The FBI Director, nominated by former president Trump, was questioned by lawmakers on accusations that the agency has been weaponized for political purposes. IrishCentral Founder, Niall O'Dowd reacts.
For as long as the Federal Bureau of Investigation has existed, and especially in the J. Edgar Hoover era, there was a right-wing bias in the agency. They made capturing communist spies and infiltrating progressive groups the top priority. Hoover, secretly gay, who somehow avoided the scrutiny of his own closet, wiretapped Martin Luther King and was seen as a hardline hater of the black leader and the civil rights movement generally.
Many in White America cheered the FBI on, in fact, their swagger made them so cool that fact and fiction often became muddled. So for the right wing to perceive the FBI as loaded against them is like seeing a Red Sox fan claim he’s really a New York Yankees booster.
Chris Wray did a great job defending his agents, especially when he named domestic terrorism as the greatest threat and instanced several times his own agents had been targets of right-wing militia.
Congressman Jim Jordan, the leading Republican on the committee, became so frustrated at one point he threatened to try and move the FBI HQ to Alabama. Other nutters talked about defunding the FBI, a completely insane notion,
The right-wingers found out that wild accusations thrown around on a Fox News hate-in news do not a legal case make. It is what happens when truth, not conspiracy theory meets reality.
There are no alternative facts as Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway claimed once there are "just the facts". Or as top cop, Joe Friday, used to say on the old “Dragnet” TV series "All we know are the facts".
That’s what Wray, a registered Republican gave to the congressional committee. The fact that he is a trump appointee makes him all the more credible.
Comments