The FBI Doesn't Deserve Our Respect

In the wake of an historically unprecedented raid on the home of a former president by agents of the FBI - a raid that Geraldo Rivera likens to a librarian sending a SWAT team to retrieve an overdue library book - both the DOJ and the FBI have come in for massive criticism from both conservatives and independents.

FBI Director Christopher Wray took umbrage at the criticism and delivered a disturbing statement defending the FBI on Thursday. In a piece for The Federalist Margot Cleveland launches a devastating critique of the Director and his statement.

Here's what he said:

Unfounded attacks on the integrity of the FBI erode respect for the rule of law and are a grave disservice to the men and women who sacrifice so much to protect others. Violence and threats against law enforcement, including the FBI, are dangerous and should be deeply concerning to all Americans.

The second sentence is so obvious as to be banal, but the first sentence is actually alarming.

What Wray calls "attacks" are legitimate criticisms of the agency he heads. What erodes respect for the rule of law is not the criticism but the behavior that elicits that criticism.

Nor are these criticisms "violence" or unfounded as Wray claims.

In the past five years the FBI has been guilty of both seeking to undermine and depose a duly elected president through deception and dishonesty and has also been guilty of employing an unjust double standard in the manner in which it investigates political figures.

The facts are indisputable and Cleveland makes them clear:

There is nothing “unfounded” in the condemnation of the FBI for its handling of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, and it is because of that widespread misconduct that Americans doubt the legitimacy of the FBI’s decision to search the former president's home.

Crossfire Hurricane revealed that agents at the highest levels in the bureau held an anti-Trump political bias. The inspector general’s report established that the FBI submitted four FISA applications replete with lies and material omissions, allowing agents to obtain a court order to surveil Carter Page in violation of Page’s constitutional rights.

The country also learned that the FBI used a backdoor conduit in Bruce Ohr to continue to accept “intel” from Christopher Steele after terminating him as a “confidential human source.”

The Mueller report revealed that for all the talk about investigating Russian interference in the election, the FBI ignored the obvious question of whether Steele had been fed Russian disinformation to meddle in our affairs.

And the trial of Michael Sussmann revealed how nonchalant the FBI was about being misled.

There is nothing “unfounded” about any of these criticisms, and it is precisely because of their legitimacy — and that they all flowed from a “get-Trump” mentality — that the country now condemns the FBI’s raid on Trump’s home.

These are all legitimate criticisms of the FBI's behavior. Does Wray think they constitute "violence?" If so, what conclusion should Americans draw?

Should we conclude that our freedom of speech does not include the freedom to criticize the FBI? Are we on the verge of becoming another version of the Soviet Union?

Cleveland continues to excoriate Wray's absurd statement by focusing on the FBI's double standard:

Further, even if this time the FBI (and its sources) didn’t lie and the court didn’t rubber stamp the search warrant, the raid still deserves condemnation because of the obvious double standard.

The FBI never raided Hillary Clinton’s home during the FBI’s investigation of the former secretary of state for mishandling classified documents.

Consequently, Clinton had time for her minions to wipe her homebrew server with BleachBit, making it impossible for the FBI to recover some emails.

The FBI also didn’t raid Clinton’s houses to search for the 13 mobile devices it believed she might have used to email her staff. The DOJ instead asked Clinton’s lawyers to provide the Blackberries and other devices to agents.

Clinton’s attorneys later told the FBI “they were unable to locate any of these devices.”

Not only was Ms. Clinton the beneficiary of the FBI's deference to Democrats so, too, is the Biden family:

The double standard appears also to apply to Hunter Biden, unless the FBI somehow succeeded in quietly searching his residences without anyone’s notice.

But even that would contrast with how agents treated Roger Stone, when the media amazingly knew to be handy during the pre-dawn raid and search of the Trump ally’s home. And these are but a few of the many examples of disparate treatment based on political affiliation.

Nor is criticism of the FBI’s broader handling of the Hunter Biden case “unfounded,” as multiple whistleblowers recently made clear when they told Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that FBI headquarters buried verified or verifiable evidence implicating the son of the now-president.

If Wray is upset about the public perception of the FBI as a tool of the Democrat party then maybe he should do a little head-knocking and house cleaning at the agency he runs and reestablish the kind of unbiased, non-partisan reputation they once enjoyed.

Wray wants his agency to be respected but respect has to be earned, and it's a lot easier to lose it than it is to gain it.