If you needed any more evidence that “the swamp” (a.k.a. the “deep state”) President Donald Trump is battling and attempting to drain is a institutional force dating back decades, look no further.
William Webster, a former CIA and FBI director, claimed in an op-ed published on Monday that the bureau is not a “broken institution” and that anyone who criticizes it threatens the “rule of law.”
Yes, seriously.
Webster defended a bureau (and CIA) that very clearly and very purposefully abused its power in an attempt to depose a presidential contender — and then president — some of its ranking members did not like. But it’s not likely to quell the public’s outcry, at least from fair-minded Americans who are acutely aware of what happened under Obama’s watch.
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Webster’s full-throated defense of the two agencies comes amid the fallout from the Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) report, in which it was confirmed that FBI officials made 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in its submissions to the FISA court to obtain warrants to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page during the 2016 presidential election.
And let’s be clear: As DoJ IG Michael Horowitz noted in his report, making that many ‘errors’ is either the result of abject incompetence — highly unlikely — or purposeful actions (which, of course, would demonstrate bias).
“The privilege of being the only American in our history to serve as the director of both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. gives me a unique perspective and a responsibility to speak out about a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love,” Webster wrote in the New York Times (because, of course it would be the NY Times).
“Order protects liberty, and liberty protects order. Today, the integrity of the institutions that protect our civil order are, tragically, under assault from too many people whose job it should be to protect them,” he added.
What gall. What hubris. What arrogance.
