The moral and ethical authority of the FBI is critical to all other law enforcement in America. What happens if the greatest investigative agency on the planet loses its moral authority? The agency’s reputation is not irretrievable, but it is suffering and may for a long time, depending on whether it can return to the rule of law, equal justice, and regain Americans’ trust.
It’s a sincere compliment when someone says to a cop, “That’s good police work.” It feels good to conduct a proper investigation and have everything come together to turn over to prosecutors. This is true at all levels of law enforcement, from local, to state, to federal. Today, sadly, Americans are asking themselves if they can trust the FBI to conduct a fair investigation into criminal behavior if the people involved are highly placed—either favoring people like Hillary Clinton or targeting people like Donald Trump.
Every cop, by definition, investigates crimes and other violations: anything from civil infractions and misdemeanors to felonies. The investigators’ scope and depth widen or narrow depending on the law enforcer’s agency and unit assignment. Generally, patrol officers will conduct infraction and misdemeanor investigations from beginning-to-end and then file a citation with the court or a report with the prosecutor’s office requesting charges. Patrol will also initiate felony investigations before turning them over to detectives either at the scene or through reports, depending on the seriousness of the offense.
At whatever level or assignment, every good cop knows what a good investigation looks like. Conversely, they also know what bad investigations look like, and they sure as hell know what a corrupt investigation looks like. A bad investigation makes cops wince; corrupt investigations make cops cringe.
Sadly, corrupt investigations seem to have been going on at the FBI and DOJ under the previous administration. What the scope and extent of the criminality has been seems to be the only question. Most career DOJ lawyers and FBI agents know what’s going on. Their partisan superiors apparently decided they would “save Americans from making a bad choice for president” by rigging a criminal investigation to improve the Democrats’ chance of winning and, when that failed, by attempting to frame the Republican winner to have him removed from office.
I’m troubled about where the rule of law stands in America. Right now, we’re holding our collective breath as our nation wavers at a crossroads: lawlessness and a two-tiered justice system to the left, and to the right, the rule of law and equal justice. The objective facts available tell us serious crimes have occurred. The degree and to whom the illegality will be ascribed is yet to be determined—if it ever is. It’s easy for not only law enforcement professionals but also Americans to become disheartened by the lack of accountability to-date for what appears to be a great deal of criminal behavior.
How people react to these objective facts tells us who is on which side politically, and it’s a sad situation. Many on the left continually excuse blatant wrongdoing, not even wanting to ask the hard questions of people they support but willing to believe the worst, without any evidence, of people they don’t like. Think about it: just erasing 30,000 emails and electronically (Bleach Bit) and physically (with hammers) destroying cell phones and computer hard drives, after they were subpoenaed, is staggering. And that’s only a fraction of the suspected wrongdoing.
For some on the left, you have to wonder what it would take for intellectual honesty to supersede political ideology. A few liberals, such as renowned Harvard law professor Allen Dershowitz, have tried to demonstrate intellectual integrity for their compatriots only to be shouted down for their honorable efforts.
Are there any leftists who wouldn’t verbally pummel (perhaps even physically) any Republican who defends Richard Nixon for Watergate? Of course not, but with the sludge of evidence of corruption involving the Democrat National Committee, a Democrat presidential candidate, and the ethically challenged hierarchy at Obama’s DOJ and the FBI, and perhaps even the Democrat president himself, it seems the left is engaged in its version of defending Nixon—but this time it’s Clinton, and it’s on a vastly bigger scale.
The left has become infamous for refusing to obey laws they don’t like. In Seattle, leftist city leaders refused to prosecute marijuana crimes well before the state legalized pot. Instead, city officials vilified cops who continued to enforce a valid law. Today, the city is attempting retroactively to void all misdemeanor and civil marijuana convictions going back years. Regardless of its legality now, pot possession and use was against the law when those people broke it—and they knew it.
The city is also still enforcing the traffic crime of Driving While License Suspended in the 3rd Degree (DWLS3), not according to equal justice but to social justice criteria. Where officers normally issue criminal citations directly to offending drivers, with DWLS3, officers must first send the ticket to the city prosecutor’s office so City Attorney Pete Holmes can “determine who merits punishment…” (according to race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status). Nope, not kidding. Been going on for many years now.
And there’s more legal sleaze involving leftists ignoring the law on a local level; Holmes, who has enthusiastically attempted to prosecute police officers, declined to prosecute 28 street criminals accused of crimes committed in downtown Seattle. Interim Police Chief Jim Pugel had personally requested these prosecutions. The city also has a policy where officers must first try to find alternatives to arrest, such as community service.
So, pee on a shop owner’s front stoop in full view of customers and what happens? Arrest? Um, no. Citation? Hell no! Instead, here’s a voucher for a cab, an EBT card, and a list of where you can find a bed for the night (which you won’t take advantage of because you don’t want to follow rules to not get drunk or do drugs). So, here’s the city’s formula for crime reduction: If you don’t cite, arrest, or prosecute criminals for their lawlessness, crime stats tend to fall quite dramatically.
At the state level, not too many hours south down Interstate 5 you’ll enter the People’s Republic of California. Of course, you’ve read about the leftist officials in California consolidating the sanctuary movement to the state and transitioning from a string of sanctuary cities to become a sanctuary state (Laura Ingraham recently called them fugitive cities and fugitive states). In particular, most recently, there is Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf who put ICE agents in danger by warning violent criminal illegal aliens the feds were coming.
California has produced a matter-antimatter conundrum for law-abiding business owners. A recent state law prohibits business owners from aiding federal agents with enforcing federal immigration law, which they are authorized by a duly elected Congress to do—it’s their duty. This puts American patriots who want to assist ICE at odds with their state government on whom they rely for business licenses and other permissions and services. This is unabashed malfeasance by a state government, forcing American citizens to obstruct ICE’s lawful actions that are explicitly within the constitutional mandate of the federal government.
I could go on and on with examples of the left ignoring laws or obstructing law enforcement locally and at the state level, especially when it comes to laws they don’t like. They wish to bring about a de facto nullification of legitimate federal law through resistance and disobedience rather than through the legal system.
On the other edge of the federal issue, this brings me to how the corruption is felt by local and state law enforcement when federal law enforcers like a leftist attorney general or IRS, FBI, ATF, or CIA director ignore or obstruct or misuse the law.
Former US Attorney Joseph E. diGenova delivered a brilliant speech given at Hillsdale College and transcribed in its Imprimis publication (February 2018). Using only facts and chronology, diGenova paints a vivid depiction of what has happened and is happening within the DOJ and FBI regarding the spiking of the Hillary Clinton email corruption investigation, manipulation of the FISA court via the Steele Dossier, and the agencies attempting to overturn a legitimate election by framing an incoming president.
Mr. diGenova carefully, and without embellishment, uses objective facts expressed in a timeline showing the deliberate effort to help the Democrat win and the Republican lose the American presidency and further secure an “insurance” policy, framing the winner for “Russian collusion” should their favored candidate lose.
What if I’d investigated a collision involving two drivers that I know? I like driver 1 but despise driver 2. Let’s say my investigation showed that driver 1 was clearly at fault. Now, despite knowing driver 1 is at fault, what if I altered my investigation so I didn’t have to issue her a citation? But, what if I didn’t stop there? What if I made driver 2 the at-fault driver and I issued him the citation instead?
If I were found to have done this, I’d probably lose my job—at the very least. And you know what? I should. Is what the DOJ and FBI did in covering for Hillary and conspiring against Trump any different—well, except for being on a much grander scale?
The DOJ and FBI helping one candidate is a grossly illegal use of federal law enforcement resources under the color of law, but to further compound the crime and corruption by actively conspiring to set up the other candidate rises to…
Well, let me ask you. If you attempted to swing an election for one candidate and, when unsuccessful, then attempted to frame the winning candidate to remove him from office, what would that be called? Begins with T, right? And if it’s not treason, why not and, if not, then if it happened as it appears it did, what would we call it?
One difficulty with investigating the Clintons is the depth and breadth of their sullied history and ongoing shady operations. I remember a quote in a movie that reminds me of the scope of the Clintons’ legal troubles. In the Sylvester Stalone movie Cliff Hanger, after murdering a partner, villain John Lithgow says, “Kill a few people, they call you a murderer. Kill a million and you’re a conqueror.” Commit a few crimes, they call you a criminal. Commit a million and you’re a senator, secretary of state, even president.
Americans might wonder why FBI agents or DOJ lawyers haven’t spoken out publicly about the corruption. But what happens when everyone you might report to up the chain of command, maybe even including the president, is involved in the corruption? What if they have a plan to deal with underling “troublemakers”?
Mr. diGenova talks about FBI agents attempting to carry out their investigations as they should. Mr. diGenova says, “When line agents complained about the misconduct, [Andrew] McCabe retaliated by placing them under investigation for leaking information.”
This issue is critical because of its impact on the American ideal of equal justice and the rule of law. President Obama’s FBI, under James Comey, was not the only law enforcement organization using the color of authority to establish and maintain a leftist orthodoxy throughout the government.
During the Obama administration, political corruption appears to have been rampant across the many agencies under the executive branch. The DOJ, IRS, NSA, CIA, ATF, and probably others were apparently involved in or were aware of surveilling American citizens and targeting for harassment business owners, media personalities, and other political opponents.
Without accountability for people engaged in this reprehensible conduct for our federal government agencies, the lack of trust will grow, and the infection will not be cured. It will fester until the federal agencies that are supposed to be accountable to the American people become gangrenous and in need of amputation.
