Political Irony

The Atlantic has a short, concise summary of what is going on with the FBI. You should read it.

Basically, anti-Clinton insiders at the FBI, with help from the Trump campaign — including Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon — leaked information saying that an investigation into the Clinton Foundation was likely to lead to an indictment. That information is now known to be false, and even Fox News apologized on-air for spreading it.

There is some irony that even as the Trump campaign is alleging improper communication between the Department of Justice and the Clinton campaign, a top Trump adviser is receiving just that kind of information. Giuliani’s statement has already attracted the attention of Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, who wrote a letter Friday to the inspector general of the Justice Department requesting an investigation into the leaks.

So we have another double standard for the campaigns. Bill Clinton is accused of improperly colluding with the Justice Department, while Rudy Giuliani brags on TV that he is improperly colluding with the FBI and pretty much gets away with it.

But the bigger question is why do FBI agents feel like it is their right to create leaks, some of which are actually false, to influence an election?

The point is not that some of these leaks are good and some of them are bad. The point is not that Clinton is innocent or not innocent, or that Trump is pro-Russian or anti-Russian. The point is that a presidential election should not depend on the ability of candidates to successfully intimidate or cultivate favor among American national-security agencies.

We recoil in horror at military coups in banana republics, but what is going on in the US is almost as bad — an internal security agency determining the results of an election.