For the last several months, quite a few leading Republican voices have tried to convince the public that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is, at its core, a wildly liberal, pro-Democratic institution. The claims have never made sense: The FBI has earned a reputation as one of the single most conservative institutions in the federal government.
As Joyce White Vance, former U.S. attorney and an NBC News legal analyst, explained last year, “The notion that the FBI isn’t, in essence, a conservative-leaning organization is really silly.”
This came to mind this week as The Washington Post published a fascinating behind-the-scenes report on the disagreements within federal law enforcement ahead of the search at Mar-a-Lago last August.
Months of disputes between Justice Department prosecutors and FBI agents over how best to try to recover classified documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and residence led to a tense showdown near the end of July last year, according to four people familiar with the discussions.
According to the Post’s reporting, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, there was “a tense tug of war between two arms of the Justice Department”: Prosecutors wanted to treat the former president like any other American citizen, and pursue a standard course in response to evidence that the Republican was knowingly concealing secret materials he wasn’t supposed to have at his glorified country club.
FBI officials, however, preferred to give Trump special treatment, even pushing the idea that the bureau should get the former president’s permission before executing a court-approved search warrant. The Post’s article added that some FBI field agents tried to “slow” the investigation, with some calling for the investigation to simply end altogether in early June, taking Team Trump’s lies about cooperation at face value.
We now know, of course, that prosecutors’ wishes prevailed, and as my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained, they were vindicated “when agents executed the search warrant in August and found a trove of classified material.”
As for why, exactly, FBI officials were so eager to give Trump a pass, the same reporting suggested that many in the bureau were “simply afraid” — of taking politically provocative steps, of damaging their careers if there were no classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and possibly of being on the receiving end of the former president’s ire should he return to the White House.
As a result, the FBI effectively lobbied to give a suspected criminal a pass. These insights are valuable for a variety reasons, including offering the public a better understanding of the investigation that might very well lead to a Trump indictment. But as I read the Post’s reporting, I couldn’t help but wonder if the former president himself would see the same article — because few politicians in modern American history have waged a public smear campaign against the FBI with the vigor and enthusiasm of Trump. Over the last seven months or so, the former president has equated the FBI with “the Gestapo.” He’s told the public that the bureau is led by “Marxist Thugs.” He’s promoted a piece that referred to the FBI as “the Fascist Bureau of Investigation.” He’s condemned the FBI as “corrupt“ and “crooked.” He’s described FBI officials as “mobsters” and a “real threat to democracy.” He’s slammed the FBI as the “Fake Bureau of Investigation,” before accusing the bureau of secretly paying people to “steal” the 2020 election from him, as part of the FBI’s plot to “rig” the election and “illegally change” the results. In other words, based on this week’s reporting, Trump has been unreserved in expressing his unbridled contempt for the FBI — but evidently, the feeling is not mutual.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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