President Trump made sure when he bashed the FBI on Twitter to assure Americans that he didn’t mean that the “rank and file” members were anything but the wonderful people of law enforcement so embraced by Conservatives. It’s simply all the top members in charge of leadership who were corrupt and partisan. Unfortunately, every FBI agent is feeling the strain of the attacks on the president, and anger is boiling over.
The top Leadership and Investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans – something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank & File are great people!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2018
According to The Washington Post:
‘Republican critics charge that the birth of the investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and agents of the Russian government was fatally infected by the political bias of senior FBI officials — and President Trump tweeted Saturday that the release of a memo on the issue “totally vindicates ‘Trump.”
‘Bureau officials say the accusations in the document produced by House Republicans are inaccurate and — more damaging in the long term — corrode the agency’s ability to remain independent and do its job.’
As it turns out, only one party is trying to dismantle the credibility of an agency for being partisan, and that doesn’t really contribute to keeping things bipartisan. In the past, it’s been liberals who have decried the FBI’s questionable moves, such as Director J. Edgar Hoover’s surveillance and intimidating of Martin Luther King, Jr. Now, it is not only the opposite party, it is the party’s president himself who impugns the integrity of the FBI while walking his own party line by extolling the virtues of law enforcement.
The Nunes memo so hyped by Republican leaderships as criminally damaging to top FBI officials like former Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe failed to be the huge bombshell the GOP hoped it would be, but the damage done to the entire organization may not ever be undone.
The true goal behind the attacks on FBI and Justice Department officials was revealed (although few were surprised by it) on Saturday when the president tweeted:
This memo totally vindicates “Trump” in probe. But the Russian Witch Hunt goes on and on. Their was no Collusion and there was no Obstruction (the word now used because, after one year of looking endlessly and finding NOTHING, collusion is dead). This is an American disgrace!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2018
In a desperate attempt to turn public sentiment his way and “fight back” against the investigation into his campaign’s alleged collusion with Russian government operatives during the 2016 election, and the allegations that Trump obstructed justice during the investigation into that collusion, Trump threw two of the nation’s top institutions under the bus for doing its job.
‘For decades, the FBI has been trusted to investigate corruption inside the government, even at the highest levels, including the White House. In the 1970s, the FBI’s probe of the Watergate break-in led to the resignation of President Nixon. In the late 1990s, President Bill Clinton came to detest then-director Louis Freeh, but their distrust did not lead to withering public attacks from the president himself.’
Trump’s attacks come while his own appointed director, Christopher Wray, works to overhaul the organization’s reputation amidst endless attacks by the president.
NBC News: FBI Director Christopher Wray has sent a video message to Bureau agents and staff. He says, "I stand fully committed to our mission." Here's the transcript of the video: pic.twitter.com/NVJywiBGMp
— Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) February 2, 2018
Wray told the agents who serve under him in a video message:
‘You’ve all been through a lot in these past nine months, and I know that’s been unsettling, to say the least. And the past few days haven’t done much to calm those waters. So I want to make sure that you know where I stand, and what I want us to do.’
Featured image via Getty/Bloomberg
