Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax's coverage of the FBI raid at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago has been relentlessly pro-Trump and anti-authority, so it stands to reason that its commentary about the raid would be even more so. Michael Grimm used his Aug. 9 column to call for the death of the FBI:
When I became an employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, more than 31 years ago, I was overjoyed. I was proud to have graduated from Quantico, becoming a newly appointed special agent — that was in 1995.
Sadly, over the years and decades, I have witnessed (first-hand) what amounts to the death of the FBI. My sadness now overshadows the treasured, fond memories of working good cases with fellow patriots, as most street agents were.
Now as I write this (and for quite some time) I can’t help but be embarrassed about my association with the agency. The bureau of today has morphed — and degenerated into — nothing more than a political cudgel to bludgeon opponents, deceive the American public, and win elections.
Jumping to the present day, when the FBI/Department of Justice (DOJ) executed the search warrant on Mar-a-Lago, the home of former President Trump and his family, it was a death-knell for any and all credibility barely remaining in both institutions.
It was one small step for liberals that fear Trump’s return and one giant leap for the banana republic America is very rapidly transforming itself into.
[...]
To be certain, there are still some great, brave field agents, but the bureau, as a whole, is no more.
May it rest in peace.
Grimm's defense of Trump is that his hoarding of classified documents and refusal to return them to their rightful owners, the U.S. government, was a "technicality."
Michael Dorstewitz ranted in his Aug. 10 column:
The unbridled abuse of power by the Justice Department, coming just three months before a midterm election is unlikely to have the effect on voters that Democrats and the Biden administration think it will.
The intention may be to demonstrate to voters that Trump and Republicans are corrupt. But voters will see where the real corruption lies — in the White House, the Democratic Party, and the Justice Department headed by Attorney General Garland.
As Thomas Jefferson noted, "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."
Dorstewitz also repeated the right-wing lie that the DOJ was "Labeling concerned parents who speak out at school board meetings as domestic terrorists." As we've documented,only parents who threatened school board members were labeled as such. Is Dorstewitz saying that violent threats are protected speech?
Larry Bell ranted about the purportedly "weaponized" FBI in an Aug. 11 column, going on to play the ol' Clinton Equivocation:
Launching a police state assault on a leading political figure just three months before critical midterm elections is a politically partisan outrage of third world banana republic proportions which will discredit public trust in the FBI for decades to come.
[...]
There was also no comparable DOJ or FBI interest in pursuing clear evidence that Hillary Clinton had deleted 33,000 emails — many containing national security-sensitive classified information subpoenaed by Congress following her term as Secretary of State — going so far as having some records “wiped with BleachBit,&rdquo and cellphones destroyed with hammers.
Any thought of the FBI invading the Clinton’s Chappaqua home to seize documents would have been unthinkable, even though they might possibly also have investigated any Clinton Foundation influence in a 2010 deal which allowed the Russian nuclear energy agency Rosatom to acquire a controlling stake in Uranium One, a Canadian-based company with mining operations in the Western United States.
First: Hillary's classified email controversy was much different than Trump's hoarding of classified documents. Second: There's no credible evidence that Hillary ever engaged in such a scheme, and a total of nine federal agencies signed off on the Rosatom-Uranium One deal, not just Hillary.
Bell returned for an Aug. 15 column to whine some more about the raid ahd portray it as a distraction from Hunter Biden:
Many have legitimate reasons to suspect that political and media pressures on Merrick Garland to indict Donald Trump on anything ahead of 2024 presidential elections may tie the raid on his quarters as part of a House committee investigation fishing expedition for evidence.
Unless Trump’s charged offense is proven to present a serious risk to national security, at least half of the nation is likely to see the raid only as blatant proof of unequal two-tier justice.
The Mar-a-Lago invasion came at a particularly perilous political time for Joe Biden and his administration as the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware reportedly nears a decision on whether to charge Hunter Biden with alleged criminal tax evasion and money laundering.
In his Aug. 19 column, Dorstewitz declared that "there’s no evidence to suggest that either the former president or his lawyers were in any manner uncooperative with federal authorities." That didn't age well; it was revealed a couple weeks later that Trump's lawyers claimed -- falsely, it appears -- that they had returned all classified documents ac ouple months before the raid. He continued to rant, spouting the right-wing talking points du jour:
The search warrant was executed by the same FBI that lied on four applications for FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. This was also the same FBI that pushed the legitimacy of the Steele dossier, knowing full well that it was little more than a work of fiction.
DOJ lawyers argued Thursday that release of the affidavit would compromise the investigation into Trump’s mishandling of classified material.
Would that be the same “ mishandling of classified material,” for example, as using a private, nonsecure email server to send and receive classified State Department information and deleting 33,000 emails?
Dorstewitz's Aug. 22 column brought up the completely unrelated case of how "In 2012 the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit to compel the National Archives and Records Administration to seize hours of audio tapes former President Bill Clinton kept in his sock drawer." Dorstewitz obscured the fact that the tapes were made by historian Taylor Branch, not Clinton, and that they have largely been in Branch's c ustody ever sincel.
