Tag Archives: government

Trust and the FBI

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Thomas Baker, a retired FBI agent, had some thoughts in the The Wall Street Journal about how to restore trust in the FBI. Naturally, I have some thoughts on those thoughts.

The centralization of case management at FBI headquarters. According to Florida Rep Matt Gaetz [R], an email from Mr McCabe said that Hillary Clinton would receive an “HQ special”—lenient treatment in the investigation into her handling of classified materials. Mr Wray has tasked Associate Deputy Director Paul Abbate to review how the bureau manages sensitive investigations.

That’s the wrong step. Director Wray needs first to explain why some investigations are more sensitive than others and then to eliminate that dichotomy.  All investigations are sensitive.  Or does Wray think some Americans are more equal than others?

Bad relations with Congress. The FBI needs to re-establish a climate of mutual respect with lawmakers. The “Gang of Eight”—congressional leaders and intelligence committee chiefs—is the time-tested vehicle for sharing sensitive information. The bureau should use it.

The only way the Bureau can be trusted to use it is with a 100% turnover of current FBI management.  And with a law requiring the FBI to turn over all materials subpoenaed—without redaction—within [24 hours] of the subpoena being issued.

A dysfunctional Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has said Congress will look at this after the midterm elections. But the FBI and Justice Department need not wait. They should adopt an internal standard to avoid the use of FISA to target an American citizen….

No.  Star Chambers, secretive or otherwise, have no place in a free republic. The FISA courts need to be done away with.  That should be the direction of Nunes’ “look at.”

A lack of emphasis on the Constitution. FBI special agents always have been instructed about the Constitution. But a new category of employee arose after 9/11. Intelligence analysts, who don’t directly interact with citizens in ways that touch on the Constitution’s guarantees, now play a major role in the bureau’s mission.  …  It is imperative that they, too, receive training about the Constitution.

No.  The FBI is a domestic police force, it is not a domestic spy agency.  Intelligence is the purview of the CIA, which already is enjoined (badly; enforcement needs to be stepped up) from domestic spying.  Leave the policing to the police and the spying to the spies.  Where there’s overlap, Congress and the public courts can work the question, Congress in the more general case and the courts on individual cases.

None of this will work though, without a wholesale replacement of FBI management from the middle layers all the way up.  Middle management on up and not just the leadership alluded to above because the cultural failure caused by the FBI’s politically appointed management has gone on for so long that it reaches that deep.  The fastest way to restore the FBI’s culture is to get rid of the current, dysfunctional culture’s practitioners and outright adherents.

It’s true enough that this will entail removal of some good people along with those who’ve failed their duty.  However, the failures within the Bureau are so rampant, wide, and deep that a scalpel cannot meet the task. The situation wants an axe.

Flipping Witnesses

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President Donald Trump decries it.  So have I in writing about the Manafort case and the credibility of Mueller’s prosecutors’ witnesses.

What’s interesting to me and saddening, and what’s dangerous to our system of justice—which includes justice for the accused as well as the victim—is prosecutors’ response to Trump’s decrial.

Peter Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor, said that Mr Trump’s comments amount to “an absolutely outrageous statement and to any prosecutor would just be shocking to hear.”

“It’s hard to overstate how fundamental” to prosecutions cooperating witnesses are, Mr Zeidenberg said.

And Stephen Gillers, a New York University School of Law professor:

Trump’s idea would effectively demolish one of the basic and valuable tools of criminal law enforcement in the US.

It’s dangerous for our prosecutors to so blatantly and avidly rely on their ability to do the testifying by using the mouths of “witnesses” they’ve either browbeaten into testifying in a certain way or who’ve sold their testimony to the prosecutors like Thursday night hookers.

If the prosecutors can’t make their case without such witnesses, they don’t have a case to make.

The Will of the People

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The West Virginia House of Delegates has returned articles of impeachment against every one of the sitting Justices of the State’s Supreme Court.  One Justice, Robin Davis, has resigned her post, doing so before any of the impeachment cases proceed to the West Virginia Senate for trial.  In her resignation press conference, Davis complained

The majority members have ignored the will of the people who elected the justices of this court.  They have erased the lines of separation between the branches of government.

The will of the people in electing Supreme Court Justices is overruled, is it?  Certainly it has been—by the will of the people as expressed in their election of the Representatives who voted for (and against) the impeachment. Those elected Representatives will be subject to the will of the people again, and much sooner than the Justices would be—the one stands for election every two (Senators, who will conduct the trial, every four years); the other only every dozen years.

Beyond that, it’s a critical function of the Legislature to remove misbehaving people from government, including those of the other branches of government.  This is what impeachment and trial proceedings are for.

The will of the people is being well served.

Chicago Mayhem

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Recall the bloody mayhem going on in Chicago these days while its mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) fiddles.  Over 80 people were killed or injured one recent weekend alone.

Last year, President Donald Trump told Emanuel to get things under control, or else the Feds would.  That was a year-and-a-half ago and so greatly predates the recent weekend.

Trump’s own mistake was in not following through on his implied threat.

Here’s President Hines’ solution, and it’s not too late to implement it; although the bloody cost of sitting on the sidelines is rising.  Since Emanuel has chosen to do nothing but natter on about how terrible things are, Hines would get on to Governor Bruce Rauner and tell him he has one week to get the Illinois State Police deployed in Chicago in place of the city’s police (who are pouting like toddlers over their mistreatment by Emanuel—a justified beef, but no excuse for shirking their duty) and beginning to restore order to the city.  In the same notice to Rauner, Hines would Federalize the Illinois National Guard.  If Rauner said his State police didn’t have the resources, Hines would tell Rauner that if he needs Guard support, Hines would authorize it.

The bottom line is this: if the city and State governments can’t be bothered to bring Chicago under control, the Federal government has to.

I grew up in Illinois.  It’s more than irritating to see a once great State descend into such bloody chaos, especially when it’s occurring because the State and local governments won’t do their jobs.

Integrity

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Recall that Paul Manafort, briefly a campaign mucky-muck for then-Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, is on trial for a number of tax and bank fraud charges.

One of those charges relates to a tax return filed by Manafort that supposedly

contained inaccurate information [that] falsely reduced his tax liability by classifying millions of dollars she believed was income as loans.

The accountant who filed the return, Cindy Laporta (“she” in the above cite) testified under oath last week at Manafort’s trial that [emphasis added]

manipulating tax returns in such a way was “inappropriate” and that she knew it was wrong, but did it because Mr Manafort was a longtime client of her firm. “I prepared the tax returns and communicated with banks based on information that [Richard] Gates and Mr Manafort provided to me that I didn’t believe[.]”

This included such incidents as

Ms Laporta said she agreed to help finesse [Manafort’s] company’s income, recasting $900,000 as a loan, based on a two-page loan agreement that appeared to be from one of Mr Manafort’s clients, Telmar, that she suspected was fake.

And another:

Messrs Manafort and Gates pressed her to send to the banks what she believed were false documents purportedly forgiving the previously booked loans, after the banks had asked to see more income to provide the mortgages.

She could have refused to do these things.  She chose, instead, to be serially dishonest.

Laporta was granted immunity for this testimony.

Given her testimony that she contributed to falsifying tax documents—Federal felonies (and State felonies if these affected any State taxes)—why should any of her testimony be believed?  She’s confessed to being dishonest; how can we take any of her testimony as other than dishonest?

On the other hand, Mueller’s Manafort prosecutors traded her immunity for her testimony.  On what basis then, can we conclude she simply didn’t sell her testimony like a Thursday night hooker?  Alternatively, on what basis can we conclude she wasn’t brow-beaten, with those felonies of hers as cudgel, into testifying the way she has?  Either way, it seems clear to me that it was the Mueller prosecutors, not Laporta, who testified during Laporta’s time on the stand; they were just using her mouth to do so.