(Newly released documents in the case of ex-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn add to mounting evidence of politically motivated abuses by the FBI and Justice Department. AP)
Opinion Editorial
By: Post Editorial Board May 16, 2020 / 9:34pm
Democrats and their puppets in the media — once fierce critics of US law enforcement and spying agencies — have suddenly become their biggest champions, at least when the issue is these agencies’ targeting of Team Trump.
Newly released documents in the case of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn add to mounting evidence of what seem like serious, politically motivated abuses by the FBI and Justice Department. And liberals are cheering the abuse.
Even columnists at the once anti-cop, anti-FBI New York Times are now solemnly lauding the bureau as “the nation’s premier law enforcement agency.”
As the new documents show, the FBI set a trap for Flynn, with agents musing beforehand about getting him fired and the bureau’ top leaders intentionally violating longstanding protocol. Yet major outlets are running op-eds arguing that the agency’s professionals are beyond reproach.
The entire left-of-center was righteously angry when it learned of the FBI’s long-term surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr. — but defend the bureau’s long-term surveillance of former Trump adviser Carter Page, even after the Justice Department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, detailed “17 significant inaccuracies and omissions” in the FBI’s applications to spy on him. And that surveillance was “justified” in the first place by a ridiculous dossier assembled to order for Trump’s opponent. Yet none of that seems to bother the left.
Democrats blamed former FBI Director Jim Comey for losing Hillary Clinton the election in 2016 when he announced days before that agents were newly-surfaced emails — but now hold him up as a paragon of virtue whose.
In 2003, Gallup found that only 44 percent of self-identified Democrats thought the FBI was doing an “excellent” or “good” job; by 2018, it was 69 percent. Even their approval of the CIA has soared to 60 percent.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is real — and dangerous to the health of our democracy, especially when it means those who are supposed to speak truth to power instead cheer the abuse of power.