Now–again–it’s the FBI. One after another, and repeatedly, President Trump has sought to discredit and otherwise undermine some of the most important American institutions:
An independent judiciary–judges and the courts, Congressional committees, the whole idea of a free and probing press, the FBI…the list is long.
Anything and everything that is supposed to be part of our treasured system of checks and balances on governmental power–especially including Presidential power–Mr Trump has positioned himself as a kind of one-man wrecking ball.
He took aim at the FBI early; now he’s returned to it, using allies in the Justice Department and Congress, plus his own words, he is impugning the honesty and integrity of the Bureau with renewed zeal.
This is disgusting and dangerous.
The FBI is the nation’s premier law enforcement agency. It has its flaws and weaknesses, but overall and in the main the men and women in it are dedicated public servants. As a reporter who has dealt with many FBI people, high and low, for many years, I can bear witness to this.
They — and we — deserve better than these cheap shots, calculated efforts to intimidate and undermine the FBI to such a grave degree as to raise the spectre of obstruction of justice.