FBI has 3 strikes but is still not out in the DC Swamp

FPI / May 9, 2024

How can the FBI continue to get away with operations that appear to violate the laws it is charged with upholding?

Since the days of J Edgar Hoover, the FBI has been rumored to be blackmailing top officials in the U.S. government. So you can have three strikes and still not be out in the DC Swamp. The FBI continues to be funded by those allegedly serving at the pleasure of the American people.

Strike One

On July 31, 2016, the FBI opened its Crossfire Hurricane investigation of the presidential campaign of Donald Trump that ended up effectively paralyzing the new administration’s executive operations before they started.

The FBI’s egregious abuse of power in constructing the Russia hoax “did incalculable damage to the country. Certainly, some portion of the distrust of the FBI that exists today is the direct result of the bureau’s fruitless pursuit of Trump,” Washington Examiner columnist Byron York wrote in August of 2021.

Related: 5 years ago, the FBI launched a sustained, arguably treasonous abuse of power with impunity, August 4, 2021

One of the worst examples, York noted, was the hiring of Christopher Steele, the former British spy “who compiled the sensational and false dossier on Trump.”

Steele had been commissioned and paid by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, but “then the FBI hired him to continue his partisan, anti-Trump digging for the U.S. government,” York noted. “For anyone concerned about the ethics of law enforcement, it was an astonishing moment. As it turned out, the FBI had to back out of the deal when it became clear Steele was talking to the press in a desperate attempt to publicize his false charges before the election. But then the FBI established a back channel to Steele and kept using his material anyway.”

The FBI’s actions in pursuing Trump and his associates “led to one of the most atrocious scenes in recent political history, or perhaps all political history,” York wrote.

Strike Two

The FBI took possession of an Apple laptop previously used by Hunter Biden on Dec. 9, 2019, following months of back-and-forth with a computer repair shop owner named John Paul Mac Isaac.

Miranda Devine, who broke the Hunter Biden laptop story for the New York Post, noted: “If it weren’t for Mac Isaac’s persistence and savvy, Hunter Biden’s laptop never would have seen the light of day, and America would be none the wiser about the FBI’s nefarious role in covering it up.”

The Marco Polo research group noted: "In 21st-century America, crimes and/or scandals involving electronic devices owned by public officials and their families are becoming an alarming trend. In fact, Hunter having abandoned his infamous water-damaged laptop at Mac Isaac’s repair shop was merely the latest in a string of national embarrassments.

Related: Part 2: What the FBI did with the Biden laptop and other U.S. officials’ electronic devices, March 21, 2024

"Our research group would not be concerned with such embarrassments if they did not provide America’s many enemies — both foreign and domestic — with considerable blackmail, " Marco Polo added. "Discontented with the many limited hangouts released so far, this Report was our effort to give a true, complete, and lasting account of the Biden Laptop and its contents, which span over a decade."

Strike Three

New disclosures in special counsel Jack Smith's classified documents case against Donald Trump reveal the FBI tampered with evidence to create the infamous photo of documents allegedly found in the raid on Trump's Florida residence at Mar-a-Lago.

"Included as a government exhibit to oppose Trump’s lawsuit requesting a special master to vet the 13,000 items taken from his residence, the crime scene pic immediately went viral — just as Attorney General Merrick Garland, who authorized the unprecedented raid, intended," investigative journalist Julie Kelly noted in a May 6 report.

"At the time, even regime-friendly mouthpieces questioned the need and optics of the raid; The photo helped juice the DOJ’s justification for the storming of Trump’s castle."

New court filings in the Florida case against Trump and two co-defendants "conclusively demonstrate that the government used the cover sheets to deceive the public as well as the court. The photo was a stunt, and one that adds more fuel to this dumpster-fire case," Kelly wrote.

During the raid, FBI agents described taking a box in its entirety if it contained papers with classified markings; the box usually contained other items, which is how the FBI ended up with so many of Trump’s personal belongings.

So, in order to flag the location of the alleged classified record in the box, agents, as noted by Jay Bratt, who was the lead DOJ prosecutor on the investigation at the time and now is assigned to Smith’s team, used the cover sheets as placeholders. (The classified records were then placed in a separate secure file.)

But now defense attorneys claim, and the special counsel concedes, that some placeholders do not match the relevant document.

“Following defense counsel’s review of the physical boxes…and the documents produced in classified discovery, defense counsel has learned that the cross-reference provided by the Special Counsel’s Office does not contain accurate information,” attorneys representing Trump’s co-defendant Waltine Nauta wrote in a May 1 motion.

The motion forced the special counsel to admit the error. “In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet,” Bratt wrote.

Kelly noted: "In other words, in their zeal to stage a phony photo using official classified cover sheets, FBI agents might have failed to accurately match the placeholder sheet with the appropriate document. This is a potentially case-blowing mistake, particularly if the document in question is one of the 34 records that represents the basis of espionage charges against Trump."

Judge Aileen Cannon has postponed the Florida trial indefinitely. The judge set hearings on key defense motions including selective prosecution, unlawful appointment of Special Counsel, and what analysts say Jack Smith had hoped to avoid, a hearing on the scope of the prosecution team including the Biden White House.

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