How The Media Are Lying Right Now: FBI Questionnaire Edition
The article discusses the controversy surrounding a questionnaire issued by the Trump administration to FBI agents involved in investigating the January 6 Capitol riots. The questionnaire requests information on each agent’s current title and their level of involvement in the investigations, which some perceive as an attempt to scrutinize and possibly target those who conducted the investigations.
critics, including CNN personalities, argue that the request is unprecedented and indicative of perilous political interference in law enforcement. Jake tapper expressed concern that FBI agents could face repercussions for their previous work, framing the situation as alarming. In contrast, the article’s author, Eddie Scarry, argues that President Trump’s scrutiny of the FBI is part of his legitimate executive oversight and not a scandal.He notes that such inquiries are typical of a president’s authority over federal agencies. Scarry suggests that the heightened concern from media commentators reflects a partisan bias, where actions taken by a Republican administration are scrutinized more harshly than those by a Democratic one.
Scarry defends the Trump administration’s actions as a lawful exercise of presidential authority rather than an unethical or dangerous precedent.
Among my favorite media-manufactured “controversies” are the ones where they take something that’s patently not scandalous but make hilariously desperate attempts to assert that it is.
That’s what CNN has been doing this week after FBI agents who investigated Jan. 6 defendants were directed by the Trump administration to fill out a questionnaire. The document reportedly asks agents to detail their current title and the extent of their involvement in the investigations. It’s unclear what purpose the information will ultimately serve, but it’s certainly not going to keep me up at night.
President Trump was elected to oversee the executive branch. The FBI falls under his purview, and nobody who works there should feel exempt from whatever scrutiny he chooses to apply.
But CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday spoke as if this were a violent assault on innocent children. “We’re really in the upside down,” he said on air. “I mean, people out there should just take a second to think about the fact of what’s going on here. FBI agents theoretically and in practice could be and have been fired for investigating the crimes committed by people who beat up cops. … It’s insane.”
True, a few Justice Department lawyers have been dismissed from the DOJ for their involvement in the wildly excessive prosecution of hundreds of people, an operation that was plainly political. That’s surely a bummer for the lawyers and their families, but it’s not the history-altering event Tapper wants it to be.
He went on to question whether the questionnaire itself is “even legal,” because “if FBI agents are forced to fill it out this time, what’s stopping the administration from forcing agents to fill one out for anything they want to?”
I mean … yeah.
A day before, CNN’s Jessica Dean helpfully explained that “a lot of these line agents at the FBI are simply assigned to those cases. … That’s just them doing their job.”
See how this works? When an FBI agent is instructed to do something by a Democrat administration, it’s just standard procedure, all innocent. But when an agent is instructed to do something by a Republican administration, particularly one that has made clear Washington isn’t going to be doing business as usual, it’s very controversial and highly concerning.
The point of course is to pressure Trump and his political appointees to do nothing that threatens the status quo because the status quo works in the interests of Democrats and the permanent Washington bureaucracy.
Trump was given power and he’s using it. That’s not a scandal. It’s the consequence of an election.
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