Back in the day, I wrote for a president. Not speeches, mind you, but special correspondence and proclamations. Watching this entire nauseating mess with the Justice Department and the FBI—agencies that many believe are corrupt to their core—I thought I’d write a statement for President Donald J. Trump that he could use to address the issue.
It goes like this:
Today I am announcing as president of the United States and head of the executive branch, acting on behalf of and in the interests of “We the People,” that I am ordering my subordinates at the Department of Justice and FBI to turn over immediately all un-redacted, relevant documents and make all witnesses available to Congress related to the Hillary Clinton server and email investigation, the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Russian election influence investigations.
Under my Article II powers, there is no executive privilege or separation of powers issue for me in ordering these actions. This is not a capitulation to a coequal branch of government but rather an exercise of my constitutional authority.
It is abundantly clear from the inspector general’s report that high ranking officials at the Justice Department and FBI acted with extreme bias on behalf of Hillary Clinton and her associates when they investigated her private email server. These senior officials went so far as to order that the investigators go easy on Clinton as she would be the next president of the United States.
Those same high ranking officials clearly took a different approach to investigating my campaign. They used every weapon in their arsenal—wiretaps, informants, grand juries and the like—to go after my campaign on this bogus ‘collusion’ matter.
But this goes beyond the 180-degree difference in tactics between the two investigations—kid gloves for Hillary versus an iron fist for my campaign. This is about a two-tiered system of justice—one for the protected class of elites like Hillary, an approach that avoids using even the normal investigative tools versus the other in which agents and prosecutors, in the words of Lisa Page, the former FBI counsel to Deputy Director Andy McCabe, come “loaded for bear.”
What other American would be given such courtesy by the FBI and the Justice Department? Other Americans have been treated to pre-dawn, no-knock search warrants with FBI agents busting in the door. Would the FBI accept from other Americans, without consequence, the destruction of evidence—using BleachBit to destroy electronic evidence or hammers to destroy mobile phones and laptops? Would they accept the blatant and systematic flaunting of our laws regarding the handling of classified documents?
Further, if an American lies to the FBI, he or she gets prosecuted, unless that American is a Clinton associate. If the FBI lies to us, however, they get “bias and sensitivity training.”
Unfortunately, it seems that the attorney general, deputy attorney general, and FBI director are more interested in protecting their broken institutions than fixing them. They can’t even seem to admit there is a problem.
Reform starts with an admission and an acceptance that there is a problem.
Reform starts with a full accounting to the American people.
To that end, I am ordering the Justice Department and the FBI immediately to turn over to Congress all un-redacted relevant documents including all classified information. The members of the relevant congressional committees have the appropriate clearances and they clearly have a right to know. I am ordering that all agents and lawyers requested by the relevant committees be produced for interviews and testimony.
The American people have lost faith that the Justice Department and FBI are committed to the bedrock principle of our justice system: Equal justice under law.
Full transparency will be the first step in restoring that faith and sanitizing the infection of bias and abuse. Because if we lose faith in the institutions that have been entrusted to protect and defend the ideas of the rule of law and even-handed justice, we will have lost our way as a country.
On behalf of the American people, and in defense of our ideals and the Constitution, I will sign today an Executive Order compelling full transparency and accountability from the Department of Justice and the FBI effective immediately.
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