In order to enforce federal criminal laws, the original concept was that Special Agents at the FBI would be responsible to investigate crimes, turning over their work product to lawyers at the Justice Department who would decide whether criminal charges should be brought. If a grand jury returned an indictment, the FBI agents would testify honestly about their investigation, and the juries would be trusted to return an honest verdict. The goal would be justice, not just prosecutorial victories. As prior articles have demonstrated, it is no longer possible to believe that the system currently works as once planned.
When Hillary Clinton willfully violated federal law and Department of State rules by using her own personal non-classified email server, thereby exposing classified documents to unauthorized persons, the Department of Justice should have prosecuted her. However, any prosecution was rendered impossible when former FBI Director James Comey held a press conference to announce his views on the case. He chose to usurp the function of prosecutors, absolving Hillary Clinton of any meaningful wrongdoing by announcing: “My conclusion was, and remains, no reasonable prosecutor would bring this case.” Then, there were still professionals at the Justice Department, and one closely involved with the investigation of Clinton’s emails told Fox News that “career agents and attorneys on the case unanimously believed the Democratic presidential nominee should have been charged.”
When the FBI believed classified documents may have been mishandled by a Republican, it raided former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in August 2022. Does that look like “Equal Justice Under Law?”
Experienced journalist Jonathan Tobin shared his observation that the federal bureaucracy generally has become overwhelmingly leftist in its makeup. “For decades, the federal service has increasingly become a bastion for liberal Democrats. Every study shows that its members are almost uniformly on the left. To give just one example: 95% of federal bureaucrats who donated to a candidate in the 2016 presidential election gave to Hillary Clinton…The worst corruption in Washington is the ability of those with lifetime tenure and no legal mandate to thwart the verdict of democracy as they tried to do after 2016 or, as we saw in Mar-a-Lago.”
With all the scandalous behavior of FBI employees in pushing Russiagate, it is difficult to know whether the FBI or the Justice Department is more compromised. It may be that the Leftist lawyers at the Justice Department have corrupted those in supervisory roles at the FBI, but the result is the same: Leftists now control both the federal investigatory and prosecutorial functions in America.
On July 18, 2022, Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, stating. “I remain very concerned that political bias by a select group of Justice Department and FBI officials has infected the Justice Department’s and FBI’s usual process and procedure to open and pursue high-profile and politically charged investigations.”
In October 2022, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) revealed that FBI whistleblowers have told Congress that the Justice Department seeks to “purge” politically conservative FBI agents, emphasizing that “You cannot have a political Justice Department and a free society, a free country.”
On November 4, 2022, House Judiciary Committee Republicans released a report “describ[ing] the FBI … as being ‘rotted at its core,’ maintaining a ‘systemic culture of unaccountability,’ and full of ‘rampant corruption, manipulation, and abuse,’” concluding that “FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland have injected politics into the FBI, so much so that it is now fundamentally broken.”
It is highly significant that just days ago, on January 3, 2023, former FBI Assistant Director Christopher Swecker, the Bureau’s retired chief of criminal investigations, called for the creation of an independent commission modeled after the 1970s-era Church Committee. Swecker suggests the committee’s work, this time, be focused on investigating the politicization of the FBI and proposed reforms.
“[I]t’s basically a wholesale takeover by the Department of Justice, which is filled with political appointees in every top position,” Swecker said. Swecker noted that the Justice Department’s ranks are laden with lawyers who “have made a career out of bouncing in and out of silk-stocking law firms, between the Department of Justice and then these law firms.” He added, “I have to say they are incredibly liberal in their politics. And that has now sort of taken over the FBI, and they are inserting that ideology into their high-profile investigations.”
Swecker argued that far-left ideologues with the administration at the Justice Department have pressed FBI agents into suppression of ideas unfavorable to the Biden administration, and into spying on American citizens. He pointed to the recent Twitter files release as evidence that the politicization of the FBI has trampled constitutional freedoms. “The FBI has an industry outreach program to help exchange information with industry, helping in the counterintelligence efforts of the FBI. This has gone well beyond that,” Swecker said. “This is nothing but domestic spying, and this is nothing but suppression of First Amendment rights and ideas.”
Swecker is not alone in his call for a Congressional investigation. The former FBI Assistant Director for Intelligence, Kevin Brock, also has argued that a new Church Committee “would be great for the FBI.” More importantly, it is necessary to prevent future violations of the constitutional freedoms that the DOJ’s politicization of the FBI has endangered.
Justice is no longer blind. These two highly credible former FBI Assistant Directors have described how leftist political appointees in the Department of Justice have coopted the law enforcement mission of the FBI, turning agents into political enforcers for the Biden regime. The new House of Representatives has the opportunity to expose how our own government has been subverted and defund the wrongdoers. If the House fails that mission, there is little hope our Republic can survive.
The best way the House could carry out its duty to the American People is to appoint a Church Committee to investigate the politicization and weaponization of the FBI and the entire Department of Justice. America’s Future calls on them to do just that.
