One Ohio Democrat is taking the idea of running away from the unpopular Joe Biden to a whole new level.
In a virtual town hall on Tuesday, Ohio Democrat David Esrati accused the president of corruption and called his son Hunter Biden a "dope fiend."
"I know I'm a Democrat and everything, but do you want to tell me what Joe Biden's done since he got elected when he was 27 years old?" said Esrati, the Democratic nominee for Ohio's 10th Congressional District. "How does he own all those houses? How is he worth what he's worth? I mean, yeah, a book deal here or there, but no, something isn't right about going in and serving your country and getting to be a multimillionaire."
Vulnerable Democratic House and Senate candidates across the country have distanced themselves from the president ahead of the midterm elections, portraying themselves to voters as independent and bipartisan politicians who aren't afraid to challenge Biden on policy. But of Democratic congressional candidates' criticism of Biden this cycle, Esrati's fiery rebuke is unprecedented in its hostility.
Esrati, who made the comments during a livestream in which he responded to chat messages, suggested that Biden became wealthy through inside knowledge he used to be successful in stock trading.
"We need to fix this," Esrati said, "and at least say, ‘No, you can't trade. You can't give advice to anybody on trades. And if you get caught, you're going to prison.'"
The candidate went after Biden's son after a viewer suggested the president got rich off "kickbacks from Hunter's dirty dealings."
"Hunter's not smart enough to do dealings to make that kind of money," Esrati said. "He had the houses before, when Hunter was still just a regular old dope fiend."
Esrati is a long shot for the southwestern Ohio district, which FiveThirtyEight rates "Solid Republican."
Ohio's Democratic Senate candidate, Tim Ryan, has also worked to distance his campaign from the Biden administration while taking a subtler tack. A spokeswoman for Ryan told the Washington Post the campaign has no plans to invite Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris to events.
Among swing-state Democrats who have criticized Biden, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D., N.H.) has been prolific in attacking the president's policies. The senator has promised to "stand up to the Biden administration" on border security, criticized Biden's student debt forgiveness plan, and slammed the president for his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Published under: 2022 Election, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, Ohio
FBI Officials Who Briefed Facebook on Hunter Biden Story Are Dem Donors
Social network says it censored story after briefing from government agents
Two FBI officials who briefed Facebook ahead of its decision to censor news stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop donated to Democrats in 2020, according to court filings and campaign finance records.
Laura Dehmlow, the unit chief for the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, and Elvis Chan, the head of the FBI’s San Francisco cyber division, were "involved" in the communications between the FBI and Facebook that led to the social media giant’s "suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story," according to a court filing on Thursday. The FBI’s interactions with Facebook have been of interest since Mark Zuckerberg said in August that Facebook blocked access to an October 2020 New York Post article about Biden’s laptop because the FBI had earlier warned the company to be on "high alert" for Russian efforts to release derogatory information about the Bidens before the election.
According to campaign finance records, Dehmlow gave $60 to the Democratic National Committee in 2020. Chan contributed $50 each to Democratic Georgia Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock for their runoff campaigns in November 2020. According to the court filing, Facebook parent company Meta identified Dehmlow and Chan in response to a subpoena for records of interactions with the Biden administration. The filing, released by the Missouri attorney general’s office on Monday, does not detail Dehmlow and Chan’s interactions with Facebook or any other social media companies. The attorney general’s office is suing the Biden administration for allegedly colluding with social media companies to "censor free speech."
The contributions are likely to revive longstanding concerns about political bias in the FBI’s probe of Hunter Biden, who is under federal investigation over his taxes and foreign business dealings. Republican lawmakers have accused the FBI of shutting down aspects of the investigation into Biden and of inaccurately referring to reports about the Biden family’s business dealings as Russian disinformation.
Sens. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) have for months pressed the FBI for information about who met with social media companies to warn them about the Post’s laptop story, which cited Hunter Biden’s emails with his Ukrainian business partners. After Zuckerberg’s comments, the Republicans asked the FBI and Justice Department to detail interactions with social media companies and accused the agencies of "falsely" portraying negative reports about the Biden family as Russian disinformation.
Twitter joined Facebook in censoring the Post’s story about Hunter Biden based on information from intelligence officials. Yoel Roth, the head of Twitter’s site integrity unit, has said he blocked access to the story because the officials, who have not been identified, said there were "rumors" that Russia would release derogatory material about Hunter Biden.
Facebook and Twitter executives have acknowledged they were wrong to censor the Biden story. There is no evidence that Russia hacked Hunter Biden or released his emails. A computer repair shop owner in Delaware says Biden dropped off his laptop for repairs in April 2019 but never retrieved it. The shop owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, provided a copy of Biden’s hard drive to the FBI in late 2019, and released another copy to the media in 2020.
According to Grassley and Johnson, FBI whistleblowers claim that an FBI official in the Washington Field Office who oversaw aspects of the Hunter Biden investigation shut down inquiries into derogatory allegations about him in October 2020. The official, Timothy Thibault, criticized Republicans in multiple social media posts.
FBI director Christopher Wray established the Foreign Influence Task Force in 2017 "to identify and counteract malign foreign influence operations targeting the United States." According to the FBI, the task force has focused primarily on foreign influence operations in which foreign actors "use false personas and fabricated stories on social media platforms to discredit U.S. individuals and institutions."
Chan, who works in the FBI’s San Francisco field office, has spoken publicly about his interactions with social media companies in the run-up to the 2020 election. He said he "was very involved in helping to protect the U.S. elections in 2020" and that the FBI "worked in conjunction with the private sector." He said he met with technology and social media companies "on a weekly basis" before the election to share intelligence regarding any "unusual" activity on their networks.
"That’s where the FBI and the U.S. government can actually help companies," he said.
The FBI has been dogged by allegations of political bias since the investigation into former president Donald Trump’s possible ties to Russia. Peter Strzok, who led the investigation, was fired after the discovery of anti-Trump text messages he exchanged with FBI attorney Lisa Page. Another FBI attorney who worked on the investigation, Kevin Clinesmith, sent text messages after the 2016 election urging "Viva le resistance," a reference to anti-Trump groups that emerged after the election.
The FBI and Facebook did not respond to requests for comment.
Published under: Campaign Finance, FBI, Hunter Biden, Laptop, Russia
EXCLUSIVE: 'You gotta get some help.' Listen to Joe Biden's tearful voicemail plea to Hunter revealing he knew his son was having a drug-fueled meltdown at the time he bought a gun - and lied about being a drug abuser on purchase form
- Joe Biden sounds close to tears as he begs Hunter to get help in a voicemail on October 15, 2018
- The timing of message reveals the president knew about his son's drug-fueled meltdown at the time he purchased a gun three days earlier on October 12
- Hunter, 52, lied about being a drug user when filling out a sworn gun purchase form at a Delaware store
- The First Son checked off that he was not a user of illegal drugs, but later admitted in his own memoir that he was a crack addict at the time
- Lying on gun forms is a felony, punishable by a maximum 10 years prison and a $250,000 fine
- 'It's Dad,' says Joe in the October 15 voicemail three days after the gun incident: 'You gotta get some help. I know you don't know what to do, I don't either'
- Comes after it was revealed Thursday that federal agents believe there is enough evidence to charge Hunter with tax crimes and lying on a firearms document
Joe Biden knew about Hunter's drug-fueled meltdown at the time his son bought a gun and lied about being a drug user on the sworn purchase form, a voicemail from the president to his son reveals.
Biden sounds close to tears in the voicemail left on Hunter's abandoned laptop on October 15 - three days after Hunter bought the gun and lied about being a drug addict - begging him to get help.
'It's Dad. I called to tell you I love you. I love you more than the whole world pal,' Joe said in the October 15 message. 'You gotta get some help. I know you don't know what to do, I don't either.'
On October 12, 2018 Hunter Biden bought a .38 caliber pistol from a Delaware gun store. About two weeks later his lover and brother's widow Hallie Biden found it 'unlocked' in his truck and threw it in a grocery store trash can. Its discovery sparked a police investigation.
The incident is reportedly one of the potential crimes that federal law enforcement have enough evidence on to charge the First Son, according to a Washington Post report Thursday.
Hunter wrote on the Firearm Transaction Record that he did not use unlawful drugs, but admitted in his memoir that he was a crack addict at the time. Lying on the federal form is a felony.
Texts on Hunter's abandoned laptop reveal Joe Biden knew his son was having a meltdown at the time. The texts reveal how Joe was sucked into his son's torrid love life and became a punching bag for Hunter's drug-fueled rants
In his memoir, Beautiful Things, Hunter admitted to his continued 'full-blown addiction' at the time of the gun incident – and in doing so, appeared to admit to the felony of lying on the firearm form. A shocking photo obtained from Hunter's laptop shows his badly damaged and worn down teeth - also known as 'meth mouth' - as he sits in a dentist chair
The FBI believes it has enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with failure to declare income from his foreign business deals and a failure to declare he was a drug addict on a gun application
The emotional voicemail, along with frantic texts between Hunter and Hallie on the laptop, could form part of the evidence prosecutors use to build their case, should they decide to prosecute Hunter for the alleged felony.
Emails, text messages, and photographs previously published by DailyMail.com are among a wealth of evidence that prosecutors could use at trial if Hunter Biden is charged with tax crimes and lying on gun purchase documents.
The FBI believes it has enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with failure to declare income from his foreign business deals and a failure to declare he was a drug addict on a gun application.
Agents told the Post they assembled enough evidence for a criminal case against the First Son 'months ago' – and the decision to charge now lies with federal prosecutors.
The agents claim they have sufficient proof that Hunter failed to declare income from his overseas business dealings to the IRS.
Hunter barely had the gun for a two weeks when a dangerous incident occurred. His lover and brother's widow Hallie Biden found it in his truck on October 23 and threw it in a trash can outside local grocery store Janssens, opposite a high school.
Hunter argued about the incident with Hallie in panicked text messages in the following days. 'The f***ing FBI Hallie. It's hard to believe anyone is that stupid // so what's my fault here Hallie that you speak of. Owning a gun that's in a locked car hidden on another property?,' he wrote. 'It was open unlocked and windows down and the kids search your car,' Hallie replied. 'I'm scared you would use it hunt … I'm scared for your life hunt'
In June, images emerged showing a naked Hunter casually waving around a gun as he fools around with a prostitute during a sex session in 2018, in yet another compromising photo scandal to plague the president's son
The First Son also wrote on a gun application that he was not a user of illegal drugs, but later admitted in his own memoir that he was a crack addict at the time.
On October 12, 2018 Hunter bought a .38 caliber handgun from StarQuest Shooters & Survival Supply in Wilmington, Delaware.
The federally required Firearm Transaction Record for the purchase, obtained by DailyMail.com, asks: 'Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?'
Hunter checked the box: 'No'.
But in his memoir, Beautiful Things, he admitted to his continued 'full-blown addiction' at the time – and in doing so, appeared to admit to the felony of lying on the firearm form.
'I had returned [to the East Coast] that fall of 2018, after my most recent relapse in California, with the hope of getting clean through a new therapy and reconciling with Hallie. Neither happened,' he wrote in the 2021 autobiography.
He said he would go for regular ketamine therapy sessions as part of his rehab treatment but continued to smoke crack throughout.
It was later revealed Hunter allegedly lied on a firearm report (above) required for the transaction. A photo of the form shows the first son allegedly answered 'no' when asked if he was an 'unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance'
Hunter bought the .38 revolver from Starquest Shooters in Delaware on October 12, 2018
'The therapy's results were disastrous,' he wrote. 'I backslid. I did exactly what I'd come to Massachusetts to stop doing. I'd stay clean for a week, break away from the center to meet a connection I found in Rhode Island, smoke up, then return.
'One thing I did remarkably well during that time was fool people about whether or not I was using. Between trips up there, I even bought clean urine from a dealer in New York to pass drug tests.
'I doubt much good comes from doing ketamine while you're on crack.'
A copy of the Firearms Transaction Record and a receipt for the purchase was first obtained by news site Politico last year.
Lying on gun forms is a felony, punishable by a maximum 10 years prison and a $250,000 fine.
In March 2021 a bombshell report published by Politico revealed Hunter's sister-in-law and one-time girlfriend Hallie had found the gun in his car, wrapped it in a plastic bag, and put it in a trash can outside Janssen's Market (pictured) in Wilmington, Delaware in October 2018, because she feared he would use it to kill himself
However, not all cases are prosecuted. Of the 478 referrals for 'lying and buying' the Justice Department received in 2018, charges were filed for 298 cases, about 60%.
Hunter barely had the gun for a two weeks when a dangerous incident occurred.
His lover and brother's widow Hallie Biden found it in his truck on October 23 and threw it in a trash can outside local grocery store Janssens, opposite a high school.
It was discovered by a homeless man rifling through the trash. Local police as well as the FBI were called.
Hunter argued about the incident with Hallie in panicked text messages in the following days.
'The f***ing FBI Hallie. It's hard to believe anyone is that stupid // so what's my fault here Hallie that you speak of. Owning a gun that's in a locked car hidden on another property?,' he wrote.
'It was open unlocked and windows down and the kids search your car,' Hallie replied. 'I'm scared you would use it hunt … I'm scared for your life hunt.'
Despite the Bidens not having Secret Service protection at the time, USSS agents reportedly showed up and asked the gun store owner, Ron Palmieri, to hand over purchase documents.
Suspecting the case would be covered up, Palmieri refused and instead later gave his papers to agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, according to a March 2021 Politico report.
In texts obtained by DailyMail.com, Hunter messaged his therapist to tell him about the ordeal. 'She stole the gun out of my truck lock box and threw in a garbage can full to the top at Jansens. Then told me it was my problem to deal with,' Hunter wrote
The Secret Service has denied any involvement. But in texts from Hunter's laptop he also claimed they had a role in the debacle.
'She stole the gun out of my truck lock box and threw in a garbage can full to the top at Jansens. Then told me it was my problem to deal with,' Hunter wrote in a three-way text message with Hallie and his therapist in January 2019.
'Then when the police the FBI the secret service came on the scene she said she took it from me because she was scared I would harm myself due to my drug and alcohol problem and our volatile relationship and that she was afraid for the kids.'
Transparency organization Judicial Watch is currently suing the Secret Service over its refusal to hand over records relating to the incident under the Freedom of Information Act.
Last year the agency told Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, who have been investigating Hunter's potential criminal activity, they weren't involved.
'The Secret Service did not provide protection to any member of the Biden family in 2018,' special agent in charge Benjamin Kramer said in a letter published by the Republican senators.
'Further, records searches concerning the reported involvement of Secret Service personnel in the alleged incident have yielded no results.'
WHERE WAS THE F.B.I???
Concha: This could be the biggest story of Joe Biden's presidency
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfjyhjQpjTU
BIDEN = 50 YEARS OF BRIBES SUCKING WITH IMPUNITY!
There it is. That's the issue. To begin, you have the corrupt family Biden. They've been scamming us and our system well for almost fifty years. The man is supposedly worth over 250 million dollars. How is this possible on his salary? It's not. So where did his wealth come from? Not from being a brilliant
THE BIDEN CRIME FAMILY
Jesse Watters: The people responsible won’t talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otRC_w7h8Iw
The main objective of “political animals” like Obama and the Clintons is to get elected; it’s not to fix a broken America, nor to protect her. There are people who govern and there are people who campaign; Obama and the Clintons are the latter. Just look at the huge Republican electoral gains under Obama and the Clintons. It’s amazing that Democrats who still care about their party still support the very people who have brought it down.
businessman. DAVID PRENTICE
THE BIDEN GLOBAL CRIME FAMILY IS ABOUT TO IMPLODE
Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dz4C0ox2JRQ
Biden family’s business dealings are incredibly ‘scary’: Rep. Jordan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qtk20coW7-g
THE PARASITE GAMER LAWYER CLASS - DESTROYING AMERICA AND GETTING FILTHY RICH DOING IT!
“Protect and enrich.” This is a perfect encapsulation of the Clinton (LAWYERS) Foundation and the Obama (LAWYERS) book and television deals. Then there is the Biden family (LAWYERS) corruption, followed closely behind by similar abuses of power and office by the Warren (LAWYER) and Sanders families, as Peter Schweizer described in his recent book “Profiles in Corruption.” These names just scratch the surface of government corruption. BRIAN C JOONDEPH
“Why nepotism beneficiaries First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are Team Obama's biggest liberal hypocrites--bashing the corporate world and influence-peddling industries from which they and their relatives have benefited mightily. MICHELLE MALKIN
* How Obama's Wall Street money men and corporate lobbyists are ruining the economy and helping their friends In Culture of Corruption, Michelle Malkin lays bare the Obama administration's seamy underside that the liberal media would rather keep hidden.
• ISBN-10: 1596981091
The FBI: A Campaign Arm of the Democrat Party
“Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity” is the FBI motto. According to the FBI website, this motto, “Succinctly describes the motivating force behind the men and women of the FBI.”
The motto may have been accurate in the 1965-1974 TV series, “The FBI”, where Efrem Zimbalist Jr epitomized those words every Sunday night on prime-time television. But today the FBI has morphed into a campaign arm of the Democrat Party, attempting to influence elections in favor of their preferred candidates, acting more like the East German Stasi or Soviet KGB rather than the premier law enforcement agency in the world.
Perhaps a new motto of “Funny Business Incorporated” or “Friendly to Biden Interests” would be more appropriate to their apparent new mission. When did the FBI, the largest and most heavily armed law enforcement agency in America, now inserting itself unconstitutionally into American politics, pivot from fidelity and integrity to partisanship and dishonesty?
Start with the 2016 presidential election. Many are already familiar with Spygate. According to Jeff Carlson:
Efforts by high-ranking officials in the CIA, FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ), and State Department to portray President Donald Trump as having colluded with Russia were the culmination of years of bias and politicization under the Obama administration.
The weaponization of the intelligence community and other government agencies created an environment that allowed for obstruction in the investigation into Hillary Clinton and the relentless pursuit of a manufactured collusion narrative against Trump.
A willing and complicit media spread unsubstantiated leaks as facts in an effort to promote the Russia-collusion narrative.
The Spygate scandal also raises a bigger question: Was the 2016 election a one-time aberration, or was it symptomatic of decades of institutional political corruption?
The FBI was in the middle of this true insurrection, meant to derail a presidential campaign, election, transition, and administration with fabricated claims of collusion, lying to Congress and the American people, and then attempting to cover everything up via the Muller/Weissman investigation, including a recent raid on Mar-a-Lago to possibly confiscate incriminating Spygate documents in President Trump’s possession.
Other Obama administration agencies and officials were also involved but the FBI was in the thick of it, with Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Other familiar names include Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok and his girlfriend FBI attorney Lisa Page.
Don’t forget another FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith who knowingly lied on a FISA warrant application about Carter Page’s work for the CIA. Despite pleading guilty to a felony false statement charge, Clinesmith is once again free to practice law. Are any of the January 6 detainees recipients of such judicial largess?
There has been little or no reckoning for these Spygate players and rather than being punished for their criminal and seditious activity, they have been rewarded with university teaching gigs, book deals, and frequent appearances on left-wing cable news shows. Perhaps Special Counsel John Durham will eventually hold the FBI bad actors to account, but Spygate is now six years in the past and it is looking increasingly likely that the FBI will skate.
Jeff Carlson raised the interesting question of whether Spygate was a one-off event or part of a larger and more systemic corruption of the FBI and other three-letter agencies. Despite not derailing candidate or President Donald Trump in 2016, they certainly tried again in 2020, this time succeeding. And they are already working on 2024, before a single candidate has announced his or her candidacy.
The FBI obtained Hunter Biden’s laptop in December 2019, a full year before the presidential election. Rather than investigating and reporting on what they found, they slow rolled the laptop as it revealed knowledge of and involvement in foreign business deals with candidate Joe “Big Guy” Biden and his son Hunter, in a manner that could be construed as a quid pro quo of selling the office of the president to foreign interests.
A letter from Senator Ron Johnson to Justice Department Inspector Michael Horowitz spelled out the FBI’s role in again “campaigning” for the Democrat candidate. Senator Johnson asserted the following,
Whistleblowers have come forward to Congress alleging that FBI officials intentionally undermined efforts to investigate Hunter Biden.
After the FBI obtained the Hunter Biden laptop from the Wilmington, DE computer shop, these whistleblowers stated that local FBI leadership told employees, “You will not look at that Hunter Biden laptop” and that the FBI is “not going to change the outcome of the election again.” Further, these whistleblowers allege that the FBI did not begin to examine the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop until after the 2020 presidential election -- potentially a year after the FBI obtained the laptop in December 2019.
And influence an election they did. Media Research Center conducted a poll of 1,750 voters in seven swing states and learned 
that, “One of every six Biden voters (17%) said they would not have voted for him had they known the facts about several of the news stories the national media refused to investigate thoroughly because they might have hurt his candidacy.”
Jesse Watters noted that the 2020 presidential election was decided by 44,000 votes in Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona. The FBI suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story would have been more than enough to account for this margin if the above survey was reflective of voter sentiment, demonstrating how the FBI interfered with and likely altered the outcome the election.
Not only did the FBI interfere directly, they also urged social media to do the same, the government suppressing the right to free speech by proxy. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained to Joe Rogan recently,
Speaking on an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, Zuckerberg explained, "The FBI, I think, basically came to us -- some folks on our team -- and was like, 'Hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert… We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that, basically, there's about to be some kind of dump of that's similar to that. So just be vigilant.’"
Zuckerberg acknowledged that "the distribution on Facebook was decreased" of the New York Post’s story about Hunter Biden's laptop, noting, "fewer people saw it than would've otherwise."
The FBI had the laptop for almost a year and right before the election conveniently declared it Russian propaganda, a falsehood parroted by “51 former intelligence officials.” The FBI, and Big Tech under FBI encouragement, fabricated and spread Russian propaganda in 2016 when it could hurt the Republican candidate and suppressed and censored a real story in 2020 it when it could hurt the Democrat candidate. That certainly sounds like election interference.
The Mar-a-Lago raid is a shot across the bow for any GOP presidential candidates for 2024, Trump being the presumptive nominee at this point. Will the FBI ask the DoJ to indict Trump on nonsensical declassification accusations? While they gave candidate Hillary Clinton a pass despite her using an unsecured server and personal email account to traffic highly classified emails? The FBI is delivering a warning to Trump. Will Governor Ron DeSantis be the next one to have his home raided by the FBI?
We expect this type of behavior from the corporate media, academia, Hollywood, big finance, big pharma, big tech, and other Democrat party constituent groups, but not the FBI and other government agencies.
This is a true insurrection, not the nonsense “soon to be former” representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are bloviating over. And where are congressional Republicans? Most are voicing support for the FBI, ignoring this blatant subversion of democracy and the Constitution.
Perhaps most Republicans support the new FBI mission -- stopping Donald Trump at all costs, ignoring the weaponization of the federal government against political enemies. Will voters reward milquetoast Republicans, most of whom are no better than their Democrat colleagues across the aisle, or will many say “why vote Republican,” throwing up their hands on election day, not wasting time on meaningless elections? Such a strategy may not lead to an expected red wave.
Is a weaponized national police force something the Founding Fathers wrote into the Constitution? Or just another example of America sliding from a representative republic into a totalitarian state?
Brian C Joondeph, MD, is a physician and writer.
Follow me on Twitter @retinaldoctor
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LinkedIn @Brian Joondeph
Image: FBI
The DOJ and FBI are beyond fixing
Republicans and conservatives like to say that we must reform the Justice Department and FBI. I disagree. If we win the majority in Congress, they both need to be gone. That means completely gone, with no attempt to reform or rebuild them. That may sound like an overreach but the time to restore our constitutional republic is upon us.
Do any of us really believe that we are somehow safer or more secure with an intact DOJ and FBI? They are irredeemably corrupt. Weeding out some of the more sinister miscreants within those organizations will not change the culture that has evolved over the past few decades. We have already tried that, and it made matters worse.
We should thank Barack Obama and Joe Biden for clearly illustrating to the American people the dangers inherent in an enforcement arm of the federal government. We are now living in a police state that will, through intimidation and force, move the country toward one-party rule and totalitarianism.
How many more lives must be destroyed before we all understand that we are under attack for what we believe including (indeed, especially) exercising our First Amendment rights? It has moved far beyond just Donald Trump and virtually anyone associated with him. Now, if you sell pillows for a living and in any way suggest that you believe the 2020 election was a fraud, then you’re on the list for FBI harassment and possible arrest. Never mind all that “free country” and “Bill of Rights” stuff.
Image by Andrea Widburg.
This is obviously not the American way. It is, however, the type of behavior that was instrumental in stirring up the American Revolution. We are witnessing a “long train of abuses and usurpations.” President Trump recently said that, if he were to serve a second term, he would fire 50,000 swamp creatures across several government agencies. God bless him, but that number is woefully inadequate. It literally needs to be upwards of a million pink slips if we are ever to restore our constitutional government.
I understand that people have become accustomed to the nanny state and that we need to move forward slowly, with respect for both the constitution and the rule of law, but we’ve been going in reverse for more than a century. There are now well over 400 federal government agencies, and almost all of them are unconstitutional. People are beginning to understand that the “nanny” can morph into an unholy witch at a moment’s notice. Our representatives need to start making big changes to try and unravel this mess before it consumes us. Defunding it is a good place to start.
The Constitution clearly spells out the government’s role. Nowhere does it call for a government police force. There is also little doubt that, as matters now stand, removing the DOJ and FBI would enhance domestic tranquility. These rogue agencies consider half the American population their enemies. That’s hardly a recipe for domestic tranquility. We did just fine without them for nearly a century, and we would be better off if they were gone tomorrow.
After all, the Constitution intended for the states to absorb the policing duties that are now assigned to the federal government. If a state “department of justice” and its police force become corrupt, that does not affect the lives and rights of American citizens in the same way that it does at the national level.
It’s also easier to fix corrupt agencies belonging to the individual states. Those institutions are closer to the people and can more readily be protested or elected away. If a state government becomes in any way oppressive, people have the option of leaving. Most would not but, depending on the level of oppression, many would.
You need look no further than what is happening in California today. A torrent of people is leaving the state. This solution is not available at the federal level. Most people do not have the means to leave the country and would not want to leave if they did. They are Americans.
If the government needs lawyers to defend itself or to prosecute individuals within the government, they can be hired out of the private sector as they were before the DOJ’s creation. Think of how much money would be saved yearly—somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter of a trillion dollars.
What manner of ominous changes might we face without ten thousand government lawyers and their police force? Perhaps, securing the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity? Maybe an American renaissance? The pre-COVID booming Trump economy was largely the result of his efforts at deregulation. Downsizing the government is the ultimate form of deregulation and what better place to begin than with the corrupt police state.
Frank Liberato is a pseudonym...
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