Last week The House Judiciary Committee convened to hear prepared statements from several well-known individuals and some lesser-known but critically important voices. Among those were former FBI agents Nicole Parker and Thomas J. Baker. Specifically, this important event was the first hearing of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
To his great credit, Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) chose to impanel people with unassailable credibility. And, at the head of that august list is former U.S. Representative for Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district, Tulsi Gabbard. A former Democrat, Gabbard cited the “elitist cabal of warmongers, driven by cowardly wokeness,” among other reasons for leaving the Democrat party in her dust. She did not disappoint at last week’s subcommittee hearing.
“No matter how deep your differences, we must all agree to stand on the side of liberty…our government has a long history of lying to us, the American people…we saw lies about our own government illegally surveilling Americans…Individuals in the FBI also throughout our country’s history have abused their power, weaponizing those agencies to advance their own political interests.”
Her statement was reasoned, passionate, and, therefore, compelling.
Former FBI agent Nicole Parker also delivered a well-crafted statement prominently featuring a reasoned analysis of facts and something truly unique in this time of disaffected media hounds — passion derived from actual experience.
Some criticized Parker for her emotional testimony recalling the horrors of the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting and the 2017 Fort Lauderdale airport shooting. She told Townhall she was the only FBI Special Agent to personally deliver death notifications to Parkland parents waiting, in desperation, for any word about their precious children. Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, recently told Fox News:
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“I worked hand in hand with her [Parker] on the Parkland shootings. She’s one of the best, brightest, most compassionate agents I’ve worked with.”
To mock Parker’s emotion staggers mere moral outrage, and the imagination can barely conceive an infernal creature capable of expelling such a noxious combination of colossal ignorance and festering arrogance. But, such diabolical homunculi exist, lurking in the sulfuric, subterranean fumes of the Twitter hellscape.
The Rough Rider, Theodore Roosevelt, would have spat on such insectile people. He famously wrote, “It’s not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better.” Parker is a doer of deeds and was and is actually in the arena. No pretending antagonist could have done better. The critic, those cold souls, will soon evaporate to a warmer clime and languish in a purgatory of obscurity with their obsequious benefactors.
Before Parker read her formal statement, she placed a black metal bracelet on the table in front of her in plain view of the seated members of congress and of the media. Too small to see, two names were inscribed into the band — FBI Special Agent Laura Schwartzenberger (a dear friend of Parker’s) and FBI Special Agent Daniel Alfin, who was shot and killed in the line of duty in February of 2021. Both agents were assigned to investigate child exploitation and were executing a search warrant on the home of a child pornographer. Schwartzenberger was 43 and a mother of two. Alfin was 36 and a father of one.
That was no cosplay. The consequences, as evidenced by their deaths, were very real, and some FBI agents face mortal dangers daily. Anyone who says otherwise is irredeemably a hack and a fraud.
Parker told Townhall that, in part, her motivation to testify is impelled by the memory of her fallen colleagues. She feels their memory should be honored by a reformed FBI, purged of politicized bad actors and a pervasive woke agenda stemming from the Muller era centralization of decision-making at FBI HQ.
Parker feels that the pre-9/11 office of origin model, which had been the standard for FBI operations for decades, should be revived. This would ensure a broad review of investigations by multiple layers of FBI field office agents, not by insulated, sometimes inexperienced, and often politically motivated FBI HQ members of executive management.
During her remarks before the congressional subcommittee, she referred to an FBI suffering from a split personality — the good men and women of the FBI working to investigate legitimately predicated cases at the field office level properly. And FBI HQ, which careens schizophrenically between politicized and/or woke policies, intelligence products, and investigations.
Parker had this to say when Townhall asked what she wished to have addressed before the congressional subcommittee had she been given the opportunity:
“One thing that’s so important for people to know, is that…FBI management continues to tell everyone inside the FBI that everything’s fine, and there’s nothing to see here…that’s just not true. And, as long as they continue to say everything’s fine..nothing’s going to change, and that’s why I felt like I had to leave. The people…in the trenches…are not being heard…or they don’t even voice [their concerns] for fear of retaliation. I think that’s very important for people to know. Leadership is insulated from what is truly happening, and it’s almost like they don’t want to know what’s happening. Now everything’s just fake news, misinformation, or just conspiracy theory. That’s just not true…people are leaving in droves.”
The FBI is certainly far less capable and substantially diminished having lost an agent like Nicole Parker. She’s overcome her fear of criticism and retaliation to take her place in Roosevelt’s fabled arena. Parker, unlike her critics, is accomplished.
She spent her first four years as an agent investigating Securities Fraud. She then transferred to Violent Crimes and, as noted above, supported the Parkland School shooting case. She also served as the Crimes on the High Seas Coordinator. Parker received multiple awards, including the FBI’s Medal of Excellence.
Under the unblinking stare of klieg lights, Parker has acquitted herself well. She has “striven valiantly,” as Roosevelt would say, earning her place in public discourse.
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