The end for the FBI
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Will the astonishing raid on Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Palm Beach residence, be the line in the sand, the Rubicon, the straw that broke the camel’s back? Maybe. Just possibly.
Probably not.
But maybe. The volume of the response this time has been turned up. Everywhere one looks, eyebrows are raised. Concern — make that “deep concern” — is being voiced. As is so often the case, it’s the little things that push people over the edge. The news that the G-Men, in addition to carting off boxes of documents, also rifled through Melania Trump’s personal wardrobe struck many people as especially outrageous. Are we about to see some of those agents wandering around with the former first lady’s underwear? I wouldn’t put it past them.
Trump himself was not at Mar-a-Lago when the heavies showed up. He was on his way to New York to be grilled by Attorney General Letitia James, whose multiyear investigation of Trump’s business dealings is coming to the boil. As Trump himself pointed out, James campaigned on the promise to “get Trump.” “What is fueling my soul,” she said in a stump speech, “is Trump.”
Think about that: the attorney general of New York campaigned on her personal animus towards an individual whom she promised to sue “every day.”
The distinguished left-wing criminal lawyer Harvey Silverglate is no friend of Donald Trump. But he is surely right that Trump is “the most investigated head of state in our nation’s history.” It’s been going on since before he was president. The entire Russia Collusion Delusion is part of the story, as were the preposterous efforts to impeach him because… because why? Because he spoke to the president of Ukraine? Because he held a rally in Washington, DC? The search warrant set to be unsealed any minute may shed more light on Monday’s raid. But as I argue in a column for the September print issue of the Speccie, the idea that the FBI went to Mar-a-Lago solely because Trump had some classified document stashed away there is ridiculous. The FBI has degenerated into a cadre of shock troops for the Deep State. Their raid at Mar-a-Lago was part of the effort “to taint Trump, to render him radioactive to the public.”
But the question remains: will the American people accept that the FBI has become the Praetorian Guard for the regime? I don’t know. I hope not. Harvey Silverglate is right: given its history of lawless behavior, “it is remarkable that no sitting president has moved to abolish the FBI.” Of course, it won’t happen on Biden’s, er, watch (or during his naps). But one way or another, the FBI must be dismantled. “We need an entirely new agency,” as Silverglate observed, “and a director who has no history of having worked in or with the FBI. Agency culture is a powerful force, and if we are to have any success in ridding the nation of this menace, we best eradicate it completely and start over.”
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Does the leadership of the FBI understand the damage they are doing to the reputation of the organization or are they focused mainly on trying to damage the reputation of their political targets? The politicization of law enforcement should lead to change. The public should demand it and so should Congress.
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