The Republicans now control the House, and they have a golden opportunity to do something about the weaponization of the FBI by making a petty, mean, and absolutely essential gesture – they can defund the billion-dollar new FBI building that would replace the decaying brutalist monstrosity of a building they currently infest. No new palace for you, bums. This needs to be a line in the sand for our guys in Washington, a pass/fail test to tell us who thinks it is still the era of Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., and who knows what time it is. It is time to act to rein in this active threat to Our Democracy masquerading as an LEO. Republicans cannot keep up their unquestioning support of a federal agency that persecutes us in between its bouts of routine incompetence and corruption.
Yeah, yeah, I know, conservatives back the blue, except the current iteration of the FBI is not blue as in cop but blue as in Democrat catspaw. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was – long ago – a storied institution full of mob-busters, commie-busters, and generally bad people-busters. Some used to be total badasses. Now it’s a garbage force of kneeling, squealing, political hacks who use their awesome power to persecute their Dem masters’ political enemies. But let’s not forget their other failures – their crime lab that botched tons of criminal cases, or the Waco/Ruby Ridge slaughters, or the corrupt Boston field office, or Robert Hansen (perhaps the worst spy in American history), or the guy who lied on the FISA warrant, or the dude who looks like Satan who was tapping the local talent. And let’s not forget the famous pic of the hefty agent in FBI tactical gear and a freaking mask kneeling in solidarity with the communists.
I would go on with more epic FBI fails, but I need to keep this column under two thousand words.
By the way, a retired cop friend called just as I was writing this – totally serious – and when I mentioned I was writing about the FBI, he launched into a tirade that failed to meet Townhall’s language standards. He was distinctly unimpressed following his years of interactions with them. But their Keystone Cop capers are really not the issue – the fact that they have allowed themselves to become political actors for their preferred side is. They prefer the Democrat side. And do not tell me about all the good apples. A few folks have blown the whistle, and some have paid a price. But by and large, it’s “I’ll keep my pension and my head down.” Yeah, now, months later, we hear about how “Oh, we objected to raiding the home of a former President who was running against the current one,” but at the time, not one handed back his M4 and said, “Count me out.”
Pathetic.
Some of you will think, “Uh oh, Kurt’s going to be in trouble because he’s criticizing these guys.” The fact that the FBI’s credibility level and the respect for it are running so low that people will immediately assume that it would use its power against a political critic is powerful evidence that it is a disgrace.
They do not deserve to be rewarded; they deserve to be shut down. But in the meantime, let them stew in their own filth. The current digs for Team Clouseau is a Schiffhole – that they have never hauled Adam Schiff away in cuffs tells you what team they are playing for. It’s ugly on the outside, the kind of grotesque architecture dumb people once thought was edgy and modern. Inside, it is falling apart and too small for the metastasizing Bureau. Except we don’t want it to grow – the feds should not be a national police force but a small and specialized team focusing on a few federal crimes. If they have the resources to track down every dude who wandered wide-eyed through the Rotunda, there are too damn many of them.
Mobsters. Commies. Perverts. That’s who the FBI should be tracking. Not framing guys like General Flynn. Not threatening moms and dads upset that their schools are becoming gender-broken weirdness factories. Not hassling Trump voters for being Trump voters or abortion protestors for protesting abortion. Frankly, I’d dismantle the whole thing and ship its responsibilities to the US Marshals, Secret Service, and Dunkin Donuts.
Billions to pay for a new building out in Virginia? Because it will be billions before the boon has been fully doogled. No. We should reward excellence and punish failure. Applying that common-sense standard, we should house the FBI in an abandoned bus station in Wheeling.
No offense to West Virginia.
The fact is the FBI has lost the faith and respect of the American people, tarnishing its good name and torpedoing its goodwill because of its own actions. Hell, there’s a former FBI big wig who retired from the Russian oligarch team and who is now in trouble involving working for Russian oligarchs. This is not the FBI of “Silence of the Lambs.” It’s the FBI of “Die Hard.”
And it’s time the GOP drew the line. The FBI does not need to be rewarded because it does not deserve to be rewarded. It’s broken, and you do not fix it by giving it a much nicer, bigger, and more expensive place to continue to be broken in.
Speaker McCarthy, let’s make a point about fighting political weaponization, not just talk about it. There is no new building for the FBI until it regains the trust it has squandered.
Follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtSchlichter. Get Inferno, the seventh book in the Kelly Turnbull People's Republic series of conservative action novels set in America after a notional national divorce, as well as his non-fiction book We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America.
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