The Federal Bureau of Investigation is the United States’ principal law enforcement agency, housed within the U.S. Department of Justice. The agency is supposed to be renowned, respected and trusted. But that trust has been broken.
Badly broken. The agency has been weaponized (including against a presidential candidate), filled with various bad actors, and used to intimidated pro-life, conservative Americans.
President-elect Donald J. Trump nominated Kash Patel on Nov. 30 to be the agency’s new director, replacing now Director Christopher Wray.
“Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People,” the president-elect said in a statement.
Patel has previously served as Chief of Staff at the Department of the Defense, Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council.
President-elect Trump’s choice of Patel to head the agency signals his desire for an outsider to reform the FBI, which has been marred by numerous scandals and abuses of power in recent years.
Let’s reexamine just a few of those notable instances.
But first, permit me a brief aside. In preparing to write this piece, I intended to chronicle a few ways the FBI has acted corruptly. But that was more difficult that I had planned. While writing, I kept coming upon new instances of FBI corruption – they kept multiplying.
The list of corruptions is truly remarkable.
Intimidation and Arrest of Pro-Life Supporters
On September 23, 2022, a heavily armed FBI SWAT team with their guns drawn descended on the home of pro-life advocate Mark Houck in a pre-dawn raid, terrifying his wife and children.
His crime? Houck was charged with violating the FACE Act for protecting his son from a pro-abortion “escort” harassing them.
Houck was later acquitted, and then sued the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice for “malicious prosecution.”
The FBI also raided the home of 73-year-old Chester Gallagher to arrest him on charges of violating the FACE Act. Gallagher wasn’t home, but his frightened family was, and the FBI demanded to know his whereabouts.
Additionally, the FBI conducted an early morning raid to arrest pro-life activist Paul Vaughn. The agents, with their guns drawn, stormed the family’s Tennessee farmhouse, frightening his wife and their seven children (including an 18-month-old). The agents hauled Vaughn away in front of his scared family.
Intimidation of Whistleblower on ‘Transgender’ Procedures
Vanessa Sivadge blew the whistle about Texas Children’s Hospital’s secret performance of transgender medical interventions upon young children. Sivadge, a nurse at the hospital, reported that the transgender clinic there was “manipulating patients into gender-affirming care.” Texas Children’s Hospital was also allegedly committing Medicaid fraud in the process.
Sivadge shared her story with journalist Christopher Rufo.
In response, the hospital fired Sivadge, and the FBI showed up at her doorstep.
Remarkably, two agents asked her about “some of the things that have been going on at [her] work lately,” Sivadge recalled. “They threatened me… They promised they would make life difficult for me if I was trying to protect the leaker.”
There’s nothing like good ‘ol fashioned government intimidation of courageous American citizens in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Memo Targeting Catholics
In 2023, the FBI published an internal memo on “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology.”
The document was titled “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.”
The FBI characterized Radical Traditionalist Catholics – or “RTCs” – by “the rejection of the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) as a valid church council; disdain for most of the popes elected since Vatican II, particularly Pope Francis and Pope John Paul II; and frequent adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology.”
Furthermore, the memo suggested the FBI should monitor these Catholics through “the development of sources with access,” including in “places of worship.”
Collusion with Social Media Censorship
In 2023, following billionaire Elon Musk’s purchase of X, formerly known as Twitter, journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss and others released the “Twitter Files.”
The Files showed that the FBI worked with Twitter to suppress “election disinformation” ahead of the 2020 election. According to Taibbi, the Files “show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.”
Raid at Mar-a-Lago
On August 8, 2022, the FBI executed an early morning raid of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. The raid was a part of the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents.
“My beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump said in a statement at the time.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said about the raid, “The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization.”
After special counsel Jack Smith filed a federal lawsuit against Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents, Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case, ruling the special counsel’s appointment was unconstitutional.
Crossfire Hurricane
From July 31, 2016, to May 17, 2017, the FBI ran a counterintelligence investigation codenamed Crossfire Hurricane, investigating alleged ties between then-candidate Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.
As Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review at the time, “The Obama administration used its counterintelligence powers to investigate the opposition party’s presidential campaign,” adding,
The DOJ’s inspector general released a report on the operation in 2019, after which Attorney General Bill Barr said, “[The FBI] launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.”
The Agency’s Bad Actors
Peter Strzok was the Deputy Assistant Director in the Counterintelligence Division within the FBI in 2016. He led Operation Crossfire Hurricane, spying on Donald Trump’s campaign.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Lisa Page – who was romantically involved with Strzok – sent him a text asking, “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”
“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok responded.
Conclusion
To be clear, most of the agents in the FBI are good men and women who are dedicated to the rule of law and public service.
But there – as evidenced above – is a long pattern of the FBI being weaponized to further partisan goals and intimidate conservative Americans.
Much of the agency’s corruption has, thankfully, been exposed.
Next up on the agenda is reform. Hopefully Kash Patel is up to the challenge – it’s certainly a tall talk ahead of him.
Related articles and resources:
Pro-Life Activist Mark Houck Sues FBI and DOJ for ‘Malicious Prosecution’
Inspector General Delivers Report on FBI’s Investigation into the Trump Campaign
Photo from Getty Images.
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