What Andrew C. McCarthy has to say at this point about the FBI
Andrew C. McCarthy is one of those writers who’s sometimes very very good and sometimes not at all good. You never know exactly which McCarthy is going to turn up, except that he tends to be good on anything to do with Russiagate and ungood about January 6th.
This column is one of his better ones, and in it I detect a somewhat new note of real anger at and disgust with the FBI and the DOJ. It’s long but worth reading in its entirety.
Here’s one excerpt that especially interested me:
In today’s FBI, progressive political bias is so notorious that what used to be shocking to humiliated bureau defenders (such as moi) has become a rueful punch line. Thankfully, hardworking case agents still habitually follow the evidence wherever it leads. That, however, doesn’t mean their political-hack bosses won’t undermine them.
He is calling himself a “humiliated defender” of the FBI, and that’s certainly the case. At the beginning of Russiagate, he thought Comey to be a person of integrity and objectivity, and over time he was sadly disabused of that notion (and humiliated for having it in the first place and for having held onto it for so long). To his credit, he finally did own up to his errors, but old habits died hard.
Here’s more from McCarthy’s article:
This spring, we watched special counsel John Durham’s first Russiagate trial blow up on him, not because he lacked evidence of a 2016 fraudulent scheme to portray Donald Trump as a clandestine agent of the Kremlin, but because he portrayed one of the two main schemers, the FBI, as if it were a victim.
It’s an unfortunate blind spot. Durham has one conviction so far: a guilty plea from FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, whose manipulation of a document caused the FISA court to be deceived into granting a surveillance warrant to monitor a former Trump campaign adviser — again, substantially based on the Clinton campaign’s bogus opposition research. Except the case wasn’t charged as a fraud on the court. It was charged as a false statement to another FBI official. Yes, it seems even when the FBI itself lies, the victim is . . . the FBI.
And now we learn how adaptable the Democrat–FBI Russia two-step is: You can run it in reverse! Not only can the scheme distort actual disinformation into an illusion of Republican collusion with foreign powers. It also can turn actual Democratic collusion with foreign powers into an illusion of disinformation.
McCarthy also writes this:
We’ve written a good bit about how Democrats and the Biden campaign, aided and abetted by their collaborators in media, social media, and the distressingly partisan network of current and former government national-security officials (pillars of the so-called Deep State, which I am going to have to stop describing as “so-called”), tried to con the country into believing Hunter Biden’s patently authentic “Laptop from Hell” was Russian disinformation. Well, now we see the fuller picture of how, far from pulling this tall tale out of the sky when the New York Post exposed the Hunter laptop in October 2020, these operatives simply incorporated it into a Biden campaign narrative that Democrats and pliant FBI officials had concocted two months earlier.
McCarthy goes on to explain the details of that transformation, in which real corruption and real evidence of corruption involving the Bidens was falsely labeled by the FBI as Russian disinformation, and fake corruption and fake evidence involving Trump that the FBI had earlier concocted and approved in Russiagate and that really was based on supposed Russian disinformation was labeled by the FBI as true.
“Russian disinformation” – is there nothing it can’t do?
Note also that in that paragraph, McCarthy admits that he needs to acknowledge that the Deep State is real.
The article also contains biting sarcasm like this:
Danchenko told Auten and other agents that Steele had extensively distorted the information Danchenko passed along to him, much of which was rank rumor and innuendo. Yet, I’m sure you’ll be stunned to learn that after these interviews, the FBI continued to rely on Steele’s information in its FISA applications. Unbelievably, the FISA court was informed that Danchenko was credible, but not that what he was credible about was Steele’s utter lack of credibility.
McCarthy has a suggestion for what to do about his once-beloved FBI:
The FBI used to be the premier federal police force, which had a domestic-security sideline. With the onslaught of jihadist terrorism that began in the 1990s, and especially after 9/11, the sideline — the intelligence mission — became such a priority that it has corrupted the bureau’s ethos. The combination of intense secrecy and awesome law-enforcement power is too combustible when entrusted to an agency that has lost the public’s trust and that has shown, time after time, that it is resistant to oversight.
If you want to get the FBI’s attention, restrict its mission, cut its budget, and hold higher-ups at the bureau and its mother ship, the Justice Department, accountable for malfeasance. There is no reason to believe, at this point, that anything else will work.
From McCarthy, that’s a pretty extraordinary statement about how far he’s come in his opinion of the FBI. But good luck with that. There is no reason to believe, at this point, that it will happen.
How the FBI, and indeed the Swamp, increasingly treats Republicans in Congress.
Did Christopher Wray cut short senate testimony to take his family on vacation in a taxpayer-funded private jet:
https://nypost.com/2022/08/07/fbi-director-christopher-wray-is-guiding-the-agency-the-wrong-way-fast/
Meh. Nobody with half a brain needs McCarthy to tell them any of this. The rest only care what McCarthy says when it agrees with what they want to be true.
And I’d still be willing to bet that when any attempt to reform or fix the FBI/DOJ results in those “hardworking case agents” being trotted out as a defense, McCarthy will fall in line.
Mike
There exists indeed no reason whatsoever to believe that the FBI/DOJ can be reformed, its being, like so much of the federal government (with more than two million employees) utterly partisan and devoted, not to the impartial enforcement of existing law, but to doing the grotesque bidding of the party currently in power and hopeful of never having to relinquish totalitarian control over its ideological enemies and over any elements of the citizenry who dare to criticize its illegitimacy. Our republic is certainly in very dire danger, nor is there much cause to hope that the elections three months from now will be conducted in a manner which can be considered “free and fair”.
Like many others, I don’t think that the FBI can be reformed. As a symbolic gesture, I’d like to see the building blown up.
The country does need an agency that can collect and share both public crime data and investigatory information, and maybe one could replace the FBI. I’d picture something like a cross between Interpol and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Of course, there’d be some negative consequences, but the trade-offs would be worth it. An FBI that keeps going down its current path is a worse danger to the country than those it’s supposed to police.
Why not sort federal law enforcement into different departments?
1. Legal representation: the Attorney-General, U.S. Attorneys, and division chiefs.
2. Corrections: prisons, regular jails, specialty detention centers, acute care hospitals, nursing centers, asylums, halfway houses, probation, parole.
3. Security services: security guards &c at diplomatic properties abroad, in federal buildings NOS and associated grounds, and on federal land e.g. parks; supplementary manpower aiding MP’s at military bases; dignitary protection; cybersecurity;
4. Investigations: specialized bureaux of (largely) plainclothes officers investigating violations of federal law, among them immigration violations, tracking financial transactions, tracking nuclear material. You could include a counter-intelligence bureau walled off from what the other bureaux in the department do.
5. Miscellaneous: U.S. Marshals, border patrol, point-of-entry inspectorate; civil aviation; forensic science, laboratories,
6. Military: MP’s and inter-service investigatory agencies
7. Civil defense: mostly fire-and-rescue type agencies, but including the Coast Guard with its law enforcement functions.
8. Revenue collection: specialized bureaux devoted to different types of revenue offered up through voluntary compliance appended to which would be a hunting and seizures service.
You could break up the FBI into several successor bureaux and scatter them over the departments in question.
So at what point will McCarthy be forced to face the bitter truth about Nov. 2022 and the grotesque Jan. 6 hoax…?
Perhaps it may be possible to retrieve something of value after decapitating the FBI. Essentially you’d have to remove almost the entire current leadership while retaining McCarthy’s supposed “hardworking case agents” I guess.
But all this is academic at this point since there’s nobody currently with enough power and political will to do so. And depressingly I don’t see that changing any time soon. Even if both houses are taken away from the Dems in November and the presidency in 2024, I doubt the newly empowered GOP would have the wherewithall or desire to obliterate the FBI if history is any guide. At most they might remove some of the higher profile ne’er-do-wells, rearranging the deck chairs but not really dealing with the greater issue of deep seated corruption. I’d love to be proven wrong of course.
Except the [Clinesmith] case wasn’t charged as a fraud on the court. It was charged as a false statement to another FBI official.
We all know that the Clinesmith case was a travesty, but I think my reading went straight to the penalty and I missed the import, or lack thereof, of the charge. Just think: the fraud didn’t just manipulate any old court but the one that oversees a giant surveillance apparatus. Then that apparatus was manipulated in order the manipulate the political process and elections.
Not only is there a deep state, but there must have been a reasonably well coordinated conspiracy involving the White House, DOJ, and FBI. The one check and balance was NSA head Adm. Rogers who shut down the FBI’s direct access the NSA surveillance (which was probably wasn’t essential to the conspiracy) and what happened to him? I’m not sure, but it looks like he slinked away feeling lucky he didn’t end up in prison.
One might also
1. amend the legislation enabling the inspectors-general corps. Sort the employees of each inspector-general’s office into hourly v. salaried and line v. staff. Require salaried line employees be over 55 and, once they’ve passed their probation in an inspector-general’s office debarred from federal employment outside of inspector-general’s offices. A tour would be meant to be their last rodeo as a federal employee. Inspectors-general would themselves be over 55 by law and subject to mandatory retirement between the ages of 67 and 76, depending on how old they were when appointed. We might also explore expanding the inspectors-generals’ books to include interviewing former federal employees.
2. Recalibrate the sentencing rules in the federal penal code. so that the severity of sentences reflects the median of state codes for similar crimes.
3. Scarify the federal penal code, reducing its scope. Have it include offenses and penalties necessary if you’re to have a working court system (e.g. contempt of court, jury tampering, perjury, absconding, and escape); offenses and penalties necessary if the government is to function and function properly (e.g. burglary, trespass, vandalism, and arson on federal property; fraud, larceny and embezzlement contra the federal government, state governments, or territorial governments; tax evasion, bribery and extortion, assaults on working federal employees, harassing police and rescue officers while they work &c); national security offenses (treason, espionage, insurrection); civil rights crimes (public officers undertaking or allowing others to undertake schemes unlawfully denying parties their life, liberty, property, or suffrage); transporting contraband across state lines or the international frontier as well as sales of contraband so transported; racketeering which incorporates participants or victims in multiple states or here and abroad (could be theft schemes, fraud schemes, or benefits through strong-arming schemes). In the course of this, one might put an end to charges which have no analogue at the state level (e.g. lying to federal investigators when one is not under oath).
4. Require federal investigators to record their interviews with suspects.
5. End unqualified immunity for prosecutors and judges, and set up a special corps to prosecute the abusive among them.
6. Require prosecutors at trial to disclose all plea bargaining offers the prosecution has made to defendants.
7. Incorporate strict sentencing formulae into the federal penal code, sharply limiting judicial discretion.
8. Replace grand juries with preliminary hearings with an adversary process. Judges so presiding would not be the judge to review plea deals or supervise the trial of the defendant in question.
9. Require prosecutors offices to indemnify defendant’s counsel for each count on which the defendant is acquitted.
10. Retrocede the District of Columbia to the State of Maryland, and discontinue the DC penal code in favor of Maryland law.
11. Re-draw the boundaries of federal trial jurisdictions, and determine staffing in each trial jurisdiction according to a decennial tabulation of case loads. Ideally, each jurisdiction would have an assigned seat. Metropolitan statistical areas, micropolitan statistical areas, and stand-alone counties would be assigned according to the commuting distance from their seat to the seat of the jurisdiction. Ideally, each jurisdiction would have the caseload to merit at least six judges: two who specialize in bankruptcy (and do general trial work with their leftover time), two who specialize in criminal cases (and who do general trial work in their spare time), and two who preside over every kind of case bar criminal proceedings and bankruptcy proceedings. The jurisdictions with the highest case loads could be subdivided, say, four around New York, three around LA, and two each around Dallas and Chicago. There would be a U.S. Attorney, a federal public defender, and a parastatal legal aid society for each jurisdiction. As for jurisdictions encompassing non-state territories, you could have it that the federal judges in such jurisdictions are sorted into six rather than three specialties, with the additional specialties being family law proceedings per the territory’s law, criminal proceedings per the territory’s law, and proceedings in other realms per the territory’s law. Each individual territory could have a magistrate’s court which would perform functions common to municipal courts in the states, while the federal jurisdiction does the superior court work. In re DC, juries would be selected from the population of the whole federal jurisdiction, not just the District. Puerto Rico would be the one territory with a dedicated territorial court. Have about 50 jurisdictions, with about a dozen active duty trial judges in the average jurisdiction. These would be on circuit between various centers around the jurisdiction.
12. Assemble revised federal appellate jurisdictions. You could have about 15 for geographically delineated federal trial courts, one national appellate court for federal trial courts with issue jurisdiction (e.g. taxation, customs, immigration, intellectual property), and one to appeal the rulings of administrative tribunals. The last two sets of appellate judges would be on circuit around the country, while the appellate judges with geographic jurisdiction would have a single seat.
13. Debar anyone from being employed as a lawyer in a U.S. Attorney’s office for more than 12 years in any bloc of 14. Ditto those employed in the divisions and elsewhere at headquarters. Debar anyone from being employed as a U.S. Attorney, division chief, or Attorney-General for more than four years in any bloc of six.
14. Require federal judges to retire at 80 if they’re to claim their pension and allied retirement benefits and define ‘retirement’ to mean retirement: you don’t hear any more cases.
15. End any advantage granted to members of the bar in recruitment and promotion of federal police.
IMO the FBI is so deep into the Deep State they have become defenders of Democrats and Marxist newbies. The entire head should be all canned day one of a Republican President as they will be working against him be it DJT or DeSantis
As a symbolic gesture, I’d like to see the building blown up.
Building is hideous. Blow it up. Cannot require Mueller, Comey, Wray, McCabe, and Sztrok be inside when you’re blowing it up, alas.
“…Clinesmith…”
“…FISA…”
Three words:
Judge James Boasberg
The core of our problem is not the federal leadership. They are symtomatic not causal.
The core of our problem is the combination of ignorance, gullibility and arrogant stupidity of the voters that installed and continue to support our corrupt leadership.
In their willful blindness, they are bringing ruin upon us all. Nor will they themselves escape that ruin. But rather than accept personal responsibility for that ruin, they will in acts of moral cowardice, blame those who warned them of the ruin the policies they supported would bring. And that hypocritical shifting of blame upon those undeserving, is the greater sin by far. Those who bear false witness against the blameless set deeply a stain upon their souls.
Everyone is responsible for their own actions but voters are somewhat restricted by the options they are presented by the political system. As they say, “A fish rots from the head down.”
Mike
The Patriot Act signed by W was an inflection point. Although, long before, federal law enforcement such as ATF and FBI were ginning things up such as Waco and Ruby Ridge, the very reason McVeigh stated he bombed OKC.
In the movie “Shooter,” the FBI agent helping the protagonist wore a Che shirt. Granted, that may be just a Hollywood thing projecting how they want the FBI to really be.
Look, write a lot of long stuff if you like but the DOJ, FBI and McCarthy suck. Hard.
Defund them.
Now the FBI has raided Mar-a-Lago and so it begins.
DOJ just popped open the lid of the Ark, and looked in…
Remember when you weren’t allowed to question Biden about Ukraine, because he was a candidate for President? Yet now the FBI can raid Mar-a-Lago, because Trump isn’t liberal.
GB: “The core of our problem is the combination of ignorance, gullibility and arrogant stupidity of the voters …”
MB: “Everyone is responsible for their own actions but voters are somewhat restricted by the options they are presented …”
It’s puzzling how every single Good German from WWII died and was then reborn as an American reporter
FBI = Stasi?
For all their talk about “election denial,” this unprecedented raid on the home of a former president shows that the Democrat establishment never considered Trump to be a validly elected president. They have contempt for him, and for his voters.
My late father was there as an Army man in occupied Germany. As I was growing up, we never spoke about the war, except he told me every time I asked about it that it was incredibly just, since all the Nazis were killed, and all the secret anti-Nazis survived!
I don’t remember how old I was when I first had an inkling of what he really meant, but I am pretty sure my age was in single digits.
As others have mentioned, this afternoon the FBI has gone and raided President Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago, including busting open his safe.
If it were up to me, I would strip the FBI of any warrant and arrest powers and relegate them to lab and forensic work only. No law enforcement; very limited investigatory powers; and at least the top 4 layers of the hierarchy shown the door. Develop a new department under the Federal Marshals and have the FBI as a service provider only. In tandem, a top-to-bottom audit of the DOJ with the hierachy required to re-interview for their jobs and sign renewed oaths of loyalty to the law of the land.
Huey Long had a great trick. He would appoint people to positions within his administration, but he would have all of them sign undated letters of resignation – which he would keep on file. He did this because there were too many political appointees that had been adversaries in the primaries – and he, very shrewdly, didn’t trust them very far. There were more than a few letters that he would pull out and release to the press with announcements of resignations when he suspected that something was brewing, and he was usually right.
The war with Ukraine was easy enough to prevent but they poured gasoline on the fire.
They poked China in the eye … for what purpose?
And today they’ve declared war on conservative Americans.
This raid on Trump’s residence should be enough to get Republicans in Congress, who have been incredibly passive so far, to outline some reforms of the DOJ/FBI for the election this fall. The Jan 6 political prisoners have been abandoned.
Andy is like Alec Guiness at the end of “The Bridge on the River Kwai”: “What have I done?”
I have been deeply depressed about the state of the country I am leaving to my descendants, I have 5 great grandchildren, now I am grieving. We are not living in a democratic republic, we are now in a tyrannical state apparently run by who and what we can only imagine.
Andy is like Alec Guiness at the end of “The Bridge on the River Kwai”: “What have I done?”
boatbuilder:
Nice! How I love Alec Guiness.
Still, however belatedly, I give McCarthy some due. Most people never admit errors or change minds.
The war with Ukraine was easy enough to prevent
It wasn’t.
We are morphing into Venezuela. And the media is aiding and abetting the move. McCarthy is finally waking up, but his voice doesn’t resonate in progressive circles. It may be too late.
The November elections are key. We must retake Congress. Even then, it will be a struggle to stop the corruption. No easy path forward. As Churchill said, ” I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering…………………You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: it is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”
At least not a survival as a democratic republic.
A reminder
https://mobile.twitter.com/KeenanPeachy/status/1556783734438866944?cxt=HHwWgMCttd2j55orAAAA
@ Miguel > I also like Peachy’s associated tweet: “Guaranteed this was Plan B. Plan A was a 3 am no knock raid with Trump being dragged outside to be filmed by waiting CNN van. They chickened out.”
The Patriot Act signed by W was an inflection point.
Not sure. Sztrok and McCabe were hired in the mid-90s and promoted through the ranks thereafter. The FBI directors during that era were Messrs. Freeh, Mueller, and Comey. All three were Justice Department lifers with some sojourns elsewhere, oddly lucrative sojourns in the case of Comey. Rod Rosenstein was another Justice Department life, more thoroughly so than these others.
I suspect the real problem is just embedded crookery. The police department in Slidell, La. records its interviews with suspects, but the FBI does not. People subject to federal investigations are bankrupted and have no recourse. Perjury and related offenses in state law commonly require that you be under oath or have affixed your signature to a written instrument containing a jurat. You can be prosecuted for misleading the FBI, even if it is immaterial and the questions they ask you are none of their business. I occasionally have exchanges with a prosecutor working in Richmond. He’s a big promoter of capital sentences, but has had occasion to say he’s perturbed by the federal sentencing schedule, as the penalties are far more severe than you see in state law for similar offenses. About 4% of all judges are federal judges, but 11% of the country’s prison census is in federal institutions. And we’ve seen in the J6 cases that the judges are collaborators with prosecutors and often the public defenders are not working on behalf of their clients. I suspect the problem is the whole edifice, which needs to be blown up.
The FBI agents are in two categories. Those who didn’t resign after Waco and those who applied for employment after Waco.
It would be different, at least a little, if any fibbie had suffered any kind of penalty, any at all, for the massacre.
But, no. And we still have agents who don’t have a problem with it.
Eastwood’s movie about the framing of Richard Jewell left out Freeh being all over the faked-up “confession”.
Leopard/spots.
Important:
Grenell on the FBI…in an article that contends that the FBI is rotten at the top, which has been heavily politicized, but that the line agents are still decent and hard-working. And trying to do their jobs.
“Exclusive: Ex-intel chief urged Trump to fire FBI Director Wray in 2020;
“Ric Grenell recounts when FBI agents admitted their bosses ordered political redactions to documents.”—
https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/ex-intel-chief-urged-trump-fire-fbi-director-wray-2020
…commentary by Grenell and interview with Kevin Brock.
The FBI is well on it’s way to being the SS of the United States.
Obama was indeed a very busy man for 8 years executing his “fundamental transformation”–it’s pretty obvious where he concentrated his efforts. Now we have Biden with his “incredible transition”. Buckle up folks, we’re in for a bumpy ride.
Well McCarthy is on the spot now, his reaction to this will reveal all.
Mike @ 8:29,
So far, McConnell is as quite as a church mouse. Which speaks volumes.
Aggie,
“I would strip the FBI of any warrant and arrest powers and relegate them to lab and forensic work only. No law enforcement; very limited investigatory powers; and at least the top 4 layers of the hierarchy shown the door. Develop a new department under the Federal Marshals and have the FBI as a service provider only. In tandem, a top-to-bottom audit of the DOJ with the hierachy required to re-interview for their jobs and sign renewed oaths of loyalty to the law of the land.”
That would be a great start were it possible. Deeply corrupt governments do not go quietly into the night. Huey Long’s fate may well await Trump.
There is no criminality, however foul that fanaticism cannot justify.
Art Deco,
Just as saying it’s so, doesn’t make it so…
So too does saying it isn’t true, make it untrue.