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It’s been said that Trump is more than simply a pathological liar he gaslights the truth in a way meant to make you wonder if you yourself are crazy. Nowhere is this clearer than with the alternative fact of both Trump and his GOP co-conspirators that the FBI was biased against Trump. 

It is a major feat of gaslighting the truth every time Trump yet again inveighs against the 17  18 angry Democrats. It’s amazing-the FBI-aka Trumpland-led by Comey and Andy McCabe were so anxious reassure the Clinton haters it wasn’t biased on her behalf they rigged the election against Clinton and they are still being accused of being Clinton shills. 

But regarding the talk of 17 18 angry Democrats-it’s debatable there are 17 18 Democrats in total in the agency. The truth is the FBI is a very Republican place and always has been.

After the Comey letter, some pointed out the absurdity of how Democratic Presidents always choose GOP FBI Directors that then spend their tenure investigating: the Democratic President. This is quite different from Republican Administrations who feel no need to appoint Democrats in agencies considered more liberal-the EPA, the Department of Labor, Education, HHS, Department of Energy-fittingly Trump chose Rick Perry who didn’t even know what the Energy Department was in a 2012 Presidential debate.

After Bill Clinton appointed Louis Freeh as Director, Freeh came to see the biggest national threat the Democratic President who appointed him-the GOPers have never been big on gratitude.

Again, the GOP is-and has been-a very Republican place.

“More often than not, the bureau has served presidents, especially Republican ones—there have been seven official FBI directors, and not one has been a Democrat. Hoover and Richard Nixon had a contentious relationship in some respects—indeed, the Watergate “coverup” was a coverup of the fact that Nixon ordered the CIA to block an FBI probe into the Watergate break-in. But they shared a basic paranoia about enemies and leftists that found them seeing eye to eye.”

“This has not always characterized the president-director relationship, though, which brings us to Bill Clinton and Louis Freeh. According to Freeh, he began his tenure trying to get along with Clinton and was spurned; Clinton recalls it differently. Whatever the case initially, by 1998, Freeh was far closer to special prosecutor Ken Starr’s team than Clinton’s. He sent agents to the White House to get a blood sample from Clinton so that Starr could have Clinton’s DNA to match it against that found on Monica Lewinsky’s infamous blue dress. The president was at an official dinner and excused himself, pretending he had to go to the restroom—in fact, he went to meet FBI agents and give up his blood.”

“Freeh hated Clinton and came to see him, by some accounts, as his top investigative priority. Freeh’s position, stated most publicly in a 60 Minutes interview at the time he released his book, was that he was appalled by what he saw as Clinton dragging his feet on pursuing the culprits of terror attacks on U.S. overseas installations, like the embassy in Dar es-Salaam and Nairobi, and at the Air Force housing complex in Khobar, Saudi Arabia. On the topic of terrorism, though, Freeh was himself rebuked by the Sept. 11 commission for not devoting nearly enough resources to the fight against terrorism; he blamed Congress for not ponying up the funds.”

Then, author Tomasky, points out something seldom considered-as noted in (Chapter A) even those who have rightly been critical of Comey tend to give him the benefit of the doubt regarding motivation-that Comey himself came up with Ken Starr and spent 20 years leading up to 2016 investigating the Clintons.

“The point as pertains to now is that Freeh baked the Clinton hostility into the cake. It’s also worth recalling that Comey himself investigated both Clintons in the 1990s as a staffer for the Senate Whitewater committee. Now obviously, it may well be that on the merits and in good faith as they see it, today’s rogue agents really do believe that Hillary Clinton is guilty of a crime and should not be president. It’s obviously their right to think that. They live under the First Amendment like the rest of us; they’re allowed to have political opinions.”

True although judging by the condemnations of Lisa Page and Peter Strozk, apparently you’re not allowed to if if your opinions are against Trump. Again, the FBI is a very Republican place.

“But their boss closed the investigation. It’s their job as agents to accept that decision. They’re not supposed to be in revolt against their superior’s edict, and they’re certainly not supposed to try to tip a presidential election.”

“But this is exactly what they’re doing. Writing in The Washington Post Thursday, Paul Waldman put it chillingly well. Noting how the campaign of leaks apparently forced Comey to write his infamous letter last Friday, Waldman argued:

And then it turns out that these agents are basing their investigation on a book called Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer. Schweizer is the president of the Government Accountability Institute, an organization co-founded and chaired by Steve Bannon. Who is the CEO of the Trump campaign.

While the “imagine if the other side was doing this” argument can sometimes sound trite, in this case it’s more than apt. Imagine if a group of FBI agents were leaking damaging information on Donald Trump in violation of longstanding departmental policy, and it turned out that they were basing their innuendo on a book published by the Center for American Progress, which Clinton campaign chair John Podesta founded and used to run. Republicans would be crying bloody murder, and I’m pretty sure the entire news media would be backing them up every step of the way.

Of course, entertaining this counterfactual even for a moment is to laugh-it simply would never happen. 

Regarding Comey, he spent the 21 years leading up to 2016 investigating the Clintons, first with Ken Starr, then regarding the Marc Rich pardon-he fulminated against Eric Holder for dropping it, then he opened up the unpredicated and very leaky investigation of Emailgate-while the Washington Post called it a ‘minor email scandal’ (Chapter B), Comey for some reason considered it ‘on the level of a 500 year flood’ that justified ‘extraordinary transparency’ that violated FBI precedent and protocol, not to mention Hillary Clinton’s own privacy rights.

Comey is a life long Republican who donated to both of Obama’s Presidential opponents. Oh, please tell me how this shows how great Obama is. Ok, but like with Bill Clinton he had a Director that used the FBI to take him down politically-or in Obama’s case his chosen successor.

Comey also voiced support for the very controversial Ferguson Effect in 2015-the notion that somehow protesting police violence against African Americans increases crime-how, because cops vindictively decide not to police certain areas that held protests? I’ve never got how this is supposed to work.

You can certainly argue that Clinton would have been at least as tough on police misconduct and brutality as Obama’s DOJ was-Erick Dyson argued provocatively she’d have been even tougher. 

In defeating Clinton, Comey and many other Republicans got Jeff Sessions as Attorney General-someone who could be counted on to have rather different DOJ priorities to say the least.

Andy McCabe is also a lifelong Republican-because Trump’s gaslighting is so thick you have to remember that McCabe leaking information about the FBI’s Investigation into the Clinton Foundation hurt Clinton-it surely didn’t help her. Interestingly enough, Lisa Page was the actual person to directly leak this to the WSJ-per McCabe’s request.

But but but-I thought she was supposed to be a Clinton shill!

Indeed, Mueller himself is a life long Republican.

Yet, just to underscore the asymmetry of the two parties, the GOP continues to lambast the FBI as the ‘Deep State’ while Democrats continue to praise it. As noted in Chapter A  the results are pretty clear which strategy has been more beneficial.