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Deep State Follies

Published by digby on January 16, 2019

Deep State Follies

by digby

Fox News used to be hardcore “law and order” and they loved the FBI and other federal law enforcement when it was investigating all the people they hate. You know, like Muslims, liberal activists and Democrats. They positively worship the border patrol and ICE. On the other hand, for years they pitched fits about the ATF (Tom Delay called them jack-booted thugs) while guys like Rudy Giuliani were always blatantly partisan in their views. (The ruthless prosecutor and law and order mayor called the agents who returned Elian Gonzales to his father in Cuba “storm troopers.”) And, needless to say, they’ve always had a problem with law enforcement when it focuses on white-collar criminals and Republican crooks like Donald Trump and never more so than today.

This screed from Gregg Jarrett takes it to a new level:

x News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett wants to repeal and replace the FBI.

“This is an all-powerful, out-of-control agency, rogue agency, and frankly it’s time that it be halted in its tracks, reorganized and replaced with a new organization that has legal restraints imposed upon it and accountable to somebody,” he told Sean Hannity on Monday.

Jarrett claimed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed special counsel Robert Mueller, “invented” a counterintelligence case against President Donald Trump “with no probable cause” and “no credible evidence” to support it.

“It is time that the FBI be halted,” Jarrett said:

Jarrett has previously called the FBI “America’s secret police” and said the Mueller investigation is “illegitimate and corrupt.”

I’ve always been skeptical of federal police power in most ways. The possibility that they would involve themselves in partisan politics is always a worry. I get it. They have been used for such purposes in the past (usually on bhalf of the right —COINTELPRO, anyone?) and even though conservatives’ occasional objections have always been self-serving and deeply partisan, we sometimes do find common ground.

This is not one of those times.

I wish we didn’t have a president who has either been the victim of a foreign plot and refuses to admit it or is an out and out traitor, but the evidence suggests we do. And the party that supports him is an accomplice in the cover-up of his crime.

Even if they weren’t actively helping him, the congress has inadequate power to pursue such a case at the level something this monumental requires. Until just this month when Democrats took over one house of Congress it had not had such power. Without some kind of DOJ/FBI investigation into this administration’s incredibly suspicious behavior they would have been given a completely free pass.

Much of our democracy has depended on a certain amount of trust that our president isn’t an imbecile or an outright criminal being blackmailed by a foreign power — or both. Clearly, that trust has been violated so we must rely on the institution of the DOJ, with the help of the intelligence agencies, to develop the case so the congress can do its job of oversight. It’s not a good situation but it’s all we’ve got.

The FBI did not cook this up. What we see Trump and his henchmen do and say in public, before the world, is proof enough that something is very, very wrong. That means we have to extend a little bit of trust to the institutions that are empowered to investigate. There just isn’t any choice except to stick our heads in the sand and pretend that it’s still 2015, before all this happened.

It happened. Those who say it’s all a big hoax are either dumb, lying or living in the past.

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