Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) was among those participating in a hearing this week of the Senate Judiciary Committee that featured individuals like a deputy director at the FBI as witnesses. The Senator’s turn to take five minutes at the mic was somewhat of a mess.
Kennedy spent several minutes complaining about the long past leadership of James Comey, a past director of the FBI who was infamously booted from his position in the early parts of Trump’s tenure. He then complained about an individual involved in investigative work related to Hunter Biden having allegedly spoken negatively about Republicans on social media. “If I were you, I’d try to be coming up with a way to suggest to Congress how you can check this power that you have so that the FBI and the Department of Justice and the other agencies can regain their reputation,” Kennedy said, as though the FBI is just doing whatever it wants, generally.
“I don’t want to live in a country where if the FBI knocks on your door, the first thing you have to do is wonder whether the agent is a Republican or a Democrat, and thanks to Mr. Wray’s predecessor, that’s where we are, folks,” Kennedy claimed. Uh, what? There is no real-world evidence of a systematic problem in the FBI or within other federal law enforcement teams involving agents carrying out their duties to further a political agenda. Isolated instances do not equal a trend or the actually systematic corruption of the agency, and neither does the targeting of individuals who happen to be Republicans mean the FBI’s work has been politicized.
Just in the fact that there are multiple layers of extensive review for many major moves in investigations, it boggles the mind to argue that the Justice Department is operating from politics, which as a rule is going to be associated with more individualized concerns. Kennedy never actually asked a single direct question, and the entirety of his time speaking was taken up by, well, him talking. The format was supposed to involve the witnesses providing answers, but he never gave them time to respond. Check out what happened below:
