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Last week's Racket News (a modestly priced Substack subscription publication by Matt Taibbi) included a fantastic article, The Bell Finally Tolls For the FBI, cited this morning in the indispensable Powerlineblog.
This one article, a comprehensive indictment of the FBI and media figures complicit in the Russiagate conspiracy to undo the 2016 election, makes an annual subscription worth the price.
The Nunes memo revealing the misuse of the bogus Steele dossier, and to which memo new FBI head Kash Patel contributed, was 100% accurate and later confirmed by the Horowitz IG report. However, contradicting the beloved Russiagate lie triggered the left and the corrupt establishment:
It’s impossible to overstate how violent the response was to these allegations. The Washington Post called the memo a “joke” and a “sham.” Nancy Pelosi called the memo “bogus,” “false,” and a “total misrepresentation.” Senate Intel chief and Virginia Democrat Mark Warner called it a “reckless” document demonstrating “astonishing disregard for the truth.” CNN cheered as fired FBI Director Jim Comey “skewered” Patel for “dishonest and misleading” work that “inexcusably exposed the classified investigation of an American citizen,” a complaint that took balls considering it was Comey’s FBI that dirtied Carter Page in the first place. New California Senator-elect Adam Schiff wrote a Washington Post editorial saying Nunes had crossed a “dangerous line,” while still-FBI director Christopher Wray and then-Acting Attorney General Rosenstein issued an extraordinary “rare public warning” to Trump, as CNN put it, saying they had “grave concerns” about “material omissions of fact” in the memo.
None of these people should be allowed in public without being constantly confronted to ask if and when they have apologized to the American people for their role in this monstrous lie, and when they promise to leave public life forever.
The spot-on conclusion to the article:
It’s necessary to lay all this out today because the “Nunes memo” backlash was the most irrefutably corrupt episode from the Trump-Russia years, and explains the impossibility of leaving participants like Chris Wray in place. The FBI absolutely should stand up to a president who is, in fact, breaking the law. But what this version of the Bureau did was invent from thin air a pretext for an open-ended investigation that paralyzed the legitimate government, essentially moving power for years to a White House-in-exile under Robert Mueller. I’ll leave it to lawyers to decide what the proper word to describe that conduct should be, but I know what that looks like to me as a voter. The FBI should get out of politics and go back to investigating crime, and it won’t do that until everyone connected to capers like the one above has been at least sent to the private sector, if not somewhere less hospitable. No matter what you think of Trump, the FBI became a criminal organization under his tenure, and defanging it will be an urgent priority of the next government.
What he said.
Discussion (9)
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From the Taibbi article as quoted in the OP:
That is not true. The Mueller investigation ran from May 2017 until March 2019. Mueller did not exercise the political power of the President during this period. Here are a miniscule number of the executive actions taken by President Trump during this period:
I do think that the Mueller investigation was unfounded, and that it caused some political weakening of the Trump administration. Taibbi's claim that it "paralyzed" the government is not true. Taibbi's claim that it "essentially mov[ed] power for years to a White House-in-exile under Robert Mueller" is also not true, and is quite shocking, essentially a false claim that Mueller carried out a coup.
This is disappointing but not surprising. It seems that in our media, as in politics, just about everyone makes false statements, often by exaggeration, as here.
It is particularly troublesome from Taibbi, who -- I think -- has been campaigning against false reporting in the press.
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I think it is true. Opinions differ. Judgement words are flexible in their application to qualitative differences.
The important thing is that the FBI has two kinds of people: (1) whistleblowers (2) people that need replacing.
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Trump had no honeymoon. His bully pulpit was always answered with a wave of accusations. His Attorney General was in fact paralyzed with respect to advising the President on this assault. His White House counsel had to devote enormous amounts of time, especially to advise against comments calling for it to be shut down because the hidden agenda was to provoke him into a response they could use to accuse him of obstruction. These falsehoods formed the basis of a gratuitous impeachment and carte blanche for the media to call him a criminal and an illegitimate President. The fact that he accomplished anything is due to force of will and a cluster of issues that were in the GOP wish list. And the poisonous atmosphere likely helped doom his re-election.
You say that "paralyzed" is an overstatement but "some political weakening" significantly errs in the other direction.
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I don't have a subscription to Racket News, but Matt Taibbi kindly put out an video clip of his article.
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Good, now I'm waiting for the people who think they need a transcript of that, rather than the original article...
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