"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson about a dinner guest
In preparation for James Comey's opening act with his buddy George Stephanopoulos, I watched the movie "Chappaquiddick" on a rainy Sunday afternoon. This new movie about an old subject reminds us that when the rising Democrat party star and Chappaquiddick Swim Champion of 1968, Ted Kennedy, left a mistress to drown and ran away, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, a DA, and law enforcement were involved in the crime and the cover-up.
Former FBI director James Comey poses for photographs at an appearance at a Barnes & Noble book store to speak on Wednesday in New York. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)If you think for one second that higher-ups at the FBI and politically ambitious U.S. attorneys would not lie, cheat, or conceal in order to help a political candidate - read history.
We have grown an alphabet soup of powerful agencies like the FBI, DHS, NSA, DOJ, IRS, etc. They can bully us because we invest them with immense powers to arrest and to ruin lives - with scant accountability. We allow them to operate in clubby secrecy because they tell us we have to. Why?
With that lack of accountability, the FBI has a budget of $8.4 billion and convicts about 10,000 Americans a year. So, we pay $840,000 per conviction just for the FBI, which does not count the cost to prosecute and incarcerate. Why?
Bureaucracies grow by making whatever they do (war: The Pentagon; drug wars: the DEA; the War on Poverty, etc.) worse, not better. You do not grow a bureaucracy by solving your agency's problems.
The FBI apparently has had so much time and money on its hands the last few years that, having run out of people to arrest, they had time to dabble in politics. Some up-and-comer in the FBI has advanced a theory that it can indict Trump on a little-known provision in Article 865-C of the Affordable Sorghum Act of 1897. Rumors abound that the guy might be the next Democrat nominee for FBI director.
This brings us to the poster boy for bad cops, the sanctimonious James Comey, who is out pimping his book. Its contents have been a closely guarded secret, unlike our nation's classified emails and the leaked secrets of the FBI. Spoiler alert: He's the hero in his own book.
Comey craves attention. There has not been a drama queen heading the FBI since J. Edgar Hoover. And at six feet, eight inches, just imagine how tall Comey would be in heels.
Ron HartView other columns by Ron Hart
Comey and Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe led a culture of corruption; they leaked FBI information that helped them and then lied about it. But when someone at the FBI misleads under oath, they call it "being less than forthcoming" and "misspeaking" and "lacking candor." When we or political enemies do it, they perp-walk them like Gen. Flynn and ruin their lives.
To this crowd of vengeful fired FBI officials, ethics and duty are like a streetwalker reporting a customer to the cops for rape only when the john's check bounced.
Where has all this weaponization of the FBI led us? Well, it just got Trump's attorney arrested for paying off a whore and ended the attorney-client privilege. Lawyers really have had a monopoly of screwing people out of money for years, until they met their match with porn star strippers.
We should have learned from the FBI and the special counsel's TMZ-like witch hunt that deep state partisans lied about a DNC/Clinton-bought and paid for Steele dossier in order to obtain a FISA Court warrant used to spy on political opponents. But what have we found out with our $20 million instead? It turns out that Trump likes good-looking, busty blondes. And that an attorney for Stormy Daniels said, "She can describe the president's genitalia in great detail." Now we don't have Michael Cohen around to give her hush money when we really need it!
Contact Ron Hart at Ron@RonaldHart.com or @RonaldHart on Twitter.