The FBI has never been an organization that cares about civil liberties. From its very inception it worked as a kind of secret police, digging up dirt on enemies. J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s first Director, was notorious for amassing files of compromising information on celebrities and politicians. He was so powerful that no President dared fire him, lest they find themselves on the receiving end of his wrath.
An agency tainted from the beginning and that experienced that kind of corruption for decades doesn’t suddenly magically become uncorrupt just because it receives a new Director. So it shouldn’t be any surprise that the FBI performs similarly today as it did back then.
If you’re a conservative and you’re at all vocal about the direction this country is taking, there’s a good chance that you’ll end up the target of an FBI investigation.
Attorney General Merrick Garland testified before Congress that the Bureau never used counterterrorism resources to target parents who spoke out at local school board meetings. Yet information received from FBI whistleblowers demonstrates that investigations were started into many parents who spoke out at school board meetings.
Those investigations were labeled with threat tags created by the FBI’s Counterrorism and Criminal Divisions. Parents were investigated and labeled threats because they spoke out on controversial topics, belonged to conservative organizations, or owned guns.
Imagine engaging in perfectly legal First Amendment activity (petitioning the government for a redress of grievances, freedom of association), and exercising your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, and being labeled a threat by federal police agencies.
The only reason we know of these things is because of a handful of good apples who have leaked this information to Congress. While it’s heartening to know that there are at least some FBI employees with a conscience, it seems clear that the Bureau itself is rotten to the core.
Whether it’s the FBI targeting President Trump and his Cabinet, or the FBI investigating concerned parents, all Americans should be concerned with how the FBI is being used to investigate political opponents of the Deep State. When an organization is this corrupt, it’s impossible to reform it either, so it’s high time to close up shop and start fresh from the drawing board.
