Whatever one’s views on the cascading allegations and denials of criminal wrongdoing by President Joe Biden, his son Hunter, and former president Donald Trump, there is no denying the pervasive lack of confidence in the FBI and Department of Justice as objective and impartial seekers of truth. It was a front-page New York Times headline that recently brought this home, again, for us.
The headline read: “Momentous Scene In Miami As Trump Pleads Not Guilty.” Momentous? Does anyone really believe that the years-long, circus-like pursuit of the former president by federal and state prosecutors was by the book or historic? Surely not. Both Trump supporters and the Never Trumpers believe that he has been a political target all long; the only difference is that the former rail against his being targeted, while the latter cheer it on.
It was not always this way. It wasn’t so long ago that the average American viewed official pronouncements from the government – certainly those coming from the Department of Justice and the FBI – with a baseline degree of respect and trust. With their treatment of Mr. Trump, those bodies have eroded their own credibility.
The truncated Hunter Biden plea deal, which ignored the several other possible crimes seemingly evidenced by emails – and also cut off any pathway to finding a link to President Biden, despite eyewitness allegations to Congress that there was one – doesn’t help matters either. Hunter Biden’s presence as an invited guest at a White House for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his wife, held just two days after the junior Biden agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of unlawful failure to pay federal income taxes, was also disturbingly inappropriate.
We should all be insisting that our elected officials seek an end to this toxic partisanship. A good start would be the appointment of a non-partisan investigative committee: something along the lines of the 1975 Church Committee, chaired by Sen. Frank Church of Idaho, which uncovered serious abuses by the CIA, FBI, and several other intelligence agencies. We can all agree that the future of society is grim without the sense that everyone has a chance to get a fair shake.
