Not looking good for the FBI.
Via WACH:
The FBI and Department of Justice have been at the center of two of the most consequential political investigations into Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. New developments have reopened questions about the objectivity of those institutions and whether their investigations were tainted with political bias.
On Friday, it was revealed that Robert Mueller removed a senior counterintelligence investigator from his team after it was discovered that the agent exchanged anti-Trump messages with his mistress, a top FBI lawyer who was also a member of Mueller’s investigative team. The agent, Peter Strzok, previously worked on the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server before he joined Mueller to investigate possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.
The agent’s text messages were reportedly discovered last summer, as the Justice Departments Office of the Inspector General was conducting its review of the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email probe. According to a spokesman for the special counsel, Strzok was removed from the investigation “immediately upon learning of the allegations.”
The fact that an investigator involved in two of the most politically sensitive public corruption cases voiced his political views came as a shock to former FBI agents, who said his actions reflect a lack of integrity and judgment. But the revelation about Strzok’s anti-Trump messages has also lent some credibility to the president’s repeated complaints that the FBI and Department of Justice are leading a “witch hunt” against him, while protecting his former rival, Hillary Clinton.[…]
Retired FBI agent Bobby Chacon noted that “there is some merit” to the president’s claims of an anti-Trump sentiment within the Department of Justice, evidenced by Strzok’s reassignment from the Mueller probe. When the president claims the Department of Justice is involved in a witch hunt against him, “texts like this give credence to that kind of thing,” he added.
Some have suggested that this development could hurt the credibility of the Mueller investigation, which many of Trump’s allies have already called into question.
Chacon warned that the issue “is going to be fodder for any defense attorney” representing an individual charged as a result of the investigation. “If they can bring up the issue of lack of objectivity in some of the senior investigators and in some of the senior prosecutors on that team, then it’s going to compromise any successful prosecution.”
More generally, however, Chacon and others have raised concerns about the overt politicization of the FBI, which began in earnest under James Comey and reportedly continues to this day.
“In my 27 years as an FBI agent, I never saw politics infect the upper echelons of the bureau as it has in the last year to 18 months,” Chacon said. His former colleagues who are still at the bureau have reported instances of the executive-level leadership, including McCabe and some officials close to him, “making political statements in meetings and demonstrating a political bias.”
According to veteran FBI agent Jeffrey Danik, the politicization of the FBI isn’t new, but it has become increasingly visible in the wake of the Clinton investigation and James Comey’sdecision to leak transcripts of his discussions with President Trump, a move that impacted the Trump-Russia investigation.