CAN THE FBI BE SAVED?

CAN THE FBI BE SAVED?

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN FBI

On Friday, Republican House Judiciary Committee staff released a report titled “FBI WHISTLEBLOWERS: WHAT THEIR DISCLOSURES INDICATE ABOUT THE POLITICIZATION OF THE FBI AND JUSTICE DEPARTMENT.”

The report is 50 pages long, but it also includes an appendix of approximately 1,000 pages consisting of letters Judiciary Committee members have written to DOJ and the FBI, requesting information that, I take it, has rarely if ever been forthcoming. The report’s contents will not be surprising to anyone who has been paying attention. Its executive summary lays out these points:

• The FBI is artificially inflating statistics about domestic violent extremism in the nation. Whistleblowers have described how FBI leadership is pressuring line agents to reclassify cases as domestic violent extremism even if the matter does not meet the criteria. They also explained how the FBI is misrepresenting the scale of domestic violent extremism nationwide by categorizing January 6th-related investigations as organic cases stemming from local field offices, instead of all related to one single incident. In both ways, the FBI is fueling the Biden Administration’s narrative that domestic violent extremism is the biggest threat to our nation.

• The FBI is abusing its counterterrorism authorities to investigate parents who spoke at school board meetings. Whistleblowers disclosed how, shortly after the National School Boards Association urged President Biden to use the Patriot Act against American parents, the FBI Counterterrorism Division set up a special “threat tag” to track school board-related cases. Whistleblowers provided evidence of how the FBI opened investigations into one mom for allegedly telling a local school board “we are coming for you” and a dad simply because he “rails against the government” and “has a lot of guns.”

• The FBI has abused its foreign intelligence authorities to spy on American citizens, including people associated with the campaign of President Trump in 2016. These facts have been documented in Inspector General reports and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions, but there is little indication the FBI has changed—or is willing to change—course.

• The FBI is clearing the Bureau of employees who dissent from its woke, leftist agenda. The FBI is actively seeking to “purge” FBI employees holding conservative views—or, in President Biden’s view, those who are a “threat to American democracy”1— because they hold conservative views. The FBI has even taken retaliatory actions against at least one whistleblower who has spoken out.

• Whistleblowers have explained how the FBI’s “political meddling” “is dragging the criminal side [of the Bureau] down” as resources are “pulled away” from real law- enforcement duties. As a prime example, one whistleblower described how he was “told that child sexual abuse material investigations were no longer an FBI priority and should be referred to local law enforcement agencies” so that he could work a Washington-directed politically charged case instead. Such a mis-prioritization is not only a dereliction of duty, but it is a grave disservice to the victims of crimes that do not advance the FBI’s political agenda.

The FBI’s role in the Russia collusion hoax is, by itself, ground for radical reform of the Bureau. The recent revelation that the FBI offered Christopher Steele a $1 million bribe if he could come up with dirt on Donald Trump is the icing on the cake. A government agency this corrupt cannot be allowed to exist in anything like its present form.

I assume that we need a federal investigative agency of some kind. I don’t know what the legitimate contours of such an agency would be. But when Republicans take control of the House and the Senate in January, reform of the FBI, and the Department of Justice, should be high on their agenda.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/11/can-the-fbi-be-saved.php