On its face, the news from various House and Senate members on the internals of the FBI are more than curious. Here is the headline from, yes, Fox News:
FBI allegedly engaging in 'purge' of conservative employees, retaliating against whistleblowers: Jim Jordan
Whistleblowers within the FBI have come to congressional Republicans with allegations of misconduct by the agency
The story opens by reporting this:
“EXCLUSIVE: The FBI is allegedly engaging in a ‘purge’ of employees with conservative viewpoints and retaliating against whistleblowers who have made protected disclosures to Congress by revoking security clearances, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee Rep. Jim Jordan told Fox News Digital.
Jordan, R-Ohio, said that more than a dozen FBI whistleblowers have come to him and Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee with allegations of misconduct within the FBI.
Jordan and Republicans have been investigating ‘serious allegations of abuse and misconduct within the senior leadership of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.’”
Then there was this from The Washington Examiner:
Jim Jordan says 14 FBI whistleblowers have come forward
The Examiner reports this, bold print for emphasis supplied:
“During a conversation about alleged politicization at the Justice Department, along with former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, Jordan made the case that the public has "figured it out" when it comes to what he characterized as the Left generating a lie, the "Big Media" reporting the lie, Big Tech amplifying the lie, and then both piling on Republicans when they catch on and say something. He said there are agents in the bureau who have realized the same.”
Over at The New York Post, the ever dogged Miranda Devine headlines:
GOP senators demand Wray, AG Garland end FBI whistleblower’s suspension
Well then. Misconduct at the FBI? Abuse of power? Political vendettas? Once upon a time the liberal media of the day was all over stories like that from the FBI. Examples?
Back there in the stone age of 2012, left-leaning journalist Tim Weiner wrote a book titled: Enemies: A History of the FBI. The book was billed as “the first definitive history of the FBI’s secret intelligence operations, from an author whose work on the Pentagon and the CIA won him the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.” And it blurbed: “The FBI’s secret intelligence and surveillance techniques have created a tug-of-war between national security and civil liberties. It is a tension that strains the very fabric of a free republic.”
Weiner makes much of — celebrates — a post-9/11 showdown between President George W. Bush and then-FBI Director Robert Mueller. The Attorney General of the moment was John Ashcroft, who seriously ill and hospitalized. So ill was he that James Comey, a future FBI Director, was designated acting Attorney General.
The issue with the FBI and Director Mueller was put this way by Weiner:
Mueller:
“…had to defy the president and the vice president of the United States, confront them in a showdown over secrecy and democracy, and challenge them in the name of the law.”
The episode resulted in a serious argument with then Vice President Cheney and Mueller. The story goes on.
The point here is not the incident itself. The point is that the “goods” on potential FBI conduct made it out into the public, so much so that they were recorded in the Weiner book.
Then there was longtime journalist and author Ronald Kessler’s book The FBI from even further back in time — 1993. In which, in detailed, microscopic fashion Kessler examines the history and activities of the Bureau — the good, the bad and the ugly.
In short, as long as the FBI was under the microscope for activities liberal journalists felt were beyond the pale, the media of the day was on top of the stories.
Yet today, when we have Members of Congress stating flatly that there are internal problems with today’s FBI running vendettas against conservatives inside the agency — where is the type of obsessive media coverage of a politicized Bureau out of control, run by Trump-hating bureaucrats? Curiously it doesn't exist.
Unless you know where to look — Fox or The New York Post or other conservative news outlets like NewsMax and right here at NewsBusters - there simply is not the mass media coverage of the Bureau because, yes, this time around the Bureau’s abuses have targeted conservatives.
Assuming there is in fact a Republican House and/or Senate after this next election, and investigations open up into what has been going on inside the FBI in terms of its internal politics and politicization of investigations, the question will be if the media will obsessively be telling the tale of every last FBI misstep or deliberate abuse? Thus educating the American people as to what exactly has been going on in their taxpayer funded government.
The betting here? Don’t bet the ranch.
Which is exactly why conservative media exists - to make certain the truth behind these FBI power plays gets out there.
