The Washington Post’s Matt Zapotosky and Devlin Barrett have written another fantasy story, chock full of anonymous sources and unnamed people, which is leading the Sunday edition on both the web and dead tree versions on the top of the front page
Inside the FBI: Anger, worry, work — and fears of lasting damage
In the 109 years of the FBI’s existence, it has repeatedly come under fire for abuses of power, privacy or civil rights. From Red Scares to recording and threatening to expose the private conduct of Martin Luther King Jr.to benefiting from bulk surveillance in the digital age, the FBI is accustomed to intense criticism.
What is so unusual about the current moment, say current and former law enforcement officials, is the source of the attacks.
The bureau is under fire not from those on the left but rather conservatives who have long been the agency’s biggest supporters, as well as the president who handpicked the FBI’s leader.
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.’ â€
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.
One law enforcement official summed it up bluntly: “There’s a lot of anger. The irony is it’s a conservative-leaning organization, and it’s being trashed by conservatives. At first it was just perplexing. Now there’s anger, because it’s not going away.â€
It continues on in this manner, only quoting big shots like Christopher Wray and James Comey, and not in direct relation to the article.
If there’s any anger in the FBI, it’s surely by career FBI agents who know that the people Republicans and President Trump are referring to are those who have damaged the FBI’s reputation. Those upper level employees who turned the FBI into a political arm of Team Obama and Team Hillary. You’d be angry too if your fellow employees were doing things that made your company look really, really bad. That made it hard for people to trust. Especially in light of the knowledge that several other federal agencies, notably the IRS and DOJ had also been weaponized to go after the political enemies of the President while protecting the allies of the President.
FBI employees know that justice should be blind. That there should be no partisan politics involved in uphold The Law. And know that the opposite happened in their agency. And they surely fear the results of this, that happened under the watch of Barack Obama.
The public attacks from the president have diminished morale inside the FBI, according to current and former officials. Among themselves, senior officials and rank and file frequently debate the best way forward. Several law enforcement officials said they agreed with Wray’s low-key approach, as a means of what one called “getting back to Mueller’s FBI.â€
Again, assuming these people are real, those who are just doing their job as it is meant to be done know the attacks aren’t on them, and surely prefer that those issues be resolved. They know the attacks have merit, but do not involve them.
Oh, and BTW, considering that Leftists like those at the Washington Post are constantly attacking American citizens and companies, often for just being rich, they should shut the hell up about attacks on people in a federal agency which weaponized itself as a political attack dog.
