HORIST: Angus King’s beef is a bit off

Angus King is the Independent (essentially Democrat) senator from Maine.  He recently advanced one of the Democrat’s — ergo the media’s — false narratives that President Trump attacks the entire intelligence and law enforcement communities.  That is simply untrue.

Trump has repeatedly made public statements that he has very high regard for the men and women working diligently to keep America safe and secure from bad actors, foreign and domestic.  In pushing aside these statements in an effort to give credence to the false narrative, the Democrats, the fawning press and Senator King commit the sin of omission.

Trump points the accusatory finger at those in leadership who he believes – with some evidence – have violated the independence and objectivity of their organizations.  It is their actions, not the President’s accusations, that have tarnished the image of those agencies.  They have been caught in germane lies –even under oath – and in statements and actions that can only be viewed as disturbingly partisan. Surrounding these facts is a fog of reasonable questions and suspicions.

In his television interview, Angus lamented the President’s criticism of such people as former FBI Director James Comey, head of National Intelligence James Clapper and some of their top staffers.  According to King, the President undermines the very foundation of democracy by casting doubt – justified or not – on the integrity of past leaders of the intel community.  King claimed that our very democracy depends on the people’s unequivocal trust of our intelligence agencies.  Really?

King sounds good if you do not think about it.  He and the not-so-loyal resistance movement are literally claiming that Trump is bringing down the Republic.  They could not be more incredible had they blamed Trump for the volcano eruption in Hawaii.

There are two things that King needs to know about America.  The first is history.  Corruption of the FBI by senior leadership is not new. Ironically for the first 37 years of the agencies existence – the years of J. Edgar Hoover – the left was the fiercest critics of the agency.  It was widely believed, with some validity, that Hoover maintained his power by compiling files on the misdeeds and peccadillos of high ranking politicians – including presidents of the United States.

During the days of civil rights and student unrest, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson would routinely meet with Hoover to plot actions against left-wing protestors and civil rights leaders.  In the most infamous case, President Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, directed the agency to go after Martian Luther King – essentially corrupting both the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ).

This led to the illegal wiretapping of MLK and his associates, and the leak of alleged extramarital affairs at a time when such allegations were extremely damaging because our moral standards were not as low as they are today.  It was especially damaging when leveled at a man of God.

As part of the administration plan to discredit King, his wife, Coretta, received a package with tapes of alleged sexual assignations of her husband and an anonymous letter intimating that King should take his own life to escape the scandal.  King later received a similar package. Others contended that the letter only meant King should reject the Nobel Peace Prize and step down from leadership. Regardless, it was later discovered that the letter was drafted by Hoover’s deputy, William C. Sullivan.  With the approval of the Kennedys, Hoover also undertook a campaign to discredit MLK and other black civil rights leaders as communists.

During the Nixon scandal, Attorney General Robert Mitchell was forced to resign because of his politicization of both the DOJ and the FBI. 

There was a reverse corruption of the DOJ under the Obama administration.  Though the press tended to look the other way out of reverence for Obama, the record is clear.  Attorney General Eric Holder killed off several scandals that deserved investigation – including Fast and Furious, the IRS politicization against Republicans and conservative individuals and organizations, the improper election influence by A.C.O.R.N. and others.

The DOJ was significantly compromised by the improper tarmac meeting between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton and her refusal to look into the relationship between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the massive contributions to the Clinton Foundation by foreign entities, including Russia.

In his sworn congressional testimony, Comey admitted that he was ordered to soften the language of the Clinton investigation findings to use the word “matter” instead of “investigation” – a word preferred by the Clinton campaign.  It was also revealed that the term “grossly negligent” – which implies criminal activity – was arbitrarily changed by FBI Chief of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok to the less legally specific “extremely reckless” in Comey’s official report.  Strzok was later booted from the Mueller investigation team for his highly partisan and inappropriate anti-Trump text messages with his paramour and fellow FBI official, Lisa Page.

If anyone wants to see the corruption of the justice system, they should spend time in Chicago – and a few other cities – where the so-called rule-of-law gives way to the rule of partisan interests.

In suggesting that the future of the Republic rests on American blind trust of intel and law enforcement agencies, Senator King has it arse-backwards.  He not only needs to read the Constitution, he needs to understand its purpose.

It is said that the Constitution protects our rights and freedoms, but only if we the people apply eternal vigilance.  The central question is: from whom or from what does the Constitution protect us?  It is evident in the written word and all the comments and writings of the Founders at the time.  The Constitution challenges us to protect our God-given rights and liberties from a powerful and abusive federal government … period.  Virtually every Article and Amendment of the Constitution is designed to limit the power and scope of our federal officials.

The worst mistake we can make is to simply trust our distant central government to provide for our needs and to protect our rights.  The Founders gave us the secret ballot to elect our representatives and even guns to take up revolution should that government they envisioned become authoritarian and abusive.  The Founders admonished us to resist the siren calls of a powerful elite to trade our freedom for a false sense paternalistic security.

In other words, we should not be put into political slumber by the views of big government authoritarians like Senator King, but rather we should greet every action, program, plan or proposal coming out of Washington with the wary eye of suspicion. 

No Senator King, blind trust will destroy our Republic a lot faster than healthy wariness.