As I’ve opined many times here [and elsewhere] politics is difficult.
Politics is especially difficult when we have the legislature conducting investigations into whether active investigations by various Federal agencies are acting outside their normal bounds; in other words the government is fighting with itself.
The very good and rational idea of getting government back to “normal” again must include assumptions that people in Federal Agencies are doing their jobs correctly.
Oversight investigations diminish this notion and while it is a “good thing” that the legislature is “keeping the agencies honest” the norms must be respected with regard to the internal works of these agencies…unless we want the House to meddle in these things?
I think some of the federal agencies have shot themselves in the foot a bit
For the longest time, it was just the progressives getting the poor treatment from the FBI (going back to the FBIs various meddling in trying to undermine civil rights groups and eco groups by planting informants in them and trying to encourage bad behaviors to have a reason to lock someone up).
During those times, they could count on the more staunch conservatives to be their allies and run distraction/deflection on their behalf.
When they started doing that to conservatives recently, they lost their ally.
A variation of the old adage goes "He who wrongs Peter to the benefit of Paul can always count on the support of Paul"
What's gone on with certain federal agencies extends that adage even further...
"When he who was wronging Peter for decades decides to start wronging Paul instead, he shouldn't expect to get a lot of support from either guy"
If we're talking about the FBI here, this is the same organization that saw fit to allow the likes of J Edgar Hoover to run it for nearly half a century.
When the same organization that's doing this:
‘Outraged’ senator Ron Wyden urges agency to explain tactics from 2020 protests reminiscent of rogue behaviour from decades past
www.theguardian.com
...is also doing this:
“It becomes really dicey when there are nearly as many informants as there are defendants,” a former federal prosecutor told The Intercept.
theintercept.com
The assumption that the FBI is acting in the best interest of anyone (on either side) would be a flawed assumption.
When they're trying to rile up both BLM activists and far-right militia groups at the same via the use of "inside guys" (who are trying to encourage them to do something so they can entrap them), they shouldn't expect to be trusted.
...and to clarify here, throughout history, progressives have been the targets of the FBI way more than conservatives have. Conservatives have only recently gotten a taste of it. The difference is, when they were doing it to progressives, the conservatives were fine with running interference for them. When they're doing it to conservatives, they can't count on that kind of staunch support from progressives because the FBI has already burned that bridge.
