The first in what will be another four years of frantic Democratic freak-outs over the things President-elect Donald Trump will say or do is upon us, with Democrats ratcheting up the fear that Trump’s FBI will be politically corrupted and not “independent.”
It is a wonderful sentiment, but if recent history is any indication, that is already true of the nation’s chief law enforcement agency.
The concerns have rained down after Trump announced that Kashyap “Kash” Patel would be his choice to lead the agency, replacing FBI Director Christopher Wray. Patel is seen as the MAGA choice, sharing Trump’s views about the problems with the deep state and the “corrupt actors” within.
This has led to Democrats calling for the FBI to keep its independence under Trump. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said Wray “apparently has demonstrated too much independence and objectivity in the job” for Trump’s liking. Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, said, “We would like to ensure that the FBI remains an independent institution insulated from politics.” Keep those comments in mind, as we will come back to them a little later.
First, we must look at that one keyword: “independent.” When Democratic politicians call for something to be “independent,” they usually mean nothing other than that they want to be able to call it independent. A prime example is “independent” redistricting commissions such as California’s, which created a congressional map that gerrymandered the state favorably for Democrats. If Republicans complain, they are labeled as kooks and partisan hacks, because the commission is “independent.” It says it right there in the name.
With that in mind, what does the “independent” FBI that Democrats want to protect look like? What does an “independent” FBI do for the Democratic Party agenda under current FBI Director Christopher Wray?
For starters, the FBI has become the enforcement agency of the pro-abortion movement. Back in 2021, pro-life activist Mark Houck and his son were pursued by a pro-abortion fanatic who was allegedly following and heckling his 12-year-old son. Houck pushed the man, and the “independent” Justice Department brought the hammer down on him, charging him for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, despite the altercation occurring more than 100 feet away from the abortion entrance.
Houck was facing up to 11 years in federal prison. He was ultimately acquitted. But that wasn’t before the “independent” FBI raided his home and arrested him in front of his family, all part of a political prosecution designed to scare pro-life activists like him into silence.
How about the push by liberal school activists to allow sexually inappropriate books in elementary schools or allow male students in girls’ bathrooms in the name of “LGBTQ acceptance” or whatever justification is used? The pandemic brought these issues to the attention of parents who were understandably upset about them and took their complaints to their local school boards, as is their right.
The National School Boards Association jumped feet-first into the political fray and asked the Justice Department to investigate parents as terrorists under the Patriot Act. The “independent” DOJ then directed the “independent” FBI to do that, and the FBI obliged. Wray admitted that there was “no compelling nationwide law enforcement justification” for the DOJ’s order, but said the FBI “conducted itself the way it should” by targeting those parents.
According to FBI whistleblowers, the FBI pursued a tip targeting a parent who opposed mask mandates in schools because the tip claimed the man “fit the profile of an insurrectionist.” Does this thus far sound like an FBI insulated from politics?
How about when the FBI’s Richmond Field Office issued a memo directing agents to target “radical-traditionalist” Catholics and their churches, even looking at recruiting church leaders as “tripwires” or unofficial informants? You know, because this country has a plague of instances of radical Catholic terrorism.
The Richmond office did that in part due to information from the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center, one of those progressive institutions that gets to decide who is hateful and who isn’t because of the unearned reverence it has from too many people in government. Wray dismissed this as irrelevant in front of Congress, telling the House Judiciary Committee that the memo was “a single product by a single field office, which as soon as I found out about it, I was aghast and ordered it withdrawn and removed from FBI systems.”
As it turns out, this was not an isolated issue in a single FBI office, as the Portland and Los Angeles field offices contributed to the document. Wray claimed “that product did not result, as best as we can tell, in any investigative action as a result of it. None.” But that was incorrect, as the Los Angeles Field Office had initiated an investigation into a local Catholic society. Doesn’t seem like too much “objectivity” there from FBI Director Wray, does it?
If you notice, all of these issues only seem to swing one way. Whether the initiators are left-wing activist groups or whether the victims are normal conservatives or people whose lifestyles indicate that they would be right-wing, somehow every mistake is one that benefits the political Left and targets the political Right.
The list goes on and on. The FBI claims it did not pressure Twitter to censor the New York Post’s story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, but the FBI did play into the false campaign from since-disgraced intelligence officials that the laptop story was Russian disinformation, implicitly pressuring social media companies to censor the story. Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe leaked classified information to the media and lied to the FBI about it, only to later win his pension back after being fired and even had his legal fees covered by the agency. That is the same Andrew McCabe who is now opposing Trump’s nomination of Patel to lead the department because “no part of the FBI’s mission” would be “safe.”
This is not about whether Patel is the right man for the job or not. That is a different debate that will happen when the time comes. But the idea that Trump is jeopardizing the “independence” of the FBI is laughable on its face. Every controversial decision the FBI makes only goes in one political direction, and does so under the weak leadership of Wray, along with his mealy-mouthed statements and lies designed to protect his agency from political scrutiny.
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Wray has shown no “independence” or “objectivity,” as this list of scandals under his tenure shows. The FBI cannot “remain” an “independent institution insulated from politics” because it hasn’t been that under Wray or even under his predecessor James Comey, who signed off on surveillance warrants based on opposition research paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Comey has since become a shill for the Democratic Party, a fact that probably won’t shock you given the FBI’s partisan track record.
You can defend the necessity of the FBI or defend the idea that most of the agents there are doing their jobs dutifully and honestly, but it doesn’t change the reality that the FBI, as an institution, is partisan and corrupt. The FBI is many things, but if there is one thing it has repeatedly proven itself not to be, it is politically “independent.”
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
