To get the ringleaders, we have to go after the rank and file at DOJ and FBI. Why? Those who are just following orders, also own part of this.
As an Army Officer, one thing my peers and I held to be generally true; There is no such thing as a bad Soldier-only bad leaders. As I said…generally true. There are always exceptions, but they are the ones who prove the rule. I also used to believe the same of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
I grew up watching Efram Zimbalist Junior putting the bad guys away on TV. During my short, ten year tenure (before the Army grabbed me…again) I had the honor and privilege of piloting a green and white patrol car as a Deputy Sheriff around a rapidly growing South Florida county. At that time, my fellow Deputies and I thought of the FBI as sort of, “the high priesthood” of law enforcement…as did the rest of the World.
Sadly, that situation no longer obtains. Even one of its most vociferous proponents, Sean Hannity, is now questioning how deep the rot goes. From over at Fox News:
I used to always say on this program during the Russia hoax, 99% rank and file FBI agents put their lives at risk, work hard to keep this country safe. Tonight, I say it’s about 95%.
Read: Sean Hannity: The FBI and the DOJ have sadly earned the country’s distrust
Let’s do a little math. The figures I have, say that the FBI has somewhere around 13,000 special agents. That’s out of an agency with approximately 37,000 employees, including support staff. Using Hannity’s numbers…
13,000 x .1% = 130 agents with possibly less than stellar integrity.
13,000 Special Agents x .4% = 520 special agents, 4 times as many government officials who might not be able to trust.
If we extend the percentage into the rest of the agency (37,000 x 4%) we get 1,480 people in positions of trust that we possibly—can’t. Remember, It was the Medical Examiner, essentially supporting cast, who reversed course and classified George Floyd’s death as a murder when it was clearly an overdose of Fentanyl.
Some might disagree with the percentages above, and that’s fair. But, this isn’t merely a numbers issue. It’s an issue of public trust in our institutions, trust which in many of them, has severely declined in the past few decades. And that mistrust is growing.
Over at Red State, my good friend and colleague Nick Arama has a piece out regarding the investigation into Hunter Biden’s nefarious and illegal activities.
Read: Last Minute Swap of Hunter Biden Prosecution Team Is Raising a Lot of Questions
As often happens, I get some very interesting viewpoints from down in the comments section of many articles. Today is no different. Commenting in the above article, writeofcenter says, emphasis mine:
This smells bad. In fact, it stinks.
The DoJ and the US Attorneys Office has been politicized and is corrupt from the top down.
There is a chain of command here. And Weiss is in the middle of it. Congress needs to focus those who are making, approving and directing these decisions. From the top of the chain down to the prosecutors.
Somebody in power has set the agenda for all of this. That’s the person I want roasted over the coals. The rest are pretty much enablers.
Ordinarily, I would agree with him and with Hannity’s position above. Like writeofcenter, above, I really want to see whoever orchestrated all of this, tried, convicted and turning large rocks into smaller rocks and thence into sand. That is going to be a tough road that will take a lot of prepping the battlefield.
We have to set the conditions that will foster that prosecution. Going after the ringleaders, the political appointees who sit at the apex of each organization can be difficult. They have lawyers on staff that are paid for by your tax dollars and mine. Not to mention, very few senior prosecutors on DOJ have been shown willing to go after sitting politically appointed agency heads.
To get there, we have to lose the idea that the rank and file are well meaning, hard working and are just doing what they are told. That also applies to “enablers,” the folks in support staff who might be hiding, losing, misfiling or flat out destroying evidence. Just following orders, as an excuse for misconduct was finally eliminated at Nuremberg in October of 1946.
We have to open investigations on the rank and file involved in slow rolling investigations on the Biden Crime family and do the same for those involved in the patently political prosecution of President Trump. Sadly, we’ll have to prosecute, convict and sentence a few of them to make an example.
Those folks can, just like as in a RICO case, be rolled over, providing info to prosecute up the food chain. But that’s not where it ends. In order to make this work long term, we need to put an environment in place that helps the rank and file push back on unlawful/unethical pressures. We need to create a culture in these organizations that just because your are in charge, not every order you give is lawful…and unlawful orders will not be followed.
I watched this happen while I was on active duty. When the Army decided to crack down on certain unethical conduct, like falsifying reports, a few examples went aa long way. We have to create the same environment I witnessed back in the late eighties & nineties. When an FBI (or IRS) Special Agent gets told to do something out of bounds, the response will be, “Sorry Sir. Ain’t doin’ it. Ain’t no way I’m going to Leavenworth behind that s***.” In that regard, the threat at the grass roots level, actually helps lower ranking personnel push back on unethical and/or illegal suggestions by their superiors.
Perhaps then, the FBI can once again stand up for the entirety of their own motto: Fidelity, Loyalty and Integrity
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I recall when I read Freeh’s comments about how much he liked Biden in his autobiography 20 years ago (Freeh, you worthless b@stard- I read your book!) that it was clear to me that he was caught up in the Biden family web of corruption, as he retired and went to work for MBNA, whose CEO had just purchased Biden’s old house at a quite favorable price to Biden.
Having worked with two of the three original AUSAs in the case as well as US Attorney Weiss has also given me some insight into the USAO here, and I am familiar where identical firearms cases to Hunter’s have been prosecuted with vigor and felonious outcomes.
Right now, Judge Noreika is the wild card.
There’s nothing as bad as a bad cop. The head guys, the enablers and the “following orders” types are all bad cops. Clean them out. No one in the current corrupt regime is going to start that cleaning process. We’ll have to wait.
Sadly, with pervasive rot in any large organization there’s a psychological hurdle that’s hard to overcome; namely the sheer number of people that fit the definition of crime and the depth that needs to be treated as complicit in the organization is so large that few of the ‘adjudicators of truth’ have the stomach to punish so many for such a wide spectrum of ‘crimes’.
Either the judges intentionally go through the motions and punish only the worst of the worst, and maybe not even them, or they come down with persecution fatigue and only go as far as they can go and then give up.
Because of recognizing that dynamic, in cases like these I’m in favor, first, eliminating the top layer or two of those that were in those positions at the time the abuse was started that had not filed objections to what was going on and, then, of a targeted, across the board, reduction in personnel large enough to get everyone’s attention. This RIF would be augmented by a well-designed screening processes that only retained those with the lowest chances of having gone along to get along.
It is likely to catch some of the wrong people but, if they were that passive that they decided to just hunker down and ride out the abuse, we probably don’t want them left in positions of responsibility anyway.
I’ve long believed that the Nuremberg Defense should be treated as a confession of guilt and proceed immediately to Sentencing Phase.