Right Wingers Attack The FBI To Neutralize It For Future Criming

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

The ongoing attacks from the far right against federal law enforcement have been so unrelenting and manifested in so many different ways that I’m afraid even astute observers are beginning to lose the forest for the trees. So a quick reality check.

It’s one of the most reliable truisms of the Trump era and its fits neatly into the scholarship on authoritarianism: Any power center outside of Trump and the right wing is a threat that needs to be neutralized. Media. Universities. Corporations. Law enforcement.

You’ve seen the script run over and over. Discredit external power centers, draw them into ridiculous fights over their credibility and legitimacy to turn them into political actors that are no better than Trump, sow distrust and suspicion so that any actions they take are de facto illegitimate.

Trump attacks on the FBI are not new. He corruptly fired FBI Director James Comey way back in 2017, prompting the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel. He savaged deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. We’re many years into this now.

What distinguishes the latest round of wholesale attacks on the FBI is that eliminating it has become a tenet of GOP politics, not just Trump, not just the far-right fringe. These are just a few examples from the past 24 hours:

Imagine: Joe Biden says he's going to hunt down & fire all agents & prosecutors investigating his son Hunter (what Trump wants to do for himself)Reality: Biden keeps a Trump appointed US Atty in place to continue investigating his son. https://t.co/gwHWQuWxsa

The FBI is no longer a law enforcement agency, it has become a political weapon for the Left. It's time to start the FBI over again from scratch. pic.twitter.com/B8eChirXVH

I haven’t troubled you with the bizarro claim that the FBI is sitting on evidence of a massive bribery scandal involving Joe Biden when he was vice president, but House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) has been touting this nonsense for weeks as evidence of the lefty FBI being in the tank for Biden:

The NYT has a story out this morning on two new angles in the Jan. 6 investigation by Special Counsel Jack Smith, but both angles seem to run through the White House Personnel Office, which you’ll recall was being run by the uber-Trump loyalist John McEntee, a 30-something neophyte who was allowed to run amok:

The firing of Krebs was always deeply corrupt and fit logically into the Trump-led conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election, so I’m glad to see it getting renewed scrutiny.

We have another in the long and sometimes confusing series of stories about what Special Counsel Jack Smith has found in his Mar-a-Lago investigation.

The latest iteration from the WaPo is about investigators’ focus on what happened at Mar-a-Lago after a federal grand jury subpoenaed the resort’s surveillance video:

Authorities have also examined events in mid-July surrounding a different subpoena,which sought footage from security cameras on the property. Around that time, the employee allegedly had a conversation with an IT worker at the site about how the security cameras worked and how long images remained stored in the system, the person familiar with that aspect of the investigation said.

The employee later told investigators that the conversation was innocent and was not about trying to hide anything from authorities, saying that he didn’t know at the time about the investigation or subpoena, according to another person familiar with the probe.

But those answers were met with skepticism, people familiar with the situation said.

Like a few other recent stories, this one is focused on and seems derived from what one lowly Mar-a-Lago employee has told investigators. Given that, I’m not sure how much these stories give us the full picture of the scope and nature of the investigation. Just be cautious.

At this point it looks like we’re over the hump on raising the debt limit. Never say never, etc, but there’s no obvious impediment to this getting done.

Some additional reading if you’re a hardcore debt limit junkie:

Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) is expected to announce his resignation from Congress as soon as today due to his wife’s undisclosed health issues. It’s a safe GOP seat, but Stewart’s resignation would temporarily shrink the already slim GOP majority in the House until a special election is held in Utah.

In case you missed it, losing GOP nominee for Secretary of State Mark Finchem of Arizona was ordered to pay his winning Democratic opponent $40,000 in legal fees for his baseless challenge of the election results. Finchem’s lawyer was also sanctioned with a $7,434 penalty for his role in the lawsuit.

Former first lady Rosalynn Carter, an advocate for mental health care for decades, is suffering from dementia, the Carter Center announced. She is still at home with former President Jimmy Carter, who remains in hospice care.

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