The Federal Bureau of Investigation is running amok, but are we so desensitized by the rampant corruption and prosecutorial overreach that we’re just numb to it all? The curtain of professionalism and apoliticism that were hallmark characteristics of this agency began to fray with the bureau’s Russian collusion investigation in 2016. It was also marked by the unscrupulous love affair between two top officials, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, and painted a picture of political animus that had infested the FBI.
The bureau and the Department of Justice are both facing heat for the August 8 raid on Mar-a-Lago, a political hit by the heavily politicized Biden Justice Department against a former president. The search warrant and the affidavit providing probable cause for the raid have yet to neutralize the stench that this wasn’t politically motivated. If anything, the release of the affidavit made the DOJ look worse.
Those will be settled in time, but another story of FBI overreach has gone under the radar. In 2020, the bureau reached out to Facebook and requested they censor the Hunter Biden laptop story. It’s another case of the FBI interfering in an election, only this time they’ve appointed themselves the guardians of information which is peak creepiness.
“How is this not a huge story,” asked Matt Taibbi, the former contributing editor to Rolling Stone. He then faced a deluge of unhinged liberals who just didn’t seem to get that a) the laptop was declared authentic eons ago, and b) the FBI policing speech in the middle of an election is antithetical to American values. The FBI is our leading domestic intelligence agency. As Taibbi noted, their meddling in news distribution should have sent chills down the spines of everyone, especially the American Civil Liberties Union. Where the hell are they in all of this?
How is this not a huge story? https://t.co/UwQdt5YNZo
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) August 25, 2022
The FBI warning Facebook away from a factually true story is incredibly ominous. The information police are here. https://t.co/YaMvF7xoqt
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) August 25, 2022
This was a true story. Same as 2016 — the “dump” Zuckerberg referred to was all true material. https://t.co/UIxEc5efHQ
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) August 25, 2022
It wasn’t disinformation https://t.co/Us5DTUq6rw
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) August 25, 2022
For the millionth time, it wasn’t misinformation, as even the Post and Times have conceded. https://t.co/9YfxEvGl5a
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) August 26, 2022
This isn’t about left vs. right media. It’s about the FBI policing speech in the middle of an election. Violates the first principles of our society in a major way https://t.co/s5mLYkh98X
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) August 26, 2022
One of the reasons why liberals don’t care about this is that their hatred of Trump is so great they’re willing to shred the Constitution to achieve that goal. Some are arguing that we’ve entered a post-Constitutional era in this country. Another reason could be that they don’t care because the FBI’s interference helped Democrats, and they’re supportive of the government policing speech they don’t like wholesale. The Left’s growing intolerance of freedom of speech and differing opinions has moved at warp speed since the 2016 election. Tired of having their views shredded in under 30 seconds, liberals now claim that opposing views and voicing them is akin to violence.
We may disagree with Taibbi often, but he’s honest, supportive of core liberal principles, like First Amendment rights, eschews support for government overreach, and will rip into his side when they go off the deep end. This is one of those stories.