[RealClear Politics] Nothing symbolizes the decline of the American republic better than the weaponization of justice that we saw last week when the FBI raided the home of former President Trump.And nothing better represents the divide that now exists between Democrats and Republicans than the fact that some people still have faith in the FBI.
Aren’t they paying attention? Heck, that's like a citizen of the old Soviet Union saying they had faith in the KGB — yeah, to crush dissent and lock up opponents of the regime in a Siberian gulag.
The evidence is overwhelming. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is now the Federal Bureau of Intimidation. Or more appropriately, the Federal Intimidation Bureau, whose acronym would spell out FIB, as in the Big Lie. Face it, nothing the FBI has said for the last six years since they joined with the Democratic Party to invent the Russia collusion hoax can be taken seriously.
Is there any need to go through the whole laundry list of lies and fabrications that the FBI, with the aid and comfort of the Justice Department, has foisted on the American public?
You can start with the extraordinary 2016 press conference when FBI Director James Comey detailed crimes committed by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton related to her improper use of a private email account to store classified material. Moments after saying she had broken the law, Comey announced with a straight face that "no reasonable prosecutor" would ever bring a case against her. Yeah, because she was a Democrat!
A couple months later, Comey set up President Trump’s National Security adviser, Gen. Michael Flynn, by sending agents to interview him about his supposed contacts with Russians.
"What's our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?" wrote Bill Priestap in a memo before the interview. Priestap was counterintelligence director at the FBI, and it became evident later that the agency’s goal was indeed to get him fired — and more importantly to get Trump impeached, fired, humiliated, you name it.
Comey himself admitted that the FBI targeted Flynn and chose not to approach him through the White House legal counsel, but informally with a direct phone call to arrange an interview. As Comey later told a reporter, it was "something I probably wouldn't have done or maybe gotten away with in a more ... organized administration."