and others—will continue to appear on the cable news stations and social media to inveigh against critics of the FBI, despite being all deeply involved in the Russia-collusion hoax.
Merrick Garland will continue to order the FBI to hound perceived enemies through surveillance and performance art arrests. And the people will only grow more convinced the bureau has become Stasi-like and cannot be reformed but must be broken up—even as in extremis a defiant and unapologetic FBI will, as its latest communique shows, attack its critics.
What gives the FBI the right to spend millions of dollars buying the right to censor on the web? If that is not proof of a coup what is?
Great report kabar. It needs to be disbanded along with the TSA. Both have outlasted their usefulness.
Great summary
This is akin to the rise of Nazism. Known/ seen but allowed to grow due to fear of personal consequence.
The pols turn a blind eye as the are more interested in $$$ for themselves so allow this abuse to continue as long as it’s against the “ other opponents “
And the recent Elections would indicate that there will NEVER be any accountability.
The RINOs are posturing and the 80% are unable to see that this is nothing but posturing.
Hey. I've got a good idea!
Build them a brand new $400,000,000 building, fully fund them (and then some), and stick it all in the new Omnibus Bill which nobody will have a chance to read! I'll bet we can get all the Democrats and at least 21 "Republicans" to sign on!!