A highly politicised law-enforcement agency has turned half the nation against itself. Credit: Getty
Why is President Trump charging hard at the FBI? Because what goes around comes around, and the FBI has been on the warpath against him for nearly a decade. A matter of settling scores, then — and maybe for Trump himself, it’s nothing more than that. Yet the bureau’s recent conduct and history highlight the real stakes: whether a democracy should encourage political disagreement, even the rowdy kind, or treat it as a “problem” to be repressed by an internal intelligence and covert police apparatus.
My father was targeted by the FBI for his opposition to the Vietnam War and American imperialism in general. As a result, charges of “FBI malfeasance” are perhaps less abstract for me than they are for others.
Since retaking office, Trump has dismissed dozens of officials at the FBI and the Department of Justice. According to The Hill, the administration is “eyeing firing perhaps thousands more in an unprecedented purge.” The earliest targets include officials involved in prosecuting Trump himself, as well as those who caught some 1,500 defendants in a post-Jan. 6 dragnet.
Then there is Kash Patel, the president’s choice to lead the FBI. If confirmed, Patel would join the ranks of other Trumpians leading agencies of which they are deeply sceptical. Among other measures, Patel has mused about shuttering the J. Edgar Hoover Building — the FBI’s headquarters, named for its notoriously lawless and racist first director — and converting it to a “museum of the deep state.”
The building’s 7,000 staffers would fan across the land, under Patel’s plan, solving workaday crimes. This would stand in stark contrast to the kind of highly politicised activity that has turned half of the country against the bureau, not least the campaign to destroy Trump, even as that meant undermining legal democratic processes.
That campaign began when the bureau used allegations of “Russian collusion” proffered in the so-called Steele Dossier to launch a wide-ranging investigation into the Trump campaign. Commissioned by the Clinton campaign of 2016, and partially paid for by the Democratic National Committee, the dossier’s claims about Russian collusion were entirely unsubstantiated, as special counsel Robert Mueller revealed in an extensive probe that concluded in 2018.
Nonetheless, the FBI leaked parts of the Steele Dossier, then used the ensuing DC rumors as “evidence” with which to apply for and receive four wide-ranging Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants. This allowed the bureau to spy on the communications of the Trump campaign; one of the FBI attorneys who helped apply for the FISA warrants was later convicted of having altered an email to make it look more incriminating.
Around the same time, Hillary Clinton was also under investigation for having permanently deleted some 31,000 emails that had been subpoenaed by the DOJ in 2014. The FBI investigated Clinton’s illegal destruction of evidence, but in the run up to the 2016 election, it soft-pedaled the matter and declined to recommend prosecution.
Rather than abandon politics-by-probe, the FBI ramped up its anti-Trump efforts four years later, during his second presidential campaign. That’s when the bureau took a leading role in the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in what appears to have been an attempt to control the outcome of the 2020 election. Having come into possession of the laptop 10 months before the New York Post published its first story about it, the FBI verified its authenticity. Yet it warned social-media platforms to be wary of a Russian disinformation operation involving Hunter. Sure enough, when the Post’s first story appeared, Twitter (now X) and Facebook swiftly throttled it.
The Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol gave rise to another embarrassing episode, combining neglect and imperiousness. There is no excusing the rioters’ actions, and some of those pardoned by Trump upon returning to office undoubtedly committed violent crimes. But the question remains: Why was the US Capitol so poorly defended that day? And why did the Capitol Police Board — consisting of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and the architect of the Capitol — deny requests from the Capitol Police to deploy National Guard in anticipation of brewing turmoil?
The answer hinges, in part, on the failure of the FBI to share important intelligence with the Capitol Police. According to Steven A. Sund, then the commander of the Capitol Police, the FBI as early as December 2020 had intelligence indicating that various individuals were actively planning to march into the Capitol and that many of them planned to be armed and ready to use violence. Yet the bureau didn’t alert Sund about this fact, which would likely have led to the authorisation of a National Guard deployment.
Then, too, the FBI has to this date failed to comply with congressional requests for basic information, such as how many FBI agents and informants were in the crowd on Jan. 6. As it happens, FBI Agent Steven D’Antuono, who was in charge of the bureau’s Washington, DC, field office that day, had also managed the bureau’s infiltration and entrapment of a ragtag band of right-wing militiamen who, at the urging of undercover FBI handlers, concocted a scheme to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The full extent of FBI manipulation of the suspects only came to light because two of the defendants refused to take plea bargains, went to trial, and were acquitted after proving FBI entrapment.
The FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago is another reason Trump is coming after the bureau. Accused of illegally hoarding state secrets after leaving office in 2021, Trump was cooperating with officials from the National Archives and Records Administration to return classified documents. The cooperation started early as May 2021 and would continue to the first half of 2022. Nevertheless, the FBI launched a dramatic early-morning raid on Mar-a-Lago in August 2022. A year later, Trump was charged with 37 federal felonies connected to the retention of national security secrets.
At the same time, then-President Joe Biden was also found to have retained and improperly stored classified documents from his time as vice president. Biden’s documents were sitting unguarded in his garage. But there was no FBI raid, nor any discussion of criminal charges. Recall, too, that Hillary Clinton was likewise spared charges over her mishandling of State Department emails.
Despite it all, Trump is now back at the summit of American power. Gone is the naïve showman from reality television. Trump 2.0 is battle-hardened and arrives with a wrecking crew and an aggressive plan to dismantle or weaken the key institutions of America’s unaccountable security state.
This is good and necessary. The FBI has a long and sordid history of framing people; disrupting, misdirecting, and destroying progressive social movements; and blackmailing politicians of any persuasion. As a result, there are many who dislike Trump yet cheer for him — because they dislike the FBI even more.
I understand this impulse. My father, the Marxist scholar Michael Parenti, was a fierce and public opponent of the Vietnam War, and he came under FBI surveillance. He even got a copy of his file. They harassed him, visited our home, bothered my mother. And so, when I read of stunned bureau officials seeking to calm the “fear and angst within the FBI ranks” and vowing to “dig in”, I felt that some little bit of cosmic justice was being done for Dad, who like many radicals of his generation spent years at the sharp end of FBI bullying.
The FBI is reeling from these early blows. But unless Trump and his colleagues are determined and systematic in their efforts, the security apparatus will regroup, shake off the dust, and strike back. We are in the opening rounds of what will be a long and brutal confrontation over the right to enjoy authentic political contestation, rather than a politics stage-managed by men in black.
Progressives who wish to preserve room for real politics, and who know their FBI history, should stand with the Trumpians in this tug-of-war.
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SubscribeIf Trump’s only motive in targeting the FBI is revenge, then I do not support him. But if his motive (in additional to some well-deserved revenge) is exposing the extent of politicization and corruption of this powerful federal agency, then I sincerely believe he is doing a public good.
Here is my question to the author of this article: Does Trump’s very public challenge to the power of federal agencies such as the FBI make him a target for a covert assassination attempt?
A covert assassination attempt by whom?
by the people behind the first two attempts that were thwarted?
Isn’t one of them dead, and the other in jail? It therefore doesn’t seem likely.
You’re talking to Americans remember, the most paranoid people on the planet. They love a conspiracy theory
You’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you, and I’d say that 2 attempts on Trump’s life before he even won the election might be a good argument that such conspiracies are a bit more than theories.
But you just keep on being you from your armchair halfway around the world, telling us in the US how it really is.
As far as the assasination attempts concerns there are only 2 possibilities and neither one is good , either there was gross incompetence at the side of federal agencies like FBI and SS or there was a coordinated and covert effort trying involving those agencies
So, to you it all depends on Trump’s state of mind? LOL….Amazing.
If his actions are beneficial then they are beneficial regardless of his motives. What do you care of his motives. You apparently would be OK with the FBI and the rest of the security state continuing to choke our political system…after all Trump has what you consider a bad attitude.
Sorry to say it, but this is something my Mom would have told me when I was 5 years old. Not fit for “grown-ups”.
Oh FFS! Trump is cleaning out the FBI (and the rest of the administration), packing it with loyalists, and giving it an explicit mandate to go after anyone who disagrees with him. And we are supposed to welcome it as a way to “encourage political disagreement” ?!!??!!
As they said during the Vietnam war, it is like fighting for peace – or f**cking for virginity.
Many of these Federal agencies employ people who cannot perform the duties required. They become employment bureauies for the ineffectual middle class.
I have worked with people who have undertaken foreign aid. The best was a Chartered Civil Engineer, who had been a captain in the Royal Engineers, lectured at a top university for five years and had decades of experience working in consulting and contracting engineering in many countries. They solved many engineering /development problems. They were not ineffectual humanities graduates .
If you father was a member of ComPUSA, he deserved investigating. ComPUSA was a wholly owned subsidiary of the USSR and everything it did, every front it supported, were at the direction of ComPUSA.
Gus Hall and Angrla Davis. That’s a ticket to get behind.
So political persecution is fine, as long as it’s not your side that’s being persecuted?
Depends upon the job. Did any action or inaction further the cause of the USSR, China or any communist country? Were they academics who marked down people who voiced anti communist sentiments?
“Hillary Clinton was also under investigation for having permanently deleted some 31,000 emails that had been subpoenaed by the DOJ in 2014.”
Surely she should be prosecuted? Isn’t deleting 31,000 supoenaed emails a massive crime given that she occupied the second highest political office in the USA after the President?
The deletion was prior to the subpoena (by a year). A technician says that they were instructed to remove them- as they were purportedly private emails. I think it would be difficult for the FBI in this circumstance to find evidence of a crime, even if some of the deleted emails were regarding government business. One would have to find evidence that there was intentional deletion of governmental records.
The timeline is a little complex because Congress were initially seeking documents relating to Bengazi (all correspondence related to Bengazi was subpoenaed in 2013). It only became clear later that there many of missing work emails were held on Clinton’s private server, and that she had been doing state business from that server. On that discovery Congress extended the investigation to all her emails on her private server.
The story is that she handed over the ‘work’ emails in December 2014. But at around the same time decided to delete the ‘personal’ emails (the famous missing 33,000) claiming that they were ‘personal’. Congress released another subpoena in March 2015 (ie three months after the deletion) for Bengazi documents on her private server, bust also requested Clinton handed over the private server for examination – which she refused.
Subsequent discovery of up to 17000 of those private emails suggested that many were work related (including of a high security clearance level) and should have been handed over.
The joke going around was that it was very possible that Clinton had been hacked and the Russians and/or Chinese had the emails, but not the American investigators. Hence Trump’s joke asking the Russians to hand them over, because Clinton wasn’t going to.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-deleted-33000-emails-secretary-state/story?id=42389308
When Wikileaks were pre-announcing their October surprise in 2016, the assumption at the time was that it would be Clinton’s emails (no-one knew Podesta had been hacked). This put the FBI in a pickle because they couldn’t sweep the email investigation away if Wikileaks then released ‘her emails’, so Comey was forced to re-open the investigation, which he quickly closed again when they realised the Wikileaks revelations were something else. But by then the damage had been done.
The timing of her instruction to a technician to delete 31,000 private emails is highly suspicious, as is the actuality of the deletion itself. Hilary and Bill Clinton are crooks of the first order, and this action is consistent with that mindset.
I wonder how many millions of USAID funds found their way into the Clinton Foundation?
it actually does NOT matter , clinton still committed at least 2 felony crimes , first of she set up a private email server and used it to send and receive official emails many of them classified …. this is a violation FOIA regulations that govern the handling of official government information , and second a violation of the espionage act which governs the handling of classified information. When you sign your papers to work for the government you go through a mandatory orientation the first thing you learn is that you may only use government issued smartphones , computers, PDA or other electronic devices to exchange any electronic communiations pertaining to official business .
The second thing you learn is that you may only use official email accounts and that the use of any other email adresses is prohibited .
Also consider that by law all emails that are sent for offical business are government records and as such become government property so if you delete a email than this is destruction of government property punishable with up to 15years in prison.
Now you may argue that federal employees delete their emails every day which is true but a email deleted from a government issued device only removes it from the device and not from the server it is stored on and those servers are periodically archived.
The FBI more or less came into being to fight communist spread after WW1. So the political aspect is its DNA.
The difference these past 15 or so years is its focus on clearly not communists, and the proactive weaponization to tear down a legitimate, non communist candidate. Fully American, just not a career insider.
Then there is the smear attacks from within FBI and DOJ labeling parents at school board meetings and conservative Catholics subversive, terrorist threats to the state.
Unconscionable even in the Viet Nam era.
Long live your father Christian, brilliant mind and scholar
If the author’s father (whom he describes as a Marxist) was supporting Marxist Vietnam in its war against the USA, it sounds like the FBI attention he got was deserved.
loved your dad Christian, brilliant and so funny.
J Edgar Hoover started off with the Palmer raids after WWI, attacking dissidents. His FBI has continued doing that to the present time, including against civil rights especiallhy Martin Luther King, the infamous Cointel project against vietnam war protestors (and no, the Vietnamese were not attacking the US, the US was attacking the Vietnamese –the war was fought in Vietnam not inside the US — amazing that some people don’t know even these most basic facts about that war. Look up where the bombs and Agent Orange landed). Hoover had incriminating evidence against almost every politician in the US.
Robert Michels said all organisations become bureaucratic oligarchies run for the benefit who control them. The end of communism removed some of the need of the FBI. The threat from Islamic terrorism and international crime requires people who have language skills and can live undercover in foreign countries. Very few of the FBI will have these skills so they have to find crimes to justify their existence.
What is needed by the FBI are people like former SOE Agents who can pass off as natives in foreign countries, I give you F. F E. Yeo Thomas GC and Violette Szabo GC.
Except that the FBI is an Intenal law enforcement agency. Thier lookout is supposed to be Federal crimes and crimes that cross state lines. There is plenty to keep them busy.
It needs completely redone though. The whole agency is rotten. It was rotten at birth. Hoover was an arch villain who should have been in prison himself. Under his leadership the FBI often chose to kill the criminals in cold blood rather than take them to trial. Look at the arrest of John Dillinger for example. Shot to death surrounded by 10 or 12 FBI agents on the sidewalk in front of a theater where he had just emerged with his girlfriend on his arm. He was just assassinated. It has always been the FBI way.
Hoover was an master criminal and ran the US government by blackmail for decades.
The FBI was born of a bad seed and it hasn’t changed much. It has such a rosy reputation because for 50 years people were afraid to say differently. The FBI kills or ruins its critics.
Please. Progressives will reflexively oppose anything that Trump says or does because it’s Trump saying or doing it. That much should be obvious. But it isn’t. Because the left is incapable of reading the room.
Trump is going to clean the FBI and transform Gaza into a Middle East Riviera.
Have already booked my ***** room!
Trump is taking on a great many vested interests. As well as making mistakes (like the ICC sanctions), he will make good decisions but will make enemies of bad people. We know what happened to JFK.
First line. “ Why is President Trump charging hard at the FBI? Because what goes around comes around, and the FBI has been on the warpath against him for nearly a decade. “
Living in abject denial that this thug is a seditious criminal flaunting nearly every aspect of the constitution and attempting to destroy it, is not an excuse for your opinion.
The only way this perspective can be seen as accurate, is to exist behind the propaganda firewall, nodding in complete accordance with the white washed rewrite of 1/6 history that states that all those folks who gathered at the capital were there for a nature walk and Big Don, being the guy he is, and who just happened to be walking the White House ferret, came upon this large nature group, and he couldn’t resist a prank. So he jumps up on the stage and screams “They are giving away $1000 bills down at the capitol building! Get them while you can!” And he innocently caused a bit of a hubbub down at the capitol but it was nothing to get worked up about, according to those who whitewashed the story.
‘the FBI as early as December 2020 had intelligence indicating that various individuals were actively planning to march into the Capitol and that many of them planned to be armed and ready to use violence.’
Gosh, if the FBI knew that, why didn’t they try to infiltrate the march and have undercover agents in and around the Capitol to try to gather more information about these armed individuals?
Progressives “stand with the Trumpians?” That’ll be the day.